Easy Mexican Beef Birria

Beef Birria is arguably one of Mexico’s greatest dishes: meltingly tender beef slow-cooked in an unbelievably delicious tomato, chilli, cumin, garlic and oregano broth. If you love beef and authentic Mexican flavours, you’re going to love my Easy Mexican Beef Birria!

Course Main Course

Cuisine Mexican

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 3 15

Total Time 3 45

Servings people

Calories 436kcal

Author Eb Gargano

Ingredients

In the saucepan:

10 dried guajillo chillies stems and seeds removed (See Note 1)
3 dried ancho chillies stems and seeds removed (See Note 1)
2 dried árbol chillies stems and seeds removed (See Notes 1 & 2)
1 stick cinnamon
3 bay leaves
1 medium onion cut into 8 pieces
6 cloves garlic peeled
750 ml boiling water

For the beef:

2 kg beef brisket or chuck roast cut into 8cm/3inch chunks
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil

In the blender:

400 g tin chopped tomatoes
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 beef stock cube (I use Kallo organic)

To serve:

Finely diced white onion
Finely chopped fresh coriander (AKA cilantro)
Lime quarters
Soft corn tortillas either homemade or shop-bought (or soft flour tortillas or rice)

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Place all the ‘in the saucepan’ ingredients in a medium to large saucepan. Bring to the boil, then simmer uncovered on a low heat for 10 minutes.
Preheat your oven to 160C / 140C fan / gas mark 3 / 325F.
Season the beef with salt and pepper.
Heat the olive oil a frying pan over a high heat for 1 minute, then sear the beef on all sides until nicely browned. (I recommend you do this in batches to ensure a good sear. If you overcrowd the pan the meat will start to boil rather than sear!)
When the meat is seared, place in a large hob-proof, oven-proof casserole dish and set aside. (See Note 3.)
When the ‘in the saucepan’ ingredients have finished simmering, turn the heat off, discard the cinnamon and bay leaves, then transfer all the chillies, the onion, the garlic and all of the remaining cooking liquid to a blender. Add in all the ‘in the blender’ ingredients and blend everything together until it is completely smooth. (See Note 4.)
Tip everything from the blender into the same casserole dish you put the seared beef into, then place this casserole dish on the hob, over a high heat, and bring to the boil.
Put the lid on your casserole dish and place it into your preheated oven for 3 hours.
After the 3 hours is up, remove the casserole dish from the oven, remove the beef chunks and place on a plate or board. Shred the beef using two forks.
Either return the shredded beef to the broth or serve the shredded beef and the broth separately.

Notes

Normally on this site I try to avoid unusual or hard to find ingredients. However, that is impossible with this recipe, since these dried chillies are at the heart of Birria – replacing them with anything more readily available would ruin the whole dish. However, these chillies are actually very easy to get hold of online via companies such as The Cool Chile Company, MexGrocer, or MexTrade. You can also buy whole dried chillies on Amazon. (The ones I use for this recipe come from The Cool Chile Company.)
This recipe comes out ‘medium hot’, but you can adjust the ‘hotness’ by adjusting the amount of arból chillies: 0-1 will give you a mild birria, 3+ will give you a hot birria. Not sure? Try 1 to start, you can always add some hot salsa at the end if it’s not quite hot enough for you!
If you don’t have a casserole dish that can go on the hob AND in the oven, simply use one that can only go in the oven. In step 5, place the meat in this casserole dish. Then in Step 7, simply tip everything from the blender into a regular saucepan, bring to the boil, then pour over the beef in your casserole dish. After this, put the casserole in the oven and continue as per the recipe.
You will need a high-power blender to get this sauce completely smooth at this step. If your blender is not powerful enough to get the sauce completely smooth, simply use a sieve to strain the sauce into the casserole dish.
One quantity of beef birria is 2kg (4.5lb) of meat. Depending on appetite and accompaniments, this may too much for 1 meal – even for 8 people. However, given that birria is hard to make with less than 2kg of meat AND it’s quite time-consuming, I recommend you make the full quantity… but prepare for leftovers!
Suitable for freezing.
Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.

Nutrition