Taco Tuesdays call for margaritas and mariachi music. It’s one of our favorite excuses to bring everyone together and make great food during the week. After falling in love with our braised beef short ribs with rustic root vegetables, we decided to try a new take on our short rib and make them for tacos. This was a favorite. I am happy to say we were scraping the pans clean to make more tacos as the night went on.
When you have a table full of people over for dinner and everyone is silent, you know you’ve created something wonderful. These were delicious and required seconds. After making 3 lbs of short rib, I was surprised that we didn’t have a shred left when the night wound down and we were putting everything away. Currently while writing this, I wish I had two or three more sitting in front of me.
When it comes to Mexican food, I really enjoy combining crunchy vegetables, succulent meat, and spicy peppers. The flavor palette is really fun to play with and there are so many different ingredients you can throw in that can change your dish. For these tacos, we used our Poblano Corn Salad that we’ve made in the past for our Pork Belly Burnt End Rice Bowls. It added a great sweet and spicy quality that really complimented the meat.
Mexican Style Beef Short Rib Tacos
Ingredients
- 3 Ibs beef short rib (6 pieces) prime if possible
- 1 large sweet onion chopped
- 1 medium carrot peeled & chopped
- 2 large poblano peppers seeded, stemmed, chopped
- 4 serrano peppers seeded, stemmed, chopped
- 4 shishito peppers seeded, stemmed, chopped
- 1 7 oz can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce use whole can (sauce and peppers)
- 6 cloves garlic roughly chopped
- 3 cups beef stock
- 2 cans Mexican Beer (Modelo Especial or Modelo Negra both work well)
- 2 limes juiced
- 1 stalk leek chopped
- 1 shallot roughly chopped
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 tsp chili powder
- freshly ground black pepper to taste
- kosher salt to taste
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp butter
For Serving
- flour or corn tortillas warmed up on the grill
- cilantro chopped
- guacamole
- pico de Gallo / salsa
- lime juice
- iceberg lettuce shredded
- tomato sliced
Instructions
- Remove your short ribs from the refrigerator and let them come to room temperature while you prep the BBQ
- Turn your Traeger on to smoke with the lid open, let the Traeger smoke until the fire is lit and then set the temperature to high. Let your grill preheat
- Lightly coat your short ribs with olive oil (the oil acts as a binder for your rub or seasoning); generously season your short ribs with smoked salt or kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, and a BBQ rub or smoked paprika.
- Place on Traeger and sear for 6-7 minutes on each side to brown your meat before braising
- **For this part, you can do on your stove or on your BBQ, either works** In a large oven safe pot or in a large dutch oven, combine olive oil, butter, garlic, onion, carrot, celery, peppers, celery, shallot, leek, thyme, and bay leaves. Let your vegetables begin to brown.
- Once vegetables have begun to brown, add beef sock, adobo chilies and sauce, lime, and beer. Let your liquid reduce by 1/4 to half and come to a boil. Season with your salt, pepper, cumin, and paprika.
- Add your short ribs to your vegetable and liquid
- At this point, transfer your pot to the BBQ if you have been cooking your vegetables on the stove top.
- Tightly cover your pot with aluminum foil or an oven safe lid and braise your short ribs for about 2.5 to 3 hours at 350 until the meat becomes tender and is falling off the bone
- After 2.5-3 hours, remove your pot from the Traeger and let rest for 15-20 minutes
- Remove your short rib from the pot and strain liquid (we love serving the peppers and onion on the tacos!) Serve immediately.
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