this recipe is directly from Chipotle according to the Sacramento News10 website. they took it off their website, but I’m too smart for them, i got it from the wayback machine!
4 guijillo chiles
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 teaspoon ground cloves
10 allspice berries
1/3 cup Mexican oregano
12 sprigs fresh thyme
6 garlic cloves
1 Spanish onion, roughly chopped
1/3 cup cider vinegar
1 (6 to 8-pound) beef roast
Salt and pepper
1 (2-pound) package dried avocado leaves
Large tortilla for wrap, beans, rice and vegetables of your choice.
Instructions:
Toast chiles, cover with boiling water in a deep bowl and set aside for 20 minutes. Grind cumin, cloves, allspice, and oregano in coffee grinder. Drain soaked chiles, puree in blender the chiles, ground spices, thyme, garlic, onion, vinegar, and 1/2 cup of water. Process until smooth. Push mixture through a sieve, season beef with salt and pepper. Rub paste all over the meat. Arrange in a bowl and allow to marinate for 4 hours, refrigerated.
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. In a deep roaster pan, scatter half of the avocado leaves on the bottom, place meat on top of the avocado leaves and scatter the remaining leaves over the meat. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil. Cook the beef 6 to 7 hours until meat is falling off the bone. If using lamb shoulder cook for 4 hours.
Note: Fresh avocado leaves are toxic - they must be dried to be used for cooking.
read the feed
Result?
Have you tried it out? If so how close did it come to the real thing?
I tried it, it turned out
I tried it, it turned out really good. And I changed a few things to use up what I had on hand. Here’s what I did:
For starters, I pretty much halved the paste recipe for my 2.5 chuck roast. I ground all the spices myself in my molcajete. Didn’t have allspice, so I used a few extra cloves and about a tsp of cinnamon. I also used red wine vinegar instead. Marinated the seasoned roast in the paste overnight, then put it in the slow cooker in the morning, threw in a bay leaf (no avocado leaves) and sprinkled on some thyme since I forgot it in the paste. Cooked it on low for about 9 hours, until it was falling apart. Shredded the meat in to bite size pieces and served with chopped green leaf lettuce (just like Chipotle does), homemade tomatillo salsa, tomatoes and cheese, and sc and guac for my man. Didn’t make burritos, fried my own crispy shells instead. Delish! I thought it would be too spicy, I tried a taste of the paste from the blender and my head just about popped off. Even my eyes were burning. And I only used two chiles!! But don’t worry…it comes out great!! Probably be even better, and closer to the real thing with all the right ingredients. Can’t say if it would be better cooked in the oven….I love my crock pot!
well, now I've tried it
And it is delicious. The results were not 100% chipotle-esque, but they were still damn good. In particular it wasn’t quite as tender and wasn’t as salty (though the recipe doesn’t state a specific amount of salt). The leftovers that have rested in the juices from the pan for a day are perhaps even better than just eating it immediately after cooking it.
Also, if I had been more careful about the shredding process that would probably be better as well.
Rip-off recipe
Whoever posted this recipe stole it verbatim from the Food Network website. He simply substituted a 6-8 lbs beef roast for the lamb shoulder originally called for in the recipe. I don’t know how good it is, but I do know it has nothing to do with Chipotle’s true barbacoa recipe. Should have been tipped off by the lack of chipotle adobo as an ingredient anywhere in the instructions. Here is the URL for the recipe he stole:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD993612807,00.html
the funny thing about recipes
If you read the full post you’d see exactly where “whoever posted this recipe” found it. (In summary: news website, went offline, then from the internet acrhive).
Recipes are an interesting thing, of course. Who invents a recipe? Who wrote it first? Has anyone written an original recipe since 1900? Don’t all recipes copy at least somewhat from another recipe? In this case, it’s more than the recipe, though, it’s the whole text of the instructions. The first occurrence from my source in the internet archive is from November of 2004. The first version on the version from Food Network is June 17th.
It does appear that this came from Food Network prior to News 10 based on this information. I’m still not sure that I’d give it to them instead of someone else.
Personally, I can’t say if it’s “real” or not. I do have some faith in a nationally affiliated news agency to tell the truth when they say it’s the “real” recipe. Of course, I see no reason why Chipotle would hand out recipes to just any old person.
In my experience cooking this twice, all I can say is that it was amazingly delicious.
Too much Thyme??
I tried this and it seemed to be overwhelmed by the thyme? I’m not sure if the amount is off?
How does Chipotle cook these things?
Something I’ve been wondering for a while - how does Chipotle cook this or their carnitas when they have to be slow cooked for 6hours+ ? Do they cook overnight or is there some sort of pressure cooker you can buy to speed the process up?
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[...] barbacoa burritos (despite their incredibly high calorie count!) I have attempted to make it from this recipe, which was good, but it definitely was not Chipotle’s barbacoa. Not actually having any [...]
update from WiseArts blog
The Wisearts blog tested out this recipe and a competing one which seems to be as good or better than this recipe…hmmm….will have to try this when I get home.
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[...] The Barbacoa Recipe (which has since been determined to be from elsewhere…) is a perennial favorite [...]
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