Mochomos Sonorenses

This is from Sonora, the cattle country in Mexico's northwest. Specifically from Los Mochis, the city on the Sinaloa border where the dish was named and where every restaurant worth its salt has a version. Mochomo is the Yaqui word for the desert ant. When the fried beef strands hit the platter, scattered and mahogany and bristling, they look like a colony of those ants on the move. That is the dish. The name is the description.

Mochomos is a northern dish and northern Mexico does not apologize for what it is. This is beef country. Sonora produces more cattle than any other state in Mexico, and the cuisine reflects it: machaca, carne asada, cortes finos, flour tortillas instead of corn. The flour tortilla is not a Tex-Mex invention. The sonorense flour tortilla, large and thin enough to read a newspaper through, is one of the great breads of the Americas, and it is the only tortilla that belongs with mochomos. Corn does not work here. Corn is from the south. Cada estado, su propia cocina.

The technique is patience disguised as simplicity. You simmer the beef. You shred it fine, finer than you think. You dry it. You fry it in batches until every strand is crisp. You build a quick sofrito of onion, garlic, serrano, and tomato. You combine. The dish is not difficult, but it is not fast, and the cook who tries to rush any step gets steamed beef instead of crispy beef. There is a difference between machaca and mochomos, and that difference is the fry.

My mother was from Jalisco and never made mochomos. I learned this dish in Los Mochis, in the kitchen of a senora named Carmen who had been making it for her family for forty years. She told me the secret was not the meat, not the chile, not the tortilla. The secret was the shredding. 'Si la carne esta gruesa, no son mochomos. Son tiritas.' If the meat is thick, they are not mochomos. They are just strips. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.