September 6, 2016

BBQ Chicken Tacos

Not pictured: tequila shots
Recently, a tier-3 vassal of some idiot politician made some dumb comment about lax immigration control leading to "a taco truck on every corner." Practically nobody has heard of this random flunky, including key members of his immediate family. For all intents and purposes, his opinion doesn't really matter. So naturally, it's all anybody has been talking about for a week. Because the news sells ads based on people watching, and they're more likely to watch when they're scared or outraged. So if there's nothing to scare or outrage people, it's time to make something that'll scare and outrage them. It's not uncommon, during a particularly slow news week, to see Anderson Cooper killing penguins at the the zoo. But I digress. The point is, now I have an excuse to make delicious delicious tacos. Also, yadda yadda xenophobia. Tacos!

Ingredients:

2.5 lb Chicken Breasts
28 oz Crushed Tomatoes (This is gonna get cooked down with a lot of big flavors for a while, so you don't need to splurge on the best brand you can find. But it's probably still best to avoid products with names like "Big Jim's Sack of Backyard Tomaters.")
2 TBSP Worcestershire Sauce 
1.5 TBSP Brown Sugar
1/2 TBSP Balsamic Vinegar
1/2 TSBP Apple Cider Vinegar
2 tsp Chili Powder
1 tsp Onion Powder
1 tsp Dijon Mustard
1 tsp Hot Sauce
1 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder 
2 Limes
Corn Tortillas
Avocado
Red Onion
Cilantro

The first thing you're gonna need to do check and see if you have a "slow-cooker," which is the network-television-nonsense way of saying crockpot. If you don't, you can still make this recipe, but life will just suck a little bit more for you. Even more so than it does now, which is probably a fair amount because you don't have a crockpot. Take your crushed tomatoes, and throw them in the crockpot (or, if you're one of the uninitiated crockless, a dumb old regular pot) along with the chicken, worcestershire, brown sugar, vinegar, chili powder, onion powder, hot sauce, salt, and garlic powder. That's pretty much everything. That's how you know it's gonna be a good recipe. When youp pretty much just shove everything together at once, flourish your hands like a terrible birthday magician, and say "cook!" Set your crockpot to high, cover it, and let it cook for 4 hours. Or, if you're using an analog pot, set it over low heat, cover it, and let it cook for 4.5 hours. Normally when there's some down time in a recipe, we use it preparing the next bit of cookery. But this is a 4 hour break. So go do something that takes almost 4 hours. Binge watch a TV show, go to the DMV, or watch the first 10 minutes of a Zack Snyder movie. Everybody meet back here in about 4 hours. On your mark...set...GO!

Not pictured: more tequila shots. All the tequila shots.
See you all on "why god, why?" Wednesday!
Welcome back! You're just in time for the fun part, and by "fun" I mean...cathartic, I guess. Take the lid off of your pot, grab a couple forks, and shred the bejeezus out of your chicken. It should be crazy tender and just kind of fall apart, but stab it repeatedly with your forks and rip it asunder just for good measure. Then add in the juice from your limes, stir that nonsense together, cover it with a lid again, and let it sit for another 10 minutes. Use this time (see, I told you) to chop your remaining vegetation, and to heat up your tortillas. Chop your avocado into slices, and chop your onion into itty bitty onion bits. Then set a pan over low heat, and toast your tortillas on both sides. If you like things extra delicious, add a little bit of oil to the pan before you do this. You're not deep frying them or anything, so just barely coat the pan. After about 30-60 seconds on each side, they should be fine. Then take your tortillas, stack them 2 deep so they don't just fall apart, add some meat, avocado, red onion, and a little bit of cilantro on them, fold and consume. You may have noticed you have a lot of chicken. That's because it's taco tuesday, not a day for the solitary eating of one taco, but a day for the mass gorging on tacos by the populace at large. So gather or hire some friends, get everybody together, and eat awesome food. Or just eat them all yourself. The important thing is, even though I still don't know the name of the guy who started all of this controversy in the first place., we managed to turn nothing into a massive public debate, thus saving the lives of all the cats living in Brian Williams' neighborhood. Also, tacos!

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