I still clearly remember eating a Birria taco at a restaurant for the first time. The flavors were incredible! And event hough it was messy dipping the tacos into the sauce, I would eat it again and again. I have seen many Birria Taco recipes, but so many seemed intense, needed ingredients that weren’t readily in my kitchen, and definitely not a weeknight meal.
This recipe for Birria Tacos is EASY! It will take you about 30 minutes to prep. Then you let your crockpot do the work for about 6 hours. The meat shreds like a dream. The most time consuming part is dipping the corn tortillas in the Birria sauce, filling the tacos, and cooking the filled tacos on the griddle again with cheese to create the classic outside crispiness of the taco.
This has become my husband and all my kids favorite meal. Well, okay, not the eight year old, because she’s not a big meat fan yet. My kids don’t seem to really like red meat until they are about 11 or 12. Weird huh? But that’s been the case with all six of my kids. So I don’t worry. They all have learned to eat a nice variety of foods as soon as they hit their teens.
I get my eye round roasts for this recipe at Costco. These roasts are my favorite because they are very lean. I prefer to not have a lot of fatty pieces when I eat my tacos. The packages at Costco usually have two or three roasts in them. I use two roasts for this recipe.
I buy San Marcos Chiptole in Adobo sauce. It isn’t labeled gluten free, but to my knowledge is is considered “safe”. There are many brands that are labeled gluten free that you can choose from. I just liked this brand because it isn’t made with soybean oil. I try to stay away from that oil when I can(personal preference).
The beef broth packets I buy, you can find at Costco, Walmart, etc. It is the Bare Bones Beef Broth. I like the flavor of this broth, and it takes up less space in my food storage than cans.
Easy Birria Tacos
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Gather crock pot and set aside.
- Trim fat off roasts. Salt and pepper them. And brown them on all sides in a pan with a little olive oil. Set in the crockpot when finished.
- In a blender, add chopped onion, garlic cloves, beef broth, tomato sauce, rice vinegar and all seasonings EXCEPT the bay leaves.
- Put the lid on the blender, and blend the ingredients until well blended.
- Pour sauce onto roasts. Add bay leaves. Place lid on crockopt, and cook on HIGH for 6 hours.
- After the six hours, Remove the bay leaves.Then, remove the meat from the crockpot and shred with two forks.
- Remove most of the sauce to a pot, reserving about 3/4-1 C of sauce in the crockpot. You can strain the sauce if you don't like serving the sauce with some chunks of onion, etc, but I like the sauce the way it is. Keep the sauce warm in the pot until ready to serve.
- Place the shredded meat back into the crockpot and mix well with the sauce. Make sure you have enough of the sauce to keep the meat moist. You don't want to much sauce, that the meat is dripping with it when you are assembling your tacos. Turn the crockpot to warm until ready to start assembling the tacos.
- Place about 1-2 cups of sauce in a dish that you will be able to dip the corn tortillas in.
- On a large, flat, non-stick griddle, heat to medium. Dip the corn tortillas in the sauce to cover both sides. Cook on griddle until both sides are cooked using a large flat spatula. If your tortillas start to stick, use some oil before doing the next batch.
- Continue cooking as many corn tortillas as you need.
- On a cutting board, start assembling the tacos. With the prepared corn tortillas, put refried beans, the shredded meat, and cheese. Fold taco over.
- Sprinkle a little bit of cheese that will cover the folded over taco. Place the taco on that cheese. When cheese is browned and adhered to the taco, flip onto sprinkled cheese again. (this image shows cooking the first side on cheese)
- Then your taco is ready to serve with a side of the sauce.
This is a fun family dinner to get everyone involved! Especially if you have teenagers. Let them cook their own tacos. They really are fun to assemble. But it does take about 30 minutes to cook the tortillas in the sauce, assemble the tacos, and cook them with the cheese. So save this recipe for a night when everyone is home to help for the assembling.
One thing that helps in the assembling is to pre-shred your cheese earlier in the day while the meat is cooking. I don’t like buying pre-shredded cheese because the additives change how the cheese melts. But sometimes, easy is best, right!
I hope that you will enjoy making these Easy Birria Tacos with your family.
Much love,
Emma
