Cooking 4 Dummies: Buffalo Tacos!

Welcome to the second edition of Cooking 4 Dummies. Now that you’ve learned to cook fish—easy, no?—a recipe for meat. These tacos call for lean, mean, healthy bison (here we’re using a sirloin cut), but you can just as easily sub beef, chicken, tofu, or as T.I. might say, whatever you like. ‘Cause that’s what cooking’s all about, baby, improv. We had no sour cream in the house, so we used Greek yogurt. No limes either, but Meyer lemons worked just fine.

This go-round, instead of posting the instructions to the slideshow (some of which Pictobrowser cut off), we’ll list them here. Just follow along in the pics, kids. Here’s what you’ll need, besides the obvious like salt and pepper: two strips of bacon—we used the Balinese long pepper bacon we told you about yesterday and it was floral and smoky and spicy and amazing—one buffalo sirloin steak, red onion, tomato, avocado, Greek yogurt, lemon or lime, cilantro, chipotle peppers, pineapple, soft tortillas and (not pictured here) honey and cumin.

1. Cut the bacon into pieces—a scissor works well, just don’t run with it—and crisp it up in a hot pan.
2. Season the steak with salt and pepper.
3. When bacon is crisp, remove it from the pan, drain excess fat (be sure to leave a little) and drop in the steak.
4. Sear steak a few minutes on each side a crust has formed and looks like the pic.
Transfer steak to ovenproof pan and roast 400 degrees for about 20 minutes*.
5. In the mean time, chop the tomato, red onion, avocado and pineapple. (You know how to break down a pineapple right? If not, click here.) Squirt the avocado with citrus**.



6. Mix two big spoonfuls of yogurt with one chopped chipotle pepper. Add salt, pepper, cumin and a drizzle of honey. Stir and reserve.
7. Remove buffalo from oven. Transfer to cutting board and let it rest for 10 minutes so the juices reabsorb.
8. Wrap tortillas in a napkin or towel and nuke for a minute to warm.
9. After buffalo has rested, slice against the grain into thin strips.
10. Assemble tacos, garnish with cilantro and lemon/lime and enjoy!

We just polished that off four buffalo tacos for lunch (they’re healthy = you can eat more!) and we can tell you they’re freaking delicious.

*A note on temperature: When eating a steak, we like it medium-rare, but in these tacos we took the meat closer to medium-well to avoid any bloody drippings turning our tortillas to mush. Adjust the cooking time more or less as you like it.

*This prevents the avocado from getting all brown and gross.