The next time you feel like fixing yourself a hamburger, try a carne asada taco instead, which is sort of the equivalent of a hamburger south of the border, fast, ubiquitous and comforting.
Here's how to make the ultimate carne asada taco, courtesy of Rick Bayless' indispensable Mexican Everyday:
Get yourself some skirt steak, a 7-ounce can of chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, a few medium white onions, some flour or corn tortillas and some olive oil. (A bottle of hot sauce is optional.)
Put the chipotle chiles and their sauce into a blender and purée them Remove the fat and white membranes from the meat and then brush the chipotle purée over both sides of it. Let this sit for a while. (You will have lots of the purée left, but it will keep for weeks in the fridge.)
Eventually . . . turn your oven on at its lowest setting. Cut up an onion into quarter-inch thick slices. Heat two tablespoons of the oil in a skillet over medium to high heat and sauté the onions until they're lightly browned but still crunchy. (Takes about five minutes.) Transfer them to an oven-safe container, leaving as much of the oil in the skillet as possible, and place the container in the oven. Return the skillet to the burner at the same heat setting, add another tablespoon of oil and cook the chipotle-smeared steak until it's well done.
Cut up the steak into thin slices, mix it with the onions from the oven, salt it to taste, add some hot sauce if you want (the chipotle sauce is fairly spicy to begin with) and roll it all up in a tortilla. Eat it with a cold beer or a Mexican Coca-Cola (which is still made with real sugar and can be found at many of the smaller Latin markets in the U. S.)
This is just about as easy to make as a hamburger with grilled onions and way more interesting -- Mexican food at its most basic and most delicious.