Quick Bites: Pork Tacos with Cilantro and Cotija

A few days ago, I happened across some center cut, boneless pork chops that were too good to pass up. About 1.5 inches think and 8 ounces each, they were beautiful. I marinated them for around 6 hours in a mix of lime juice, minced garlic, 1/2 bunch of cilantro, crushed with mortar and pestle, and a mix of jalapeño, serrano, and habañero chiles, also crushed. I grilled these on the Weber over charwood, searing hot heat for about 5 minutes on a side. The chops came out seared, juicy, and still a little pink in the middle. Here's what I did with the leftovers:



You will need:

• 1 lb. marinated and wood-grilled pork, cooked
• 4 taco-sized flour tortillas
• 2 tbsp. Búfalo Chipotle hot sauce (its actually quite mild)
  
• 1/2 cup grated Cotija cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese (I like Cabot)
• fresh cilantro leaves
  

Dice the pork into bite size pieces and mix with the chipotle sauce. Reheat in a saucepan over medium-low heat or in 30 second intervals in the microwave. Spoon 1/4 of the pork into each tortilla. Top with cilantro leaves and cheeses.

Makes 4 tacos / serves 2

Kenutcky Grilled Oprah

So I realize it has been months since I posted and I apologize. But KFC's Kentucky Grilled Chicken has been all over the media lately, and between the commercials, the coupons, and the ensuing "scandal", I just couldn't stay away. For those not in the know, KFC recently launched a grilled chicken line, and Oprah arranged a promo so that anyone with a Windows or Mac machine can print a coupon for a free 2-piece meal:



Needless to say, the issues ranged from the coupon website being overloaded, to absurd comments in web forums, to certain restaurants not honoring the coupons, and ultimately reaching its apex with a racially charged KFC sit-in in NYC. (Thanks to SeriousEats for this info.)

Some of the quotes are scary:

"THANK YOU OPRAH, I WAS JUST NOW ABLE TO PRINT THE KFC COUPON! IT TOOK OVER 3 HRS.. THANKS AGAIN!! NEW JERSEY GIRL"

while others are downright hilarious:

"Requires Windows or Mac. So to get a free dinner I have to spend $300. Linux users are people too, but I guess we can afford dinner with the money we saved on our OS."

and others just seem to miss the point of the promo (and KFC) entirely:

"It would be nice if you had something for us veg folk who don't eat meat."

By this point, I was just as interested in the media spectacle as the food, and I seemed to be one of the "lucky ones" - I was able to print the coupon with relative ease, found a KFC with no lines, the coupon was honored without question, and I was in and out in under 3 minutes. There's only one problem - the chicken sucks.

I'm not really sure where to start, so I guess we can break it into 3 categories: appearance, aroma, and flavor.

Beginning with appearance, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Let's just say there is some distance between what's depicted in the ads and what you get. Not uncommon for fast food, but worth noting:

What they sell


What you get:



Just based on what I saw, I found several things that just weren't right. The pale color wasn't exactly appetizing. And while the chicken in the ads doesn't look quite like what comes off my grill, the presence of dark grill marks almost serves to say "Yes, it's really grilled!". All I can assume here is that they left my chicken on the "grill" long enough to cook it but not to fully impart the "grill" marks. I'm pretty sure this is just baked in a convection oven on a wire rack.

Next, the size. The thigh is smaller than the biscuit, and the leg is in similar proportion. I realize chickens vary in size, I just hope KFC isn't killing babies for Oprah's promo. These chicken pieces are really, really small.



And I'm pretty sure someone already took a bite out of this leg:



Moving on to the aroma of this meal, I wasn't prepared for what I got when I opened the lid. The smell was reminiscent of a hospital cafeteria, only boosting my suspicions that no grill is actually involved in the process of cooking this meat. I've spent a lot of my 28 years grilling on charcoal, propane, and electric, and never conjured a meal that smelled like this.

As I'm sure you can guess by now, I don't have anything good to say about the flavor. I spent some serious time convincing myself that I needed to actually taste the stuff in order to justify this post. So eventually I did. It just doesn't taste grilled. Or good. In fact, it doesn't have any taste at all. I chewed on the leg for a good 45 seconds trying discern the flavors, and there were none. It honestly didn't even taste like chicken, and it was tougher than dark meat should be.

I'd really like to know more about the "grilling" method KFC employs to make this new chicken - it could use some improvement. A basic brine, or marinade, or wave of the salt shaker would help enormously, as would higher temperatures during the cooking process. This chicken honestly looks and has the skin texture of chicken baked in a low-temperature oven.

Kudos to Oprah and KFC for this promo to try to reach the masses and give some folks a free meal, but it definitely leaves something to be desired. I remain a lifelong fan of Original Recipe, but if you're not already a KFC customer, the Kentucky Grilled Chicken isn't going to convert you.