Things I Go Through to Have Great Tacos at Home.

Alright so yeah, I am not above having a taco bell taco - but I'm from Buffalo, so I prefer a Mighty Taco over Taco Bell. Sometimes though, I like to get weird and make tacos that just hug my tummy and make me happy. Sometimes I go through great lengths to have great tacos at home. Here's an example of a journey that led up to a great batch of tacos -

We go back to Saturday when I finally had a weekend day with zero plans. This never happens, so I have a tendency to make the most of it by doing absolutely nothing constructive. The weather wasn't terrible, so I decided to fire up the smoker and get some treats going!

I played it safe and went with 2 racks of baby back ribs and a pork shoulder. For the rub, I threw together a blend of 1.5 parts coarse pepper, 1 park kosher salt, and 1 part 'butt rubb' -

Now if you look at the pork shoulder, you'll see I've got it in a tray with veggies! That's right, I like to cook my shoulders in a pan to speed up the cooking time by about 20%, tenting the tray at about 160 degrees when the stall happens. But those veggies are basically going to get smoked and then cook in the pork fat. 'veggies confit' baby!

Anyways. Those ribs turned out amazing. I cooked them 4 hours at 235, wrapped them in peach paper and cooked them for another hour and 15 minutes. After that, I pulled the paper off, brushed them down with stubbs original and dusted them with about a quarter cup of brown sugar each.

See how the meat doesn't slide off the bone, but comes away clean with a bite? that's what you WANT people! don't let Applebee's tell you how it should be!

So what about those veggies? Let's have a look!!

holy confit !

What do you do with these treats? Well, one of my favorite things to do is chop them up and turn them into a hella good hash for breakfast!

DUNK !~!!

Ok, so now it's Monday, 2 days later, and I pigged out on ribs, gave a whole rack to my salad fairy Karen at work for feeding me salad almost every damn day, and only had 2 ribs left.. TIME FOR TACOS!

I had some of those smoked onions left. smoked caramelized onions!