Sunday Gravy with yeah right: The Number 12.

Good morning folks!

Happy Selection Sunday!

Closing in on NCAA Tournament time so we’ve got another little distraction in the goddamn insanely long offseason. I’m a fan of the tourney and it will occupy some of my sports watching attention for a couple of weeks.

Whatever it takes, man!

But the best news of the past week was….

BASEBALL IS BACK!

Yes, I’m an old timey baseball guy. How old timey?

FUCK THE DESIGNATED HITTER!

How’s that?

Now we have it in both leagues and there are going to be like 75 teams in the playoffs. Why don’t they all get participation trophies instead?

Pansies.

I’m still happy to have the game back though.

So?

That banner pic caught your eye, didn’t it?

How the fuck could it not? I mean, just look at that glorious fucking thing!

Holy shit!

Not sure how the rest of the country serves or names their Mexican food since I think it might be borderline insane to actually consume Mexican food outside of the Southwestern United States or Mexico.

We are definitely spoiled by our proximity to the real enchilada out here. So to speak.

That glorious plate of awesomeness is a “Chunky beef burrito” and the fact that it’s covered in sauce and cheese means it’s “Wet.” One would order it as a “Chunky beef burrito wet” or as the title of this post alludes just order it by the menu number. I call this the “Number 12” because my favorite local Mexican place “El Tarasco” listed this as a #12 on their menu. That’s the original El Tarasco in El Segundo for additional clarification.

The number 12 is a big ass tortilla filled with slow cooked chunks of roast beef, not ground beef mind you, real chunks of roast beef, then a spoonful of refried beans, finally it’s covered in a rich sauce, or gravy even, covered with cheese and delivered to you with chips and salsa.

It is stupid good.

It is also a food coma waiting to happen.

I’ve got an employee of mine who has one of these every few months because the restaurant is real close to work. He inevitably eats the whole thing and then comes back from lunch with glassy eyes, a slight waddle in his walk and a complete lack of energy or ambition for the rest of the day.

It’s an afternoon wrecker for sure.

The beef in the recipe we’re doing today has indeed been made here before back in 2016 or “Season 2” of Sunday Gravy. It’s also one of my personal favorite recipes for anything ever.

It’s called carne guisada and it’s essentially a slow roasted beef stew with Southwest spices and good lord almighty does it produce some of the tenderest, beefiest, succulent servings of cow anywhere on this fucking planet.

Quick point of Parliamentary Procedure: The actual reason I cooked this roast wasn’t even specifically for todays recipe! It was intended for what will be next weeks Sunday Gravy. I needed some beef but not this entire slab so I came up with the idea for this meal while I was at it!

That’s a little insight into what the inside of my mind looks like.

I’ll walk you through the entire prep on how to build this beast if you’re ready.

And for the record? Yes I did indeed eat the whole fucking thing in one sitting.

Carne Guisada.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Get a 2-3 pound slab of chuck roast

2 1/2 cups of beef stock. Store bought is fine

1 large onion chopped

4-5 celery stalks chopped

5-6 cloves of garlic minced

3-4 jalapenos, stem and seeds removed and chopped.

2 tablespoons of tomato paste

1/4 cup of flour

2-3 tablespoons of vegetable oil

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon of ground black pepper

1 teaspoon of ground cumin

2 teaspoons of chili powder

This baby starts out by procuring a big-ass slab of beefy goodness.

Goddamn right that prices have gone up. Obviously that’s my favorite cut, the chuck roast. We’ll hack it up ourselves so we can dictate the size of the beef chunks.

Instead of a standard mire poix this recipe calls for a bit more zing substituting jalapenos for the carrot.

Leave the seeds in for a bit more kick.

Get the onion action going hot and heavy.

The process begins by flouring up our meaty bits. And getting them into a preheated pot along with a couple of tablespoons of cooking oil.

Then browning them.

Season with salt and pepper as you brown.

Cook in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan.

Then it’s time to collect and measure the beef stock.

Let’s finish browning all of the meat.

 Then add in the tomato paste.

This allows us to scrape up all of the browned meat chunks or “fond” and also kind of sort of deglaze the pan and such.

Add the veggies to the tomato paste and give them a good stir to coat all of the veggies.

Get that meat back into the pan along with the garlic and cover with the beef stock. This is also the time to add in the cumin, chili powder and black pepper. Give the stock a taste and season with salt if needed.

Place a lid on this wonderfulness and get it into the preheated 350 oven.

About 2 and 1/2 hours ought to do the trick.

The smell will drive you to the brink of insanity and it kicks in real early too to prolong the agony while patiently waiting for this to cook.

Let’s get a look when done.

Oh hell yes.

You know you want some.

Again, it’s not unheard of for the cook to grab a spoon or fork and just commence to shoveling. Remember though! Two meals from this so use restraint.

HAH!

Take the meat out of the pot and set aside. Let the juices, veggies and the rest of the cooking ingredients cool.

Now for the fun part!

Transfer the cooking ingredients – not the meat! – to a blender. And give it a whirl. Use some of the leftover beef stock to get this to the desired consistency. 

Let’s pause a moment to reflect on this insanely delicious “gravy” that we just made.

I’ve never tasted the likes of it. It’s got a solid note of beefy flavor right off the bat, the texture is silky smooth and the hit from the chili powder/cumin/jalapeno is fucking legendary.

This is one of the best gravies I’ve ever made and I’ve made some motherfucking gravies man! Shit, you know!

I will be repeating this gravy before the season is over because I had a Jesus-sized epiphany on a crazy idea for another use.

File that away for future reference.

To make a burrito of the size and stature of this one, you will need to acquire one big-ass tortilla.

To make a proper “Number 12” you will need to apply a liberal layer of beans to the tortilla. Followed by as much meaty goodness as you think you can handle.

Face it people. You WILL destroy this damn thing. You will also feel pain and probably a bit of self disgust but it will be so worth it.

Finally ladle on the gravy and coat with cheese. If the gravy has cooled pop this back in a hot oven for a few minutes to reheat the sauce and melt the cheese.

I like to grab some restaurant style tortilla chips followed immediately with the loosening of the belt.

You already know how this ends don’t you?

Sure you do.

It starts with this being insanely, ridiculously delicious and your brain then short circuits while you began destroying the burrito by the forkful.

Don’t try to eat this with your hands people, is what I guess I’m saying. Use the tortilla chips to get some of the sauce and any stray chunks of beef.

So fucking delicious.

The next thing you know you’ve hit the “food wall” and realize you’re close to fucking stuffed but this shit just tastes so damn good!

You reach the halfway point thinking “Maybe I can save the rest for later. Yeah! That’s the ticket.”

Then you proceed to take a couple of more bites.

You start sweating, your belly is groaning a bit right now but goddammit you can’t stop eating it! Two thirds of the way through you begin to wonder first if you will be able to eat the whole thing and second if that last bit of burrito is even worth the trouble of wrapping up for later.

Your brain then comes to the inevitable conclusion of?

Destroy the evidence!

Then against any form of normalcy, self restraint or intellect you go ahead and eat the entire thing.

I know you.

This has happened before.

You’ve subsequently reached the state of a food coma but you are, in a way, kind of fucking proud of yourself too.

God DAMN was that good!

You’ve also destroyed any chance you had left of being productive for the rest of the entire day.

Oh yes folks. This is indeed the good shit. Top shelf shit.

Will haunt your dreams shit.

This will make it more difficult than ever to convince you good folks that I REALLY DO EAT HEALTHY DURING THE WEEK I SWEAR TO GOD!!!

What I won’t do is apologize for dropping this recipe on you. I know most of you folks really do believe it when I say how stupefyingly delicious something is and this here motherfucker is right at the top of the stupid delicious list.

Hopefully y’all are intrigued enough to come back next week to find out just what the fuck we’re going to do with the other portion of this slow roasted beefy goodness.

Hope you do come back because it’s a goddamn beautiful recipe all on it’s own.

Thanks for joining us today. I appreciate each and every one of you for tuning in each week.

May your favorite college hoops-ball team have a favorable tourney bracket.

Be safe out there everybody.

PEACE!