Arrachera: What and When?
Published April 2, 2009 by Rachel Laudan
A friend wrote to ask about arrachera. I’m going to hazard some guesses but I bet some of you know a lot more than I do. Please chime in.
Arrachera is inescapable now in Mexico. Every supermarket has it in plastic packets. When you cut into the packet the curing liquid runs out and you can unfold a long thin piece of meat with various bits of membrane attached. If you grill it, it turns out tender no matter what. And it’s pre-seasoned. No wonder that it’s a standard in restaurants.
Home cooks find it a boon. One of my friends told me yesterday that she was going to chop 10 lbs of arrachera, plus bacon, onions, bacon, and strips of chile poblano. It’s her turn to provide the dinner for the ladies of the Rotary and she was going to grill it all today (I suspect on her big solid metal grill) so they could make tacos.
And for many visitors to Mexico too, it’s just great. Try googling Chowhound arrachera. I’m not actually a great fan of arrachera as neither its taste nor its texture thrill me. But it is a phenomenon.
So what are we talking about here?
I don’t think it was around in central Mexico when I arrived between 12 and 15 years ago. There weren’t many supermarkets then, at least not in medium sized towns. You went to the market. There meat came in three grades and three prices: essentially solid meat, meat with fat, and bone and gristle. Of course if you knew what you were doing and spoke Spanish (which then I didn’t) you could be a good bit more specific.
Nor do you find it in Mexican cookbooks, though Mexicans still cook confidently without cookbooks. And there’s no entry for it in one of my most invaluable handbooks, the Diccionario del Español Usual en México which does have lots of food words and that first came out in 1992.
So I think modern arrachera spread with supermarkets. Those bags are ideal for super marketing. I think it came from the north of the country where most of the commercial beef is raised. I think it spread with its first cousin, marinaded but not dried cecina (thin sliced beef or pork). And it’s related to the Texas dish, fajitas (about which I have a story I must tell you sometime). And to its Mexican cousin, carne asada, all of which I suspect of being pretty recent inventions.
Ricardo Muñoz in his great Diccionario Enciclopedico de la Gastronomia Mexicana describes the cut as being the part that runs along the ribs, 6 kgs per animal, as being from the north, and as being grilled simply brushed with a little oil, salt and pepper. Great.
Supermarket arrachera has experienced a good bit more than oil, salt and pepper, perhaps one of those tenderizing machines and certainly one of those tenderizers made from papaya.
And that about exhausts my expertise. Please chime in.
ADDENDUM: Have other countries used sealed (cryovac?) wrap to sell meats that have been seasoned and/or tenderized? I simply don’t know. If you’ve got other examples it would be a nice illustration of how new technologies are used in unanticipated ways.
Filed under Just Good Eating, Life in Mexico, Mexican Cuisine
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I have eaten arrechera countless times and often wondered from which part of the animal it came from. Now I know. Thanks.
Interesting. For what it’s worth, there is a recipe for “Arrachera al Carbon” in Bayless’ Authentic Mexican, original edition (1987), and he writes: “Though arrachera (’skirt steak’) is commonly used only in northeastern Mexico (especially around Monterrey), cooking thin sheets of beef over charcoal is popular throughout the North and everywhere Northerners have set up taquerías.”
Looking forward to the fajitas story!
We have that stuff here in the States. Sometimes it is apparent that it is seasoned and/or tenderized. In an equal amount of cases, it is not apparent without doing a really good search of the packaging.
In the second category I’ve noticed two sources that seem to be most prevalent in marketing/selling this stuff: WalMart; and ‘home-delivery specialty meats’ companies.
In both cases this meat is actively marketed as upscale provender, and if you did not know better (as a cook) you would not know that you were paying a high price for something that is a rather weird substance.
These meats have to be cooked exactly as the instructions on the package describe or the chemicals start to seep out, giving the entire dish a very strange flavor. The most successful ones are the ones designed for the big American Grill. Grrrrr. Throw that sub-quality steak on, get a blackened surface, drink a lot of beer and who really knows the difference? This is a market accustomed to burgers pre-formed and blackened into sawdust chips served on cotton-ball buns, a market that takes a hot dog (frankfurter) to also blacken it into something resembling a dried up dog turd (just a bit smaller), which is then eaten as if it is a normal everyday occurance.
The consumers seem happy with the products, those that I’ve seen using them. I tried them twice, both times by mistake due to hurrying – and I had to figure out what was wrong with the stuff by getting out a microscope to read the labeling.
Water-injected method, of course, too. People now pay a per-pound price for water when they buy meat.
Lots of seasoned meat in cryovac packages in the States. Trader Joe’s sells carne asada and Korean bbq in sealed wrap.
Cryovac packaged foods were a boon to the Korean pickle industry. Something about the amount of pressure applied when sealing effecting texture.
Cryovac was of great assistance to the restaurant business. The labor and quality shifts it enabled allowed many mid-range restaurants to open. It also moved the restaurant equipment manufacturers to develop new equipment that eventually led to the upscale ’sous-vide’ methods now used by high-end chefs engaging in use of new cooking technologies (along with not a few mid-range cooks who do the same quietly without fanfare).
I’m from Mexico and I have bought arrachera and eaten carne asada all my life, and not just the packaged meat from supermarkets. Here in the north of Mexico, where, as you said, cattle is raised, you can go to your neighbourhood butcher and ask him for arrachera freshly cut, and grill it without any tenderizer or chemical. I don’t really now what part of the country you describe, but in any town or city of the cattling states, there are all kinds of fresh meat cuts to be prepared in a carne asada, and they’ve existed for decades.
Jorge, Thanks so much for that clarification. Very helpful. I would just love some of that freshly cut arrachera. I will investigate more about when it appeared in (say) Guanajauto.
Never was a steak man before. Recently, at my favorite Mexican Cantina, the waitress gave me Arrachera with my Huevos Rancheros by mistake. I de-voured it.
I went next door to the attached market and bought a lb of it. You just can’t go wrong with this stuff. My favorite way to prepare: I sprinkle it with melted butter, salt, pepper and a some herbs and throw it on the grill for a few minutes.
I’ve been in culinary ecstacy ever since.
Corin, glad to find you on my blog. And even gladder that you have found culinary ecstasy with arrachera!