“Don’t Count The Tortillas: The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking”Ģ ounces carne seca (If your grocery store does not sell carne seca, you can buy it online. Caldillo de carne seca, still served throughout the Texas Mexican communities, is a way that you can bring delicious history to your new year, 2022, dinner table. I add boiled brown rice to this soup, but the version César cooked for me uses the more flavorful Mexican rice. Cesar recreated the recipe from memory, and says that this version “is very close to the one I remember at the ranch.” This recipe is from his Aunt Zenaida (Garza), who cooked it at the ranch for the family. The little threads of dried beef are called machacado, meaning pounded and bashed.Ĭésar Martinez, renowned visual artist, cooked this soup for me in his San Antonio home, recalling how he ate it almost every day as a young boy, when he would spend summers on his family ranch in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, just south of the Rio Grande. The dried meat was then pounded into fine threads with a traditional Mexican mortar (either a molcajete or the larger metate) and pestle (tejolote). With no refrigeration available, venison, beef, and other types of meat were preserved by salting and then drying. Family arriving at the annual “Fiesta Del Rancho” in Concepción, TexasĬarne seca, dried beef, is an iconic food of the rancho lifestyle. It is held in October in Concepción, Texas. The annual “Fiesta Del Rancho” celebrates the continuing Rancho culture, including culinary traditions and music. However, many small ranchos are still owned by Texas Mexican families whose cultural legacy and traditions persist and are celebrated in an enduring lifestyle characterized by form of dress (e.g., hats and boots), by Tejano music, and by traditional foodways (Arreola, 2002). The lands have transitioned to the production of grains, with other income deriving from oil and hunting leases. Today, most of the ranchos on both sides of the Rio Grande have largely disappeared, along with their way of life. It is held every October in Concepción, Texas The “Fiesta Del Rancho” celebrates Rancho culture and culinary traditions.

In them a class structure prevailed, with the patrón (owner) living in a big house made of sandstone or caliche, while the peones (workers) were in small jacales (huts) made of unhewn wood and thatch.

Ranchos were settlements near towns, dedicated to the maintenance and management of cows, sheep, goats, and horses. Rancho refers also to a community living space, a form of settlement brought to Texas and northern Mexico in the 1800s by Spanish and Mexican colonizers. The Spanish word rancho means a common meal, a mess as in mess hall, a food hall. This caldo de carne seca, dried beef soup, is the perfect Texas Mexican recipe to begin the new year, 2022.Ĭaldo de carne seca is like a rustic broth and is a true rancho recipe.

Machacha carne