You’ll find it in quite a few countries. With quite a few different names. The one most internationally talked about is bresaola, the one from Northern Italy. The one I’m going to talk about is cecina, the one you’ll find here in Central Mexico. I decided to talk about cecina because last week, while savoring my requisite San Miguel Sunday caesar at Kenny’s Place, I saw tacos de cecina on the chalk board. This week I was back at Kenny’s for those tacos.

In five words or less, cecina is salted, air-dried beef. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Something even Don Day might be able to make. But there’s at least one step in its production that only a cecinero (yes, yet another Mexican word for an occupation) can do.

Like almost every beef dish, the best versions start by using the most appropriate part of the cow. The best cecina is made with the tenderloin or meat from the hind legs. If it’s a tenderloin, the cecinero starts by removing the silver-skin, the fatty membrane that encircles the loin then does something that seems, to me, beyond the capabilities of any human being.

With monstrous machete in hand, the cecinero makes one vertical slice in the filet, creating a piece of meat about two inches thick. He then continues to gently slide this razor sharp piece of steel through the loin, creating twelve plus horizontal slices from this single piece of meat.

The best I’ve ever seen, the guy I call the master cecinero, is a butcher from Chiapas who creates one, single, 30-foot long roll of cecina from a filet. Watching him is, for a foodie like me, like watching a ballet. 

The next step is to dry and “cook” the meat. I like it done the traditional way. The beef is sprinkled with salt on each side, then taken outside and spread on wooden planks or straw mats in a place where it will bask in maximum sunshine.

When it turns the exactly right shade of chestnut brown (too long and it turns a nasty green), the cecina is ready and taken inside to hang on poles in a cool place to dry until it’s ready for retail.

If you’re a Spaniard, you eat cecina raw like you would Jamon Serrano. If you’re a Mexican like I pretend to be for six months a year, you eat it grilled or fried.

The capital of cecina is a town in Morelos called Yecapixtla. The statue in the main square is not of a saint nor a soldier, it’s of a cecinero.

The second most heralded home for cecina is Toluca, a town about 40 miles west of Mexico City. Gabriella Blanco, the chef at Kenny’s Place, gets her cecina from Toluca, not quite directly but via Beto’s Tacos who brings cecina every week to San Miguel’s Tuesday Market and where almost everyone except those who can afford to shop at City Market gets there cecina.

The way you eat cecina at Kenny’s is in tacos.

After chopping the cecina into about one inch squares, Chef Gaby pours a little vegetable oil into a cast iron frypan with a ribbed base, adds the meat and a generous amount of onions, sprinkles a little pepper (“just on the onions, not the cecina”, says Gaby), then tops them with the fresh corn tortillas to trap in the steam.

The tortillas are then taken, one at a time, to a separate frypan to add a little color and crisp before being stuffed with the juicy cecina and the slightly charred onions.

They’re served, three to the order with a side of avocado and sour cream and a big bowl of salsa verde.

“They don’t offer sour cream in San Miguel de Allende but, in Mexico City, cecina tacos get sour cream and I’m from Mexico City”, Gaby told me.

In tribute to a taco stand in Toluca’s market, Gaby Blanco adds one more thing to each cecina taco, two or three french fries. Not four or five, just two or three on each taco which, of course, leaves you longing for at least two (or three or four) more.

One more special thing about Chef Gaby’s cecina tacos is the salsa verde. Now I know Mexican green sauce is Mexican green sauce and you can even get a decent salsa verde on a supermarket shelf but Gaby’s green sauce had this something extra, this little zing. I asked her what was in it.

“Tomatillos, zucchini, garlic, onions, jalapeños and a hit of cumin”, said Gaby. 

Cumin. That was that little zing, I thought. That and a little more jalapeño than some chefs might dare.

Kenny’s place isn’t the only place in town that sells cecina tacos but I’m sure it’s the only place in town you can sit on a barstool and follow them with a piece of carrot cake with a generous layer of cream cheese icing.

Unless, of course, you order a second order of tacos de cecina.

Kenny’s Place is located at Julián Carrillo 7, Colonia Guadalupe, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. They are open from 1:00 pm to 9:00 pm, every day but Tuesday.