Authentic Slow Cooker Barbacoa! | Tex-Mex Queen

tex-mex to me means the lovingly the loving fusion of mexico and texas growing up eating tex-mex is totally different than you would eat at a restaurant ours is very humble very comforting food made with fresh ingredients it's not loaded with sour cream and velveeta even though we do have those dishes it's very homey it's very family oriented and it's just truly delicious hola hola hola viene rodriguez here from south texas and welcome to the tex-mex queen growing up in south texas we always visited my grandmother on sundays and that meant two things misa and barbacoa so we all had to go to mass and then we were rewarded with varacoa so varvacoa is a traditional mexican dish that crossed over into texas because it features cuts of beef that were not really really popular we would go to the local barbacoa restaurant and this was in bransville texas and we would drive up and she would order le disiva dos libras por favor so that means two pounds of barbacoa and out would come out these little cartons red red and white checkered cartons filled to the brim with varracoa next to it would be these little styrofoam cups and it'd have diced onion chopped cilantro and salsa so we get home and we ate it and it was one of my most special memories and today i want to share with you a little a little twist on the classic because traditionally barbacoa is made in a hole they dig it in a hole they put the cabeza the cow's head in a hole they cover it and it's cooked low and slow for endless i mean for hours i mean it's truly delicious but i want to give it a twist and i want to give it a sense of ease so that we can all enjoy and today i want to show you how to make varvagoa in a slow cooker for this recipe you're going to need cheek meat here's the twist we're going to add a little bit of chuck roast because sometimes there's limited amount of cheek meat we found my grandmother could easily source it in bransville but we live two hours away in corpus christi and at the time when my mom made this in the slow cooker cheek meat was very limited so she would add some chuck roast to it and it turned out to be super delicious so that's what i've been making ever since and to the recipe we're going to add onion garlic bay leaf salt and pepper so super easy so i'm going to start by cutting the onion i like to use a yellow onion because as it cooks it becomes sweeter and since beef cheek is really really it's a really fatty cut of meat we kind of want to cut that fat and then i garnish on the top with the fackles when i serve it with white onion because that's when i want that bright crisp flavor and we're going to do three cloves of garlic in this one with the thick end of my knife i place it over the garlic and with your palm you're just going to strike the garlic i have that little mincer the garlic where you put the garlic and you throw it through the mincer but it just makes a mess and i we don't have time for that not on sundays and then it kind of breaks it apart a little bit which is good because in the slow cooker it'll start to get softened and it'll really flavor your beef we're going to season it with salt pepper and we're going to use bay leaves and if you've never used bay leaves it's very popular in tex-mex and mexican cooking you can buy them fresh but i prefer them dry and it's a great ingredient to have in your pantry because it adds a touch of warmth to the recipe and then later i'm going to use it in beans so i always add a bay leaf to my beans i've got my slow cooker ready i'm going to add my beef cheeks first on the bottom because those are going to release a lot of the fat people often ask me can i replace it you don't want to replace the beef cheek because that is one of the biggest components of the traditional part of barbacoa and it also adds the flavor to the meat if you can't find it at the local grocery store ask the butcher sometimes they're very willing to order special order you something you can buy beef cheeks online i know that's weird but they come perfectly packaged in dry ice and back in the day my grandmother used to be able to buy barbacoa the entire caveza so it had the eyeballs it had the bones it had the cheeks and you would put it communal style on the table and you would get the tortillas and you would take the pieces of the barbacoa off beef cheeks look daunting when you first see them because it's literally the cheek of the cow guys we're just gonna dice it into thick pieces because this is gonna cook low and slow for six to eight hours so it's gonna have plenty of time to break down and once it breaks down we're gonna shred it with a fork it's gonna be so good you're gonna notice that i'm not gonna add any liquid to the slow cooker because the beef cheek will release all the fat creating the liquid and the liquid will get flavored from the onion the bay leaf and the garlic i mean in a lot of mexican households it's just a little bit of this a little bit of this they're adding everything to the pot and there's not clear measurements which drives me crazy my mom started making it in the 70s because it was hard to source barbacoa fresh buttercup but my mom did not write anything down i had to go back and physically make each recipe with her and write it down as she was cooking i told her okay show me how elita made her varva cola walk me through it what do i need to buy what do i need to do give me tips and tricks and then i told her and i don't want any help i want you to sit at the table i want you to tell me what to do because i physically want to walk through all the steps and i want to write it down we bonded on a completely different level that's what i want to share with you how to recreate recipes that maybe you didn't have a chance to write down so we're going to start with the two bay leaves we're going to add our yellow onion and then we're going to add our garlic so this is three cloves of garlic and we're just gonna tuck those in there we're gonna add four teaspoons of salt because we really want the salt to help us break down the fattiness then we're gonna add two teaspoons of pepper because we want to make sure we season this watercolor really well and that's it we're going to cover it we're going to set it to low and we're going to let it go for 8 hours do not remove the lid it takes time for this puppy to heat up so if you remove the lid you lose all the heat so once you cover it you set it on low walk away from it don't touch it don't stir it let it do its job about six to eight hours we're gonna come back we're gonna check on it and if it needs a little more because sometimes the beef cheek can be a little tougher we'll let it go if not then i'll show you how we're going to shred it okay guys our barbacoa has been cooking for six glorious hours oh my gosh it looks so good and you can see there's plenty of liquid in the slow cooker we started with no liquid at the beginning of this recipe so we have some of our chuck roast it smells like sunday morning at my abuelita's house in bransville texas let me show you how we're going to shred this because it's nice and tender see how easily it shreds everything becomes nice and soft and tender that fat of the beef cheeks has rendered into our chuck roast oh it smells so good now what do you say we make a taco and we try this okay so we have our barbacoa i'm gonna add just a little bit of salt some cilantro for freshness the diced onion just to cut that little fat and then of course you gotta have salsa and there you have it guys slow cooker so easy so delicious be sure to like and subscribe for more tex-mex goodness

Channel: IDENTITY

Views: 6,772

Keywords: #texmex, #mexicanfood, #tacos, #food, #texas, #texmexfood, #foodie, #eats, #comolaflor, #mexico, #instafood, #delicious, #nachos, #fajitas, #guacamole, #tejano, #tejana, #yummy, #taco, #production, #cookingshow, #identityproductions, #bipoc, #poc, #diversity, #tvshow, #eeeeeats

Id: V9aWVqtCrUs

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021