Extreme Fajitas™️ 🥩 🔥
Making the Restaurant Classic at home… quicker, easier & better!
Greetings, 🥂
Really happy to see the Shrimp 🦐 Guide was a hit! We will be frequently returning to seafood content and the cheat sheets in that Substack are helpful to have around when shopping or meal planning.
At this point there’s too many ideas and not enough time to put them all out… which means we are never running out of content here! 😂
Fajitas 🔥 🥩 :
I still remember the first time I had beef fajitas. In a crowded restaurant with one of those flour tortilla assembly lines, cranking out dozens of freshly rolled and cooked tortillas… inviting customers to stare while they waited for a table. Total gimmick to make people hungrier and, as it turns out, effective because people love food spectacles.
Then came the real spectacle. “Grilled” strips of charred beef served on a sizzlin’ steamin’ platter… sitting atop charred onions and peppers… a feast for all the senses 😂
It was also a rule whenever going out… if fajitas were on the menu… get beef, never chicken 😂 . Tableside food presentations have long been a hit. Diners historically enjoy dining room theatrics… from the OG practice in French 🇫🇷 dining rooms of carving whole Dover Sole tableside, the flambé desserts like Crepes Suzette and can’t not mention the piercing of perfectly billowing soufflé that is then filled with a rich and decadent creme anglaise.
Yes… diners love food shows. The below poll bares this out. Most people think that the sizzlin’ steamin’ platter actually makes fajitas taste better.
And this is part of the reason that Fajitas are such a popular menu item in restaurants across the globe 🌍. This isn’t just a Tex-Mex phenomenon. American “mid”-tier resturants like Chili’s, Applebee’s etc have fajitas on the menu as well as many other non-traditional niches, because Fajitas sell.
So…
What are Fajitas?
Where did ‘Fajita Madness’ come from?
Are the best fajitas made at home faster than going out to order them?
Today, all of these questions will be answered! (Spoiler alert…Yes; the best Fajitas ARE made at home… and quicker)
But first… a shoutout to all the Mother’s reading ⬇️
Happy Mother's Day! 🎉 🎁
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Don't miss out on this opportunity for the absolute best price on these revolutionary new tools—and give Mom what she really wants this year. Quality that will last decades on!
Fajita Madness
I find food history to be intriguing. In my cooking it helped to give context and appreciation as my skills grew. Tex-Mex is looked down a lot, but really has a lot of fascinating dishes that have evolved over time through migration, cultural traditions, economy and necessity. The history of fajitas is also interesting. Traced back to the Rio Grande Valley (Texas), ranchers would give off cuts of slaughtered cows (think: head, entrails, meat trimmings, etc) to the Mexican workers as part of their pay. This was the beginning of “fajitas”: grilling skirt steak over a fire.
In 1969, fajitas appeared on the menu at the Round-Up Restaurant in Pharr, Texas.
(The owner) Otilia Garza never claimed to have invented the dish, but she did maintain a tradition of grilling skirt steak learned from her grandmother, a restaurateur in Reynosa, Mexico. At the Round-Up, fajitas were served on a sizzling platter with warm flour tortillas and mounds of condiments – guacamole, pico de gallo (chopped fresh onions, tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro), and grated cheese – for making tacos. <quote from link above>
And that launched fajitas into an ever-expanding popularity on restaurant menus all over the world.
What are Fajitas?
Traditionally, fajitas are made from the outside skirt steak of the cow. These days it’s almost impossible to find outside skirt steak at grocery store or butcher shop. They are heavily coveted and directed to wholesale restaurants leaving none for the retail folks.
Over the years the beef fajita was bastardized into the more economical chicken fajitas… and then there are all sorts of other “creative” explorations like shrimp 🦐 fajitas 👀 .
In fact, fajitas became so popular that many restaurants started using other cuts of beef (like flank) to make fajitas, usually because it was a more readily available (aka cheaper) cut.
For our purposes here we can define beef fajitas as skirt steak that is marinated/seasoned then charred (preferably over fire, but there is an easy work around, described below!)
Why Make Fajitas at Home?
There’s a few reasons and all of them make sense.
Cost: Beef prices are through the roof, and it’s going to be much cheaper finding skirt steak at a butcher or supermarket and bringing it home to cook up.
Quality: Given that you’re buying the raw meat, you can specifically get a particular grade or appearance. Remember, not all beef of the same Grade is the same Quality. I wrote a post about this that shows you how to cherry-pick 🍒 to find the best beef at the market.
Time: a) ordering fajitas by delivery is strongly discouraged. The beef will steam and overcook sitting around for 30-45+mins. b) by the time you get ready, drive (or ride) to the restaurant, wait for a table, order, (maybe have appetizers), then finally your fajitas come out… eat… wait for the check… pay, leave and drive (or ride home). We’re at a few hours. You can do this at home with about 10 mins of prep time, and 10-15 mins of active cooking time.
So let’s cook-up some Extreme-ly Tasty Fajitas at home by using a little science, some flavor bombs, and making sure we are slicing our fajitas in the proper way to maximize tenderness…
Fajita Valhalla awaits!!! 🙌 🔥 🥩
