I had been eyeballing Birria tacos for some time. Redicans’ Smoked Chuck Birria tacos inspired me to make them someday. I’ve had them once and thought they were good but not any better than regular hard tacos IMO…just a different approach with shredded meat rather than ground meat, etc..
Birria is actually the Mexican stewed meat. It hit me one day that I had this shelf stable shredded beef in my stash. I had seasoned some up and made hard shell tacos before and they were pretty good. This stuff is a great easy button option. The ingredients are beef, beef broth and salt, nothing weird. I did heat it up to dissolve the tallow, then drain/press it in a sieve to remove most of the broth, which wasn’t a lot.
I wasn’t going to re-hydrate chilies and all that per the authentic recipes that creates the sauce and cooking liquid. After researching I decided, the sauce is not too far from an enchilada sauce…but brothier. The packaged Birria Bomb sauce stuff is for a lot of meat and pretty expensive. I read that Redicans even stepped on that product with more stuff when he did his. The sauce in the restaurant Birria I had was pretty much pot roast liquid and didn’t really have a complex flavor. I like much flavor! So, I modified my enchilada sauce recipe with less roux so it would be a little thinner.
I had a spare jalapeno, so I said, what the heck…and sauteed it up to add to the meat. What I’m doing is not exactly traditional anyway!
This meat is already shredded, but I picked it apart finer. In the skillet with the jalapeno.
Some of the sauce mixed in
Meat divided up, workstation teed up. Researching this, traditionally the tortillas are dragged through the fat floating on top of the braising liquid before hitting the skillet. To simulate that, I mixed some sauce with olive oil (I’ll be sure to emulsify that better next time), brushed that on one side of the tortilla, laid that side on the pan/griddle and brushed the other side while on the griddle.
Then flipped the tortillas again to have the pre-cooked sauced side up, layered cheese (in this case pepper jack), meat mixture, more cheese then the traditional onions and cilantro.
Folded, cooked both sides till firm, held the first three warm in the toaster oven while cooking the other three. Fuzzy pic but took just this one. Even taking pics was a last minute thought.
Plated with some refried beans and more sauce. I bought these little creamer pour things to use for sauces. It occurred to me one day how silly dipping some things are when you can just drizzle. It hit me when I made fresh/spring rolls and a few of the ingredients tried to fall out when dipping. I use these for sushi rolls too, rather than dipping them in the soy sauce/wasabi mix I like. Lots of potential uses. I haven’t found the right little squirt bottles yet.
Pretty tasty for ingredients I had on hand. I even had the tortillas in the freezer . I buy those stacks, separate them into 12 counts and vac seal. 6 per meal, It’s usually just me and the wife.
Afterward it hit me, these are freaking quesadillas! Why they are called tacos…well, I guess it doesn’t matter, there is a similar looking quesadilla called a Dubai Taco I may try one day…but, it too is called a “taco”.
No outdoor cooking here...does it count if the chef was "smoked"?
Birria is actually the Mexican stewed meat. It hit me one day that I had this shelf stable shredded beef in my stash. I had seasoned some up and made hard shell tacos before and they were pretty good. This stuff is a great easy button option. The ingredients are beef, beef broth and salt, nothing weird. I did heat it up to dissolve the tallow, then drain/press it in a sieve to remove most of the broth, which wasn’t a lot.
I wasn’t going to re-hydrate chilies and all that per the authentic recipes that creates the sauce and cooking liquid. After researching I decided, the sauce is not too far from an enchilada sauce…but brothier. The packaged Birria Bomb sauce stuff is for a lot of meat and pretty expensive. I read that Redicans even stepped on that product with more stuff when he did his. The sauce in the restaurant Birria I had was pretty much pot roast liquid and didn’t really have a complex flavor. I like much flavor! So, I modified my enchilada sauce recipe with less roux so it would be a little thinner.
I had a spare jalapeno, so I said, what the heck…and sauteed it up to add to the meat. What I’m doing is not exactly traditional anyway!
This meat is already shredded, but I picked it apart finer. In the skillet with the jalapeno.
Some of the sauce mixed in
Meat divided up, workstation teed up. Researching this, traditionally the tortillas are dragged through the fat floating on top of the braising liquid before hitting the skillet. To simulate that, I mixed some sauce with olive oil (I’ll be sure to emulsify that better next time), brushed that on one side of the tortilla, laid that side on the pan/griddle and brushed the other side while on the griddle.
Then flipped the tortillas again to have the pre-cooked sauced side up, layered cheese (in this case pepper jack), meat mixture, more cheese then the traditional onions and cilantro.
Folded, cooked both sides till firm, held the first three warm in the toaster oven while cooking the other three. Fuzzy pic but took just this one. Even taking pics was a last minute thought.
Plated with some refried beans and more sauce. I bought these little creamer pour things to use for sauces. It occurred to me one day how silly dipping some things are when you can just drizzle. It hit me when I made fresh/spring rolls and a few of the ingredients tried to fall out when dipping. I use these for sushi rolls too, rather than dipping them in the soy sauce/wasabi mix I like. Lots of potential uses. I haven’t found the right little squirt bottles yet.
Pretty tasty for ingredients I had on hand. I even had the tortillas in the freezer . I buy those stacks, separate them into 12 counts and vac seal. 6 per meal, It’s usually just me and the wife.
Afterward it hit me, these are freaking quesadillas! Why they are called tacos…well, I guess it doesn’t matter, there is a similar looking quesadilla called a Dubai Taco I may try one day…but, it too is called a “taco”.
No outdoor cooking here...does it count if the chef was "smoked"?
