Chase's Top Notch Birria Tacos

This recipe features one of our bottom round roasts. On a commercial animal, or one that hasn’t been raised quite like ours, this is a tough, you better slow cook it, kind of roast. However, as you can see below the roast off of this animal is marbled more than most of the high priced steaks you’d get at a downtown restaurant.

These pictures got sent to me by one of my good friends from undergrad Chase. Chase lived one unit down from me in our apartment complex which meant frequent dinner parties. Once he found out that I grew up on a cattle ranch beef was encouraged to be on the menu which made the experience that much more fun since more often than not I helped raise what we were eating for dinner. We would often have London broils since it is an simple recipe and more than enough to feed four college boys (Chase, myself and both our roommates). He was always interested in how I cooked the beef so it is so fun to see this all come full circle and receive photos and recipes from him and the culinary adventures that he and his family are taking with my families beef.

He started preparing the roast in the morning for a slow cook for some birria tacos. As he put it, the knife dropped through the roast and he was taken back at how marbled it was. He said he immediately wondered if he should just cut it into one inch steaks and grill it do to it's extreme marbling. He decided to stay a course and slow cook it as planned for that evenings family dinner. It sounded like you didn’t need teeth to eat the fall apart beef and his family were more than satisfied.

Ingredients

• 4-5lbs Roast cut into 4 inch chunks

• 1/2 tbsp Salt, 1/2 tbsp Pepper

• 1 1/2 tbsp Olive Oil

• 12 guajillo chiles, rinsed, stemmed and seeded

• 5 arbol chiles, rinsed, stemmed and seeded

• 2 large Roma tomatoes

• 1/2 medium yellow onion

• 1 4-inch Mexican cinnamon stick

• 3 bay leaves

• 1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns

• 2 cups beef broth

• 1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

• 3 cloves garlic

• 1 tsp dried Mexican oregano

• 1/2 tsp ground cloves

Instructions

1. Season meat chunks on all sides with salt and pepper, sear on all sides in a large pan with olive oil then set aside to cool.

2. Add all chiles, tomatoes, onion, cinnamon stick, bay leaves and peppercorns to a medium pot. Cover ingredients completely with water and bring to a boil, then cover pot, reduce heat to low and allow to cook for 10 mins.

3. Using a slotted spoon or tool of your choosing transfer now soften ingredients from this pot to a blender and blend.

4. Add one cup of the Chile soaked cooking water, the beef broth, vinegar, garlic, cumin, oregano, and cloves to blender with chiles and such. Blend on high until smooth.

5. Strain blended materials through a cloth or something fine into a pot with the seared meat to discard any solids that did not get blended.

6. Stir the meat and Chile sauce together in the pot and bring to a boil on high heat, then switch heat to low and cover the pot. Then let cook for 3 to 3 1/2 hours until the meat is fall apart (looking at this roast it probably didn't take that long so maybe check it sooner).

7. Transfer cooked meat into a large bowl to shred with two forks then transfer shredded beef back to sauce and serve on tacos, over something cool, in a sandwich (get creative it sounds great).