Barbacoa Tacos

hey guys it's matt with meat church and welcome to my outdoor kitchen today i'm going to show you guys something that my family eats pretty much every saturday my wife made me fall in love with this years ago and this is a video you guys have probably been requesting more than any other video barbacoa tacos let's talk about the definition of barbacoa tacos so it comes from beef cheek years ago this was made by smoking the entire cow's head in the ground today it's more common to cook beef cheek in a slow cooker but of course anything we're going to do we're going to cook outside i want to add a smoke element to it we've had this recipe on meatchurch.com for a long time it's very popular so excited to finally show you a video we're going to start out with beef cheeks here i actually got these at sam's club it's probably the least sexy piece of meat you'll ever deal with i mean to be honest with you they're kind of a mess and kind of call these like an a cheek and a smaller beef cheek this piece isn't nearly as big what i like to do is trim all the hard fat off any kind of unnecessary pieces some people will season these and cook them whole because they like the fat in the taco i like to get out of it in advance because i don't i don't want this in my bite so i'm going to choose to take it out now and to be honest with you this will be somewhat hard to follow you've just got to do this but you can just go on here and see this unnecessary stuff here and just remove it [Music] once i get all this fat off of here and i get all of these trimmed up we're going to get to seasoning i've got these trimmed up you can see quite a bit of fat and silver skin there that i pulled off those so kind of trim those to your liking a couple seasoning options from us i'm going with our holy cow it's just a salt pepper garlic blend it's really texasy we have fajita seasoning that's really good or you can make this your own do whatever kind of seasonings you like but i want something with a lot of pepper in it which is very common here in texas so i'm gonna give this a pretty moderate seasoning and our cook process is gonna be really simple i'm gonna try to get a couple hours smoke on these bigger cheeks at 250 degrees this little piece may not go quite that long so kind of watch it you might only get an hour and a half or so out of this one i don't want to dry it out and then after that we're going to put it in a pan or a dutch oven in our case with some braising liquid and we're going to braise it until it's fork tender a great option for this is to do this at night get a couple hours smoke on it put it in your pit if you choose use a slow cooker if you have a pellet grill it's a great option and let it roll low all night and then when you wake up breakfast will be ready anyway let's get these over to the pit i've lit a post oak fire on our offset at 250 degrees and i'm gonna get these on [Music] all right we got the offset rolling like i said we're going to put these in just get a couple hours smoke on these cheeks there we go we'll be back all right guys we've been rolling 250 for about two hours i flipped these cheeks you don't have to do that so i've got a half pan here with some beef broth in it a handful of garlic cloves and some white onion i'm gonna put these cheeks in this liquid to braise one thing you can do if you've got time if you're doing this during the day you can continue to smoke this open after an hour to flip the meat over let it keep going then wrap it but again i like to do this at night i'm gonna wrap it up and just braise it this is fine we're doing this on our offset but it works fantastic on a pellet grill because it can purr all night while you're sleeping and like i said when you wake up you've got breakfast this is gonna braise until it's fork tender which is probably about five hours or so but when it's when it's ready to be shredded you're done we're back here from the pit and it's time to build tacos i told you guys we were going to cook this in a dutch oven and i just kind of forgot and put it in a half pan which works great i put on my heat gloves here and shred this so this uh probed over 200 degrees it felt super tender that's all you're looking for you just want to be able to pull it apart we're putting cotton gloves on here and then just pulling the nitrile glove over the top and what i'm going to do is i'm just going to reach in here and i'm going to shred some of this cheek meat i mean this stuff is really really rich i mean it's great look at that look at the deep smoke that we see on there and this stuff is just pulling apart with little to no effort look how thick that smoke ring is on that this stuff is going to be great so i'll just kind of pull some apart here and i'm going to put it down in this braising mixture we had kind of mix it around in it we'll set that to the side for a moment so let's talk tortillas use whatever you like flour corn i'm going to talk to you guys about my buddy michael's flores tortillas out of whitney texas these are made with smoked beef tallow so you know they're gonna be awesome but use whatever whatever kind you like let's load these up gotta make a big taco in texas my buddy corey proctor always gives me a hard time when i make wimpy tacos he was a lineman for the cowboys so he's taught me how to eat big so let's make them big it's a great meal because it's pretty inexpensive and as you can see it was extremely easy to prepare [Music] and you can garnish it how you like but let's let's go with what i like so traditionally some white onion a little bit of cilantro [Music] now i like to squeeze a little fresh lime juice on mine [Music] of course i'm going to end with some cotija cheese you might put some hot sauce of your liking look at that telling you these are gonna be good i wish you could smell it from deep in the heart of texas i'm going with a big bite off the taco my wife tracy taught me to love years [Music] so ago [Music] this meat is so rich such great flavor just by itself but when you combine the traditional accompaniments we went with especially i love that squeeze of lime i mean let's not forget these heavenly tortillas i ain't mad about that sorry guys it's that good anyway if you like this video please subscribe to our channel we're just trying to inspire you to get outside and cook for your friends and family appreciate you guys watching see you next time

Channel: Meat Church BBQ

Views: 68,258

Rating: 4.9795918 out of 5

Keywords: meat church, matt pittman, traeger, bbq, barbecue, grilling, meat church bbq, meat church bbq youtube, Meat Church BBQ YouTube, Meat Church, Matt Pittman, BBQ, Barbecue, Grilling

Id: WrV1MMNFxYk

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021