shredded beef tacos recipe – use real butter (2024)

Recipe: shredded beef tacos

That phrase is the first sentence I learned in Spanish way back in high school, from a bunch of friends who took Spanish. I took French, see. So when I headed down to South America to do field work for graduate school I was all, “Guys, I don’t speak a lick of Spanish.” Well, except for por que tu eres un taco grande? Everyone assured me I’d pick it up.

I did pick up some Spanish, all with an Argentine accent. That got me a lot of funny stares when I flew across the Andes to Chile for work on a field project with Jeremy and a team of astronomers. When Jeremy met me at the airport in Santiago and we caught a cab, he was amazed while I chattered away with our driver in my Argentine Spanish explaining the geophysical research project I had been working on for the past month. Jeremy speaks Spanish. When he saw me off at the airport in the US, the only new Spanish I had learned was No me molestes! and Chupacabra (from an X-files episode).

When I say Jeremy speaks Spanish, I really mean that he knows a lot of Spanish, but the guy hardly speaks much in English and even less in Spanish. He actually *thinks* before he speaks. That’s why when he finally says something, everyone listens. It’s usually something quite good. But me, I run my mouth all the time and let my jabbering find its way around until I say what I wanted to say. I don’t hesitate to speak. Same goes for my Spanish.

Despite my crappy command of the Spanish language I did surprisingly well communicating with the locals. I attribute that to my crappy Chinese. I’m well practiced in the art of getting semi-complex ideas across using a 3rd grade vocabulary. You should have seen me asking where I could find birthday candles at the grocery store in Pisagua, Chile [where can I find a small light that you place on a cake which is served on the day someone is born?]

So the other day I was thinking about how bad my Spanish has become (rather, how much worse) and I said aloud to myself, “Por que tu eres un taco grande?” Mmmm, tacos. It had been an age since I last made shredded beef tacos (and I had this giant sack of limes to finish off). I got on the shredded beef taco kick after going to an awesome Taqueria on Mission and 24th in San Francisco with a friend of mine who had grown up there. He told me if I ate Taco Bell, he’d beat the crap out of me. Ha! I could *so* kick his ass. But the memory of their amazing shredded beef tacos still lingers in my mind.

I tried to reproduce these in graduate school, but I think when you work on a PhD, you become incompetent at everything you do (including the PhD). It’s worse than chemo brain, I tell you. I always used beef chuck and shredded the beef in the food processor using the dough blade. Somehow, a light bulb went off in my head this time… Why not READ the recipe carefully?

Beef eye of chuck is not quite beef chuck as I knew it. Dude in the meat department was all “That is not the right cut of meat in your hands, you want this instead.” I did look it up for sh*ts and giggles because I like diagrams of animals and the names of the cuts of meat (and how the Brits have different names than Yankees do.) Being a Coloradoan, it’s my sworn duty to loathe Texas, but when it comes to Beef, Texas knows what she’s talkin’ about.

Right, so the recipe said I could grill the beef or bake it. Grilling it won’t result in shredded beef, just fajita-like strips. I opted for the baked version because I am all about the slow-cooking and the falling apart of cheap cuts of meat. The original oven time was just over an hour. When I tried to shred the beef, it felt tough, so I let it go another hour in the oven. Much better.

After shredding the beef, I mix it in with the juices and serve it on lightly fried fresh corn tortillas with lettuce, guacamole, salsa, whatever you want, really. I highly recommend queso fresco instead of cheddar. Since all of the grocery stores in Boulder conspired to NOT HAVE queso fresco, I grated some feta which actually worked out nicely (not as creamy, but nice, smooth and salty). Of course, the first store I set foot in when I was visiting Grandma in California had GIANT slabs of queso fresco on display. *sigh*

Jeremy loves these shredded beef tacos. I, myself, feel like dancing while I eat them. They are THAT happy-making.

Shredded Beef Tacos
[print recipe]
slightly modified from Tejas Tacos in The Border Cookbook

1 1/2 lbs eye of chuck (which is NOT beef chuck roast)
4 tbsps vegetable oil
2 tbsps vinegar
2 tbsps fresh lime juice
1 1/2 tsps ground cumin
1 1/2 tsps chili powder
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup beef stock
salt to taste
~ 24 corn tortillas
lettuce, queso fresco, salsa, guacamole, etc. (for toppings)

Trim the fat and cut the beef into 1 inch thick slices. In a ziploc bag, combine the oil, vinegar, lime juice, cumin, chili powder, and garlic. Place the meat slices in the bag, seal, mix it around and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight. Bring the meat to room temperature. Place all contents from the bag in a baking dish with the beef stock. Cover the dish and bake for 1 1/4 hours (I baked it for 2 1/2 hours) at 350°F. Let the meat rest for 10 minutes and then shred it with forks or process it quickly in a food processor with the plastic dough blade (I prefer the forks method). Salt the meat to your liking. Fry the tortillas lightly in a little hot oil. I like to double the tortillas and stuff them with shredded beef, lettuce, cheese, guacamole, and salsa.

October 8th, 2008: 9:22 pm
filed under dinner, meat, recipes, savory, spicy