Beef Birria - Mexican Stewed Beef

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with beef beer yeah that's right i am very excited to be showing you this recipe and not just because it's one of the most delicious beef stews ever but also because after we enjoy this in its stew form we're going to do a follow-up video and use it to make some of the most incredible tacos you've ever had so you'll definitely want to stay tuned for that and by the way to make a real birya you're going to want to use goat or lamb but here i'm going with a little bit easier to find beef which is also really good but goat is my favorite but anyway let's go ahead and get started by prepping our beef and i'm going to use two different kinds i have three short ribs and a nice big piece of beef chuck and because the short ribs have that flat bone in them i'm not going to be able to cut all the way through but i'm going to make one slice right in the middle all the way down to the bone which is going to make those cook a little faster hopefully matching the cook time of my chuck and as far as that goes i want to cut it up into like three to four inch pieces and as you know we always like to look for any existing seams and separation in the meat since those are usually good places to start our cut but if you don't see an obvious one which i didn't we can just go ahead and cut that in half and then like i said start cutting about three to four inch pieces and note to self send out knife for sharpening and then what we'll do once we have that cut into some nice big pieces is go ahead and transfer that into our stew pods assuming it's something we can fit in our fridge since that's where this is going next and if not just use a bowl and then what we'll do once our meat's been potted is go ahead and season it up with a whole bunch of kosher salt right rule of thumb for this kind of thing i like to use one teaspoon per pound of meat and then to that we will add some freshly ground black pepper a whole bunch of dry oregano preferably mexican if you can find it and we'll also do a little bit of cumin from any country and then we'll finish up with a little touch of cinnamon and then just a little bit of ground clove and that's it we'll get in there with a couple clean hands and we will toss this until we're 100 confident everything is well coated which is going to take more than like 10 or 20 seconds so we'll probably want to massage that for at least two or three minutes until it actually starts to feel awkward at which point we'll stop wash our hands place over the cover and transfer that into the fridge at least overnight all right we want to give that meat plenty of time to take in that salt and all those spices and then at some point the next day we can actually start the recipe by prepping our chili peppers and what i'll be using is some dried guajillo chilies which are my favorite for this but this will work with other dried chilies like ancho pasilla california and what we'll do to prep these is take some scissors and we'll snip off the stem although we should be doing this over a plate and what we'll do once the stem's been removed let's go ahead and slice that open at which point those seeds should be very easy to scrape or shake out and that's it depending on the size we'll go ahead and do that to like six seven eight or nine of those all right that's going to be up to you i think i did seven and then what we'll do is go ahead and toss these into a saucepan set over medium heat into which we've drizzled a little bit of olive oil and all we're going to do is toss these chilies around in that hot oil for about 30 seconds or so to do as we say in the business wake them up which i should mention is normally done in a dry cast iron pan or one of those flat top griddles but as long as you don't burn them this is going to work out just fine and then what we'll do after about 30 to 45 seconds is go ahead and toss in some chopped onions some peeled garlic cloves and then about a one inch piece of peeled ginger that i sliced into like five or six pieces and then i went ahead and gave that a quick toss mostly to make sure those chilies at the bottom were not getting charred which for a second i thought they were but they ended up being fine and then to finish this up we'll go ahead and add some fresh tomato which not to brag but yes they were from our garden and then we'll finish up with two cups of nice cold fresh water and then we will raise our heat to high and wait for this to come up to a simmer and while that was happening i remembered i had a few cayenne chili peppers from the garden they were sort of getting dried out so i decided to snip off the stems and toss those in then all we have to do here once this is simmering is back the heat down to medium-low and then just let this cook stirring occasionally for 30 minutes and if everything goes according to plan about a half hour later it should look something like this and that's it to finish this we will turn off the heat and then use a stick blender to puree this very smooth and yes of course you can use a regular blender but i find this method to be easier and less dangerous but either way we'll go ahead and blend that smooth and believe it or not we just made what most people would call an adobo sauce all right not all of them but most of them which means we can pull our pot of meat out of the fridge and then attempt to very carefully strain our adobo sauce into this pot and if you have the option i don't want to use a strainer that has a super fine mesh which is going to take like 9 years for this sauce to pass through so that's why you see me using this strainer which actually has a relatively large mesh my only regret is it doesn't have a long handle so my hand is a little closer to that hot sauce than i would like but i was fine and hopefully what's going to happen here is all that beautiful sauce is gonna pass through leaving us with just the tomato seeds and a few random pepper seeds as well as all those little bits of tough skin from the dried chilies and i should probably mention a lot of recipes don't even call for you to strain the sauce but personally i do think it's better if you strain that stuff out and then to all this goodness we'll go ahead and add some bay leaves as well as one optional spoon of honey which i think is important to balance the heat and the acidity but whether you add that is totally up to you i mean you are after all the chesty larue of your mexican beef stew but personally i'm a big fan of adding some in especially because of the next ingredient which is going to be a very large splash of white vinegar and then last but not least we'll finish up with about a quart of chicken broth or what's even more traditional plain water with some chicken bouillon powder but either way is going to work just fine and then what we'll do is bring this up to a boil on high heat at which point we'll back this down to medium low and simmer it for about three to four hours or until that meat has fallen apart tender and there are basically two different ways you can go with this okay you can have this come out more like a stew with a fairly reduced and thickened sauce which is the version i'm making today or you can use twice as much liquid and end up with something much closer to a soup which by the way i find is more common and during the cooking time there's not much to do except maybe given it the occasional stir and if you want you can skim some of the fat off the top but do not under any circumstances throw that away okay you remember those tacos i talked about earlier this reserved chili stained fat is going to be a key ingredient in that recipe so do not throw that away and tell everyone in your house not to throw it away so i went ahead and let mine simmer for about three and a half to four hours at which point it looked like this and how we know we're done is that meat is basically falling apart tender so we'll test that with a fork and as you can hopefully see that was very very tender which means all we have to do is check for seasoning and if we think it's perfect which i did we can go ahead and serve this up alongside the traditional garnishes of white onion cilantro and lime so i transferred in a few chunks of beef well more than a few and then ladled over plenty of that absolutely gorgeous sauce which as i mentioned could be a broth if you want but since i went for the thicker stew version i was able to use this wider shallower bowl for a much more dramatic presentation and if there's a better looking stewed beef recipe out there i have not seen it because i think this really is stunning and then once that's been served up we can go ahead and garnish with our onions and cilantro and then usually i would just squeeze a lime over but since i have to take some pictures i'll just go ahead and place that on the side and that's it my beef myria was ready to enjoy and that my friends was just magnificent okay if you like beef stew and you're a fan of chili you are going to go nuts over this i mean it really is incredibly flavorful and while i enjoy eating this as is maybe with a nice warm flour tortilla some other common garnishes include a chili oil which i really don't understand because this is plenty rich enough and if i wanted it spicier i would just add some hot peppers but anyway that's what some people do as well as some people actually like to spoon over a fresh salsa which if you're into go ahead but i kind of find redundant and as far as my meat choice went i really do like the combination of the short rib and the chuck so i think that combo works out very well and if you make this and enjoy it with the beef you really should try to get some goat or lamb and do it that way too all right that little bit extra gaminess you get with those meats really does work out even better with this flavor profile and as far as serving a complete full menu goes i generally like to serve this alongside some spanish or mexican rice with maybe also a nice crisp green salad and all that makes for one of my favorite meals ever but anyway that's it my take on beef birya the stew-like version at least and as i teased earlier we're going to take the leftovers and we're going to turn them into a little something called birya queso tacos that we are then going to dip into a soup made with the leftover sauce so please stay tuned for that but in the meantime i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 349,414

Rating: 4.9641829 out of 5

Keywords: beef, birria, taco, stew, Mexican, chili, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, recipes, meat, goat, lamb

Id: qqKNH2HRbD4

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Reecova]

Made it tonight. Found one of my new favorite dishes

[u/Wolfy9]

I made birria de chivo (goat) about six months ago and it’s absolutely one of my new favorites. Since then I started combining guajillo, morita, and pasilla chiles. And I found if you switch out oil for lard you get a nice amount of fat at the top that really defines the dish

[u/toastedbread47]

Seems like everyone is getting on the birria train. Might try this on the weekend!

[u/PK_RocknRoll]

I usually like goat birria but this looks killer

[u/sarahostewart]

I made this and it turned out perfect. Added arbol chilies for spice and cooked meat low and slow for the whole day.