You know what? Let's just stop
and take a moment
to appreciate how beautiful
an orange is.
It's like look at that.
It's so pretty when you cut it
in half like this.
I love it.
And we're just going to
squeeze it right in there.
♪♪
♪♪
Hi. I'm Farideh, the culinary
director at Munchies,
and you might know me
from "The Cooking Show,"
but today, we are not doing
"The Cooking Show."
We're doing a how-to video.
We're doing a recipe
for carne asada fries
from our cookbook
"Munchies Guide to Dinner."
Carne asada fries
are basically really crispy,
delicious homemade French fries
with some deliciously marinated
and grilled meat,
as well as some salsa
and guacamole on top.
What we have here is about
1 pound of flank steak.
It tends to be
a little bit tougher,
so in order to curb that,
what we're gonna do
is marinate it
in a bunch of citrus juices
and some garlic
and cilantro and jalapeño.
So first things first, we are
going to just make our marinade.
Three cloves of garlic peeled,
right into our food processor.
If you don't have a food
processor, that's totally fine.
I do recommend having
a food processor.
This just makes it
a little bit easier.
You can also chop
everything by hand.
Put that into there,
and we're gonna use
one entire bunch of cilantro.
♪♪
Into there.
This could all be done by hand,
but I'm lazy.
♪♪
Okay.
Just like that.
That smells so good.
You can smell the garlic
[Coughs]
little bit of jalapeño in there,
all that really fresh cilantro.
Citrus is a really good
ingredient for marinades
because the acid from the citrus
will help tenderize the meat.
We're using lime and orange on
this one mainly just for flavor.
We're also gonna use, again,
another acid,
2 tablespoons of white vinegar,
just a little plain old
white vinegar in that,
and then we're gonna add in
about 1/2 cup of olive oil.
We're gonna do a little bit
of pepper into this,
and then we're also gonna do
about 2 teaspoons of salt.
Okay.
Marinade is done.
We're gonna pop our meat
into this little ziplock bag.
Pour our marinade
right in there.
♪♪
Whoo.
Get the air out.
And just seal it, super easy.
Right on in there,
so juicy, so delicious.
We're gonna refrigerate this
for about four hours.
We're gonna use some
russet potatoes, about 2 pounds.
We're gonna make
our own fries.
It's times like this I wish
I could juggle, but I can't.
You should learn,
new skill set for yourself.
Get a book called
"How to Juggle"
and then get this book,
and you'll be good
to go with life.
Making fries is super easy
especially
when you use this method,
but you're gonna
just kind of cut them
into nice little
kind of batons, okay.
So about quarter inch thick
or so, half an inch thick.
Like I said, as big as you want.
These are our fries.
Couldn't be any easier
than that.
Now, you want to let these soak
for about one hour
in this water.
Two reasons
why we're doing that.
The first reason was
to prevent oxidation.
The second reason is there is
a lot of starch in potatoes,
so we're removing
some of that starch, okay?
You'll see after about an hour,
there will actually be starch
kind of like sitting at the
bottom of the bowl of water.
When we get rid of that starch,
these fries are gonna be
so crispy and delicious.
You can already see
it's starting to get
a little bit cloudier.
It's releasing that starch.
We're cleaning that starch off.
We're gonna refrigerate these,
wait about an hour, come back,
fry up our potatoes.
[ Clock ticking, bell ringing ]
Our fries have been soaking
for about an hour.
We need to dry these off
really well,
because oil and water do not mix
and we don't want that, like,
snap, crackle, pop
while you're cooking these
'cause that gets
dangerous for you.
Look at these. Nice.
And you can see, like,
they crisp up already,
so proof is in the pudding.
Proof is in the potato,
as it were.
All right, start off
right in there,
and then we're gonna turn it
onto about medium, medium-high
and let it just sit there
and cook.
So the awesome thing
about this recipe
is that we're starting
the potatoes
in just, like,
cold, neutral oil.
What that means is, you don't
need a deep-fryer thermometer
at home, which is awesome.
Okay, so while the potatoes
are cooking,
we're gonna make
our accoutrement.
I'm not really good at speaking
that kind of French language.
[ Laughs ]
We're gonna make
our pico de gallo,
which is basically just a very
simple tomato kind of salsa.
Halve these guys, take out
that little core there.
Just gonna kind of
finely chop these guys.
And don't worry about, like,
taking out the seeds
or anything like that.
You can make it, like,
as chunky as you want, also.
So I like a white onion.
It's pretty sweet, you know,
white onion, usually.
If you don't have a white onion,
you can use a yellow onion,
totally fine.
To dice an onion, basically
just take it nice and slow.
You're gonna keep
this root end on
'cause that's gonna help you
hold the onion together
while you're dicing it.
So just do some lines
right down through,
not all the way to the root end.
You're going right about enough
so you can still hold on
to the onion, okay?
Then you're gonna go like this,
make a little line in there,
again, not all the way through,
and one more line right there.
Put your fingers back,
and you're gonna hold on to
the onion and just slice it.
Gonna add that
right into our pico.
I like to use the zest.
It's a really good part
of the citrus.
Has some of, you know, the best
aromas on it is the zest,
so we're gonna take
a Microplane.
I recommend you have
a Microplane,
and we're just gonna
zest this guy,
both of these limes,
right on in here.
And we're done.
Chop up some cilantro here,
about 1/3 cup,
season it with salt, again,
to taste, and some pepper.
Now, some may say
that only serial killers
have gloves at home,
but they are good for when
you're dealing with jalapeños.
Give it a little bit of a taste.
Mmm, so good.
All right.
Ugh!
Next step,
we're gonna make guacamole.
Mortar and pestle.
You do not need this
to make this recipe,
but it's fun,
so we're gonna do it.
This is so creamy already,
and I'm adding in
so much lime juice.
I'm gonna make it really fresh
and kind of, like, bright.
I don't want all those seeds
in this.
First, I'm gonna
roughly chop this
because we are gonna end up
mashing it in there anyway,
so it doesn't really matter.
Little bit of
this red onion, okay.
I'm just gonna use the other
half of this jalapeño.
Oof!
Mash it up in there.
All right, avocado.
Okay, be careful with avocados.
We don't you to cut your hands.
It's a very popular injury,
people.
Take a spoon.
Scoop her out.
I'm just kind of
roughly chop these guys.
[ Groans ]
We're gonna put this
all back into here,
add some cilantro
and then about 1/4 cup
of fresh lime juice
that I squeezed myself.
That's a lie.
I had my intern do it yesterday.
And the whole thing about this
is that it's gonna
be really chunky.
Look at that.
Mmm.
That's so good.
While this is all going, while
our fries finish up cooking,
we're gonna take the meat out,
and we are going to grill it,
let it rest,
and everything
will be coming together.
This is what we call
the marinated meat shake.
Just like this.
Okay.
Look at this.
This has been marinating
for about four hours,
and we're just going to season
it with some salt and pepper.
Put this right on our grill.
[ Sizzling ]
Nice little sizzling sound.
We're gonna let that go.
All right, we're just gonna let
this cook to about medium rare.
You can cook it to whatever
preference you like.
If you want it more well-done
or whatever, totally fine.
So this is cooked
to my desired temperature.
I'm gonna move it aside
onto a clean board.
Our potatoes have been
cooking about 40, 45 minutes.
They're pretty much done.
As you can see in here, they're,
like, kind of starting to float.
They're that nice golden color.
They look really good,
so we're gonna take them out.
This is called a spider.
It's really cheap.
I recommend getting one,
especially if you're
gonna be doing a lot
of deep-frying at home
because look how easy it is
to use to get things
out of the fryer.
Put it on this.
Okay.
Those are gonna cool slightly.
Our meat has rested.
With flank steak,
I'm just gonna cut it
at a slight angle
against the grain.
See how there's --
You can see the striations
in this and the lines.
That is the grain.
We're gonna go against it.
That just also makes the meat
more tender
when you're eating it
and stuff, okay?
Slight angle right there.
Look at that, perfectly
cooked medium rare.
I'm gonna kind of
thinly slice it,
so just gonna go like that,
so you're kind of cutting it
into bite-size pieces like this,
nice little chunks.
Oh, my gosh.
This is so good.
♪♪
I'm gonna put some meat
on top of it.
This literally is just, like,
an awesome kind of snack.
If you're hanging out,
watching movies at home,
make this for your friends.
They will love you.
Put our pico on here.
♪♪
Now we're gonna do a little bit
extra of this onion,
some cheese.
Oh, my gosh.
This is so good.
And then our guacamole.
I like to do just a big old plop
of guacamole right on the top.
Cilantro leaves.
We're gonna squeeze this lime
juice all over the top of it.
And here you go,
carne asada fries
looking pretty good, delicious.
You eat this with your hands,
obviously.
I'm a lady,
so I'm gonna use a fork.
Get all these
good bites in here.
Fries, God, look at that,
perfect little bite right here.
It's gonna be good.
♪♪
Mmm.
The meat is super flavorful.
It's juicy.
You can taste that citrus.
It's tender.
The fries are crispy, so easy.
The guacamole is, like,
nice and bright.
You've got the tomatoes.
What an amazing recipe.
If you want this recipe,
you can click the link
in the description below,
or better yet, please...
buy this cookbook.
This recipe and a whole lot more
recipes are in this cookbook.
Carne asada fries.
Thank you very much.
♪♪
♪♪
