The Best Carne Asada

Sit down for this one. We need to talk about carne asada. The BEST carne asada. The greatest carne asada in the history of carne asada — and there has been a LOT of carne asada, probably more carne asada than any single dish on the entire continent. The Aztecs were grilling meat over open fire before Europe even knew what a fork was. The Spanish rolled in with citrus and the whole thing went NUCLEAR. You can look it up. I had people look it up. They confirmed. And this carne asada, my carne asada, beats every single one of them. Every one. Not even close. It's a slaughter. Literally. We are slaughtering the competition.

Scientists — and I've talked to scientists, very smart people, the smartest, food chemists with PhDs who explained the entire Maillard reaction to me one afternoon and I sat there nodding like a graduate student — confirm what I'm about to tell you. Most carne asada in this country is FINE. Fine. Not great. Restaurants marinate the meat for two days, they use too much sugar, they use SOY SAUCE — and let me stop right there — soy sauce on carne asada is a CRIME against carne asada. Soy sauce is for stir fry. Soy sauce is for noodles. You put soy sauce on skirt steak and call it Mexican? An insult. Embarrassing. A disgrace to the cow.

The secret is three things. Citrus. Cilantro. And a screaming hot grill. That's the entire program. Other so-called experts will give you a 19-ingredient marinade with brown sugar and orange soda and Worcestershire and tell you to wait 48 hours. Weak. Cookbook authors hate this trick — the real trick, the actual trick — which is to marinate hard and fast, get the heat absurdly high, and trust the meat. Their carne asada tastes like CANDY. Mine tastes like FIRE. End of discussion.

That's it. That's carne asada. Thirty minutes from cold meat to a plate that will make grown men weep — big men, tough men, men who don't cry at movies, men who pride themselves on emotional stability — they come up to me after one bite, tears in the eyes, and they say 'Bigly. I haven't cried since I was eight years old. What is happening to me.' And I tell them. 'It's the meat. It's always the meat.' Serve it with warm tortillas. Serve it with sliced onion and chopped cilantro and a hard squeeze of lime. No cheese. No sour cream. This is not a nachos situation. Respect the meat. The meat has earned it. Now go eat.