Shredded Pork and Beef

This is an important process to know for making a variety of dishes and we will come back to this again several times when making dishes like tamales, tacos dorados (fried, folded tacos), rolled tacos and here a version of chile verde. Often when you get a dish with shredded meat it can often be a mixture of pork and beef. My mom always claimed that "the Chile Pepper," one of Yuma's most well known Mexican food establishments, always used pork and beef in there shredded meat, I'm sure she's right.

So let's start, always use meat with bone in it, there is a lot of protein and hence flavor in bone that will change your meat from lack luster to fantastic. Don't use super lean meat, some fat is good, yet of course too much fat is not good so trim large excess pieces of fat before you begin. In terms of ratios of pork:beef I aim for close to 50:50 yet as beef is very expensive here I often use more pork than beef sometimes to a ratio of 30:70. If you have very large pieces you can cut them down to tennis ball size chunks to facilitate faster cooking. Beef takes a longer time than pork to to get to the point where is falls apart, just to keep in mind.

For every kilo (2 pounds) of meat I use a medium to large onion, quartered or eighths is fine; two bay leaves, three or four cloves of garlic roughly chopped, several jalapenos or other small hot green chiles, and a couple tablespoons of Mexican Oregano.

Add a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil to the pan on medium heat and add the garlic, onion, and chiles.











Shortly thereafter, add the meat, oregano and bay leaves let brown for a few minutes then add some ground black pepper, then cover with water.










Now you wait, if using a pressure cooker it will take 2-2.5 hours if your doing it in a pot then it will take over 4 hours on high heat and you will need to continually add water. The trick here is to end up with as little as liquid as possible, while avoiding burning the meat. I have done this enough to where I can judge the rate of evaporation to coincide with the meat being finished. Other option that are less risky are using the oven or cooking on lower heat for a longer period.



What you are looking for is meat that easily pulls apart using a fork. When you get to that point shred the meat using two forks and add salt to taste. This is the basic shredded meat. You can use this as is for a variety of dishes.

Chile Verde/Green Chile
From here green chile is pretty simple. You will need to roast some green chiles (pictured are Chiles from Hatch, New Mexico). In Norway you can buy a good replacement at the immigrant shops, they come in bags and are roughly 20cm long, dark to light green. Roasting can be done several ways: on a grill, in a pan with oil or under the broiler. You will need high heat as the idea is to blacken the chiles, lower heat

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Finished green chile and bean burros with salsa verde!