I’ve mentioned here before that I wanted to make Quesabirria Tacos, often called Birria Tacos. I had never heard of them til last Fall when Chad asked me if I had ever had them. Nope . . don’t even know what they are. He had them while in Detroit and he went on and on about how good they were. He made some and he said they were delicious but a pain to make. Later he said they weren’t hard but they were time consuming and messy. That kinda convinced me not to make them.
The taco shop here in town makes them often for their food truck but their food truck is rarely even in our town (and kinda rarely in MO). They’re in Kansas and Oklahoma often and the few times they’ve been in Joplin that they had them, we missed them. Saturday, late in the day, I saw that they had them at their shop which is probably less than 5 miles from our house but we had already eaten.
I came across this video late Sunday night and I wanted to make these birria tacos . . so badly that I almost went upstairs at midnight and started working on getting the meat to cooking.
This lady made the meat/sauce in the crockpot (for the most part). She did steam parts of the sauce in a pot of water and he also uses the blender.
I had a chuck roast in the fridge so yesterday morning, I seasoned the roast, browned it in a dry skillet (as recommended) and that worked so well. No splattering grease! I followed her directions pretty much exactly and these tacos were delicious!!
As recommended in the video, I used a liner in the crockpot so cleanup there was a breeze. Part of the process is dipping the tortilla in the cooking “gravy”, then searing it in a dry skillet. I had a plate by the crockpot, dipped the tortilla in the gravy, then put the tortilla in the plate to get it to the stove without dripping so I didn’t really make a mess at all . . which is very unusual for me.
My Notes:
- Guajillo Peppers – I had ordered these from Amazon back when I thought I was going to make this dish. They were great – not very spicy at all.
- I did use chipotle peppers in adobo.
- For the beef broth, I used water and Better than Bouillon.
- I did not use cayenne pepper since I was using the Chipotle peppers. It wasn’t very spicy at all for me . . Addie and Nicole would think it was over the top hot.
- I did strain the pepper sauce after blending. Mine seemed a lot more “liquidy” than hers did but towards the end, mine was very thick and the “sauce” was perfect.
- I did not put potatoes in mine. I meant to do that but I had set the crockpot (as recommended) on high for 6 hours and planned to put the potatoes in about one hour before the food was to be ready but after 4 hours, Vince was hungry and the meat was quite tender.
- I did not use the raw onions/cilantro inside the tacos. Vince won’t eat either of those. You can see in the photo, I topped mine with cultured sour cream (homemade) and cilantro.
- I used one medium sized chuck roast and it would easily have fed 4 – 6 people.
I think I will make up some of this and can it. Of course, it isn’t an approved recipe by the powers that be but here’s my thinking and please tell me if you think I’m wrong.
- It is ok to can roast beef by putting raw chunks into a jar and canning it. It can also be browned and covered with water or broth. National Center for Home Food Preservation
- There are all kinds of recipes online for canning enchilada sauce. I would probably add tomatoes just to be sure I had enough acid.
- I found a video that has a recipe for canning this. She mentions, as she should, that this is not approved but honestly, I don’t have a problem with this and I’m pretty picky about canning unapproved recipes.
- She does use some different ingredients in the canning recipe that weren’t used in the recipe I made. I’m not sure how it could get much better but I may use more of these ingredients next time.
NOTE: Make sure the sauce is not too thick if you’re going to be canning it. Make it more on the “liquidy” side. You can always boil it down before serving.
Please let me know if you have questions or suggestions.