Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Carne Apache (Pickled Ground Beef Cold Dish)


The ground beef is cooked in ACIDIC FRESH LIME JUICE. Then mixed with other fresh ingredients. PERFECT for the summer heat. Don't worry about e coli or undercooked the acid will do it's job as well as the proper waiting time.
This is served with TOSTADAS aka lighly fried corn tortillas that are like a big round crisp corn chip and you spread this on top.
You can buy tostadas pre-packaged and made. I choose to make my own at home. I'll post that up shortly.

Ingredients
-About 1 ½ to 1 lbs. ground beef (USE A REALLY LEAN ground beef for this I recommend it)
-2 Cups freshly squeezed LIME juice (about the juice of 13 juicy limes)
-4 small or 2 large ripe Tomato cut in little cubes
-1/2 onion Onions minced into little tiny cubes
-1 cup finely chopped cilantro
-3 Serrano chili peppers (minced VERY tiny seeds and all)
-About 1 ½ tablespoons salt or salt to taste
-1 tsp. of ground black pepper or to taste
-1-2 tsp. garlic powder (optional but for me it makes a HUGE difference)

Directions
-Mix ground beef with lime juice in a bowl. Cover bowl in plastic wrap and refridgerate for about 3-4 hours or until beef loses all it's pink color and if grey or cooked. Some people rather leave it overnight to cook like 6-12 hours. Honestly for me 3-4 is enough.


-When beef is cooked mix well with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
-Then add the rest of the ingredients and incorporate. Taste it to adjust salt to your taste.

ENJOY as a spread over your tostada on a HOT DAY!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Top round: good for apache (bottom round if cheaper that week; chuck if you like nasty, cold raw fat; filet if you have money to burn). Some folks add diced green olives or red bell pepper into the mix. Personally, I consider this a salsa cruda / pico de gallo with acidified raw beef as a main ingredient. Green cabbage, slices of hard boiled egg, or avocado slices are frequent topping "condiments" on tostadas. Try sprinkling a scant pinch of whole, roasted cumin seeds on to a few tostadas and see which your guests like best.... Now I'm hungry. Oh, yeah, I grind my meat with a hand cranked meat grinder. Best technique ever--and you can choose your own dice size. I like my dice larger than many, but it works with top round.

Nathan said...

Hugh.
What part of Mexico are you from (if you are from there) the olives, roasted Cumin, and egg sound interesting as well as the larger dice.

I've always had Carne Apache as a main course because it is heavy on meat, my mother's family is from Guadalajara but my mother was raised in Michoacan for a long time. It's had as a main course.

Anonymous said...

u missed the salsa valentina & a chela bien fria to wash it down bud!!!!

Nathan said...

Anonymous,
Forgot to mention the salsa valentina and chela hehe this post needs a re-post to do it justice :)

Jeanette said...

My parents are also from guadalajara and my mom makes it as a main course too. We have it with either tapatio or valentina. And we do jalapeno peppers not serrano.