Beef Flautas

I felt like making flautas so I went searching for a good recipe for the filling.

I came across one from the Homesick Texan and it looked good. I've cooked from that site before, so I know the recipes are sound and I decided to give it a shot.

I made my meat slightly different because my daughter doesn't always like shredded beef for some reason. I wanted to do a more "ground" beef texture. I guess it ended up being faux ground beef in the end but it was great, regardless of what you call it. 

Beef Flautas

(adapted from Homesick Texan here)

2 pounds of chuck roast

1 tablespoon fat: lard, bacon grease or canola oil

1 medium Spanish onion, quartered

5 cloves of garlic, crushed

2-4 jalapenos, diced (optional for the kids)

1 pound tomatillos, quartered

1 cup cilantro chopped

2 tablespoons cumin (or taco seasoning, which I had leftover)

Salt and black pepper to taste
1 cup of water

Juice of one lime

Flour tortillas

About 1 cup of oil

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Get your meat together. Make sure it's slightly frozen if you're going to go this route as I'm going to dice the meat up small.

I used 2 different cuts of beef I had leftover in the freezer.

Dice the meat into small cubes. You don't have to be perfect.

Toss the beef into a dutch oven with a tablespoon of fat over medium/high heat. I used bacon grease because it's awesome.

Brown the beef a bit and toss in the onion.

Remove the husks from the tomatillos and wash them well. There's always weird black schmutz on them.

Cut into quarters or eighths and toss them in along with the garlic.

Add your spices, salt and pepper and the cilantro.

Give everything a stir and add 1 cup of water.

Cook in the oven at 300F for 2-3 hours.

Everything will start to break down quickly.

At 2 hours, I removed the pot from the oven and transferred it to the stovetop over med/low heat and began to cook off the excess liquid.

If your beef is tough, keep it in the oven for another hour or so.

Cook for 15 minutes or so or until most of the liquid has evaporated. Check for seasoning and add some lime juice to taste.

Remove from the heat and let cool until you can handle it.

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When you're ready to make your flautas, take 2 tablespoons of the filling and place it into a tortilla.

Of course, you can us corn tortillas here too.

Roll as tightly as you can.

Pin with a toothpick.

I actually ended up pinning them parallel to the roll in subsequent ones. It worked better than the perpendicular pinning.

Fry as many as you can fit into your pan.

Flip when golden brown.

Drain on paper towels.

(See the toothpick pinning method as described above)

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Serve with rice and beans and sour cream and salsa or whatever you prefer.

I thought the filling was killer in these flautas. The meat was very flavorful and had a nice depth to it. The acid form the limes brightened it up a bit, but the tomatillos gave it another level of tartness that was very nice.

The texture of the meat was exactly what I wanted. Kind of a hybrid between shredded beef and ground beef. Like a SUPER shredded beef.

It was delicious.

Enjoy!