Beef Barbacoa is a wonderful slow cooked Mexican beef recipe. Use your slow cooker or crock pot or pressure cooker to create soft, luscious pulled beef using beef cheeks. This is the perfect filling for tacos and makes enough to feed a party and you'll be surprised at how easy but delicious beef barbacoa is! This is a pushy recipe Dear Reader.
The word "Barbacoa" traces its roots to the Taíno language in pre-Hispanic Cuba. It made its way to Mexico, where they slow cook meat either over an open flame or in a pit. Often an entire cow was prepared and covered with maguey (agave or century plant) leaves for added flavour and moisture. Nowadays when people make barbacoa at home they use the slow cooker or crock pot to make their barbacoa as the cuts of meat usually reserved for barbacoa are less expensive cuts that do well with slow braising.
In central Mexico, the meat of choice is lamb but in the Yucatan their traditional version cochinita pibil or pit-style pork is prepared with pork. In the United States in Texas, barbacoa is often prepared with beef, particularly beef cheeks. In terms of flavours, people are definitely opinionated about how to cook beef barbacoa. In Texas, traditionalists would use just salt, pepper and maybe a bay leaf while more modern cooks like braising their beef in beer while others like using spices like cumin, oregano and dried chillies. I decided to do it the traditional Texas way as this is said to bring out the flavour of the beef.
You can use any cut of beef that needs to be cooked low and slow but for the best combination of textures and fattiness I love using a mix of beef cheek (cachete) and beef tongue (lengua). This combination is called "Barbacoa Especial" when you order it. I remember ordering lengua or tongue at a taqueria when I was in Los Angeles in 2019 and it was delicious. You buy it by weight and then you can take it home and eat it with tortillas or take it to a table and DIY your own tacos.This was my first time sourcing beef tongue although we cook it a lot at Korean BBQ but it has the perfect low fat but soft texture against beef cheeks' luscious, fatty texture. I think just using beef cheek is too much and I like the balance between the two (but feel free to use all beef cheek or a 50/50 mix of beef cheek and chuck roast).
Tips For Making Beef Barbacoa
1 Finding beef cheeks is fairly straightforward. You want 3 beef cheeks for this barbacoa recipe and they weigh around 350g/12ozs each.
2 You may need to order the beef tongue in from your butcher. I called six butchers and five of them didn't stock it but one did and it was a frozen whole beef tongue that weighed around 950g/2.1lbs.
3 Cut the beef into smaller pieces so that they take less time to cook. Don't worry about peeling the skin off the tongue, we will remove it after cooking where it comes off easily.
4 This is truly one of the easiest recipes for a party. Set this to cook overnight and wake up to the best beef tacos to feed a crowd!
5 Serve beef barbacoa with tortillas, salsa, hot sauce, avocado, coriander or cilantro and limes.
Other Mexican and Texan Recipes You Might Like:
- Mexican Oaxacan Oregano Chicken Bake
- Texan Beef Brisket
- Mexican Birria Tacos
- Shrimp Prawn Tacos
- The BEST Guacamole Recipe
I was so excited that my first time slow cooking beef tongue worked out so well. The meat was so tender and I filled so many tacos with this. All they needed was a bit of onion, hot sauce and I was in heaven! While I love cooking with spices I do see a logic to just adding salt and pepper to bring out the flavour of the beef. And please don't let the idea of beef tongue, which admittedly looks like a giant tongue, put you off. It's a glorious cut of meat.
While this was my first time slow cooking barbacoa we ate the tacos in front of the television watching Worst Ex Ever which is a new series that I've been absolutely addicted to. It's the follow up to Worst Roommate Ever and it's such a well made series. I also think that the alt title for it should be "Worst Cops Ever" because if there's a recurring theme then it's that all the police let down the mostly female victims in a significant way. One ended up in prison instead of the abuser!
I was telling Mr NQN that I had a suggestion. If someone puts an insurance policy out on your life, you should get notified of this. That way people would definitely have a heads up if there's a spouse or partner that has malevolent intentions. And honestly I can't believe that it isn't a thing yet!
So tell me Dear Reader, do you like beef barbacoa? What cuts would you use in it? And have you seen Worst Ex Ever?
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