Red Chile Beef Tacos Recipe

by wold630

3.3K9613

Intro: Red Chile Beef Tacos Recipe

Authentic Red Chile Beef

My mother-in-law tells stories about visiting El Grande Market in Tucson, Arizona as a young mother in the 1970's. She would take her son (my husband) along to pick out hot chiles and learn how to cook and prepare authentic Mexican food. My mother-in law is very fair skinned with strawberry-blonde hair and my husband is a towhead, so they stood out from the normal customer at the market! The market employees were very welcoming and were happy to teach a young white mother. They thought it was so great that she wanted to learn proper Mexican cooking. My mother-in-law learned how to make many amazing dishes from the women at El Grande Market which included this Red Chile Beef. She ultimately taught my husband how to make it and in turn I also learned. It's amazing!!

STEP 1: Ingredients for Authentic Red Chile Beef

The most important part of red chile beef is of course the chiles! Three different dried chiles are used in this recipe: roasted jalapeños, California red chiles, and chile arbols. You can most likely find these chiles at your local Hispanic grocery market.

Authentic Red Chile Beef
2 lb beef roast (preferably arm or round, well marbled)
2 whole roasted, dried jalapeños
3 whole dried California red chiles
20-30 whole dried chile arbols
1 cup beef stock
1 whole white onion, quartered
6 large cloves garlic
4 medium fresh tomatoes (quartered) or one 15 ounce can tomato sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon honey
Juice of one lime

Gather all ingredients...

STEP 2: Prep and Cook Roast

Heat a large frying pan on high heat. Sear the roast on all sides until you get a nice brown sear on each side.

Place roast in a slow cooker and add one to two cups of water or about half way up the side of the roast. Set to high heat and cook 5-6 hours or until meat easily shreds with a fork.

STEP 3: Prepare Red Chile Sauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Using a sharp knife remove stems from all chiles. Depending on the amount of heat you want the final red chile sauce to have keep or remove the seeds.

Add all chiles to a bowl of boiling water. Let stand 10-15 minutes or until chiles become soft and plump.

While the chiles are soaking roast onion and garlic on a baking sheet in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes or until they start to soften and char slightly. If using fresh tomatoes roast with onion and garlic.

Drain water off chiles. Reserve chile water and add one cup to blender along with chiles. Add onion, garlic, roasted tomatoes or can of tomato sauce, salt, beef stock, lime juice and honey. BLEND!

Using a fine mesh strainer and a ladle strain red chile sauce to remove all seeds, skin and membranes of chiles.

Add to a pot with shredded beef. Heat over medium heat for 20-30 minutes to infuse the chile sauce into the beef.

Serve on tacos with toppings and condiments of choice!

Eat and enjoy!

11 Comments

waxm 8 years ago

yum yum! now i feel starving......cheers

HollyMann 8 years ago

This looks INCREDIBLE. I need to make this sometime..thank you for sharing it. I am in love with avacados...so that photo is making me hungry!

tomatoskins 8 years ago

Oh my! This looks amazing! I used to live in Texas and now I miss the food so much. I'll need to try this sometime!

cdstudioNH 8 years ago

Thank you SO much for posting this. I, too have a little familial experience, but most is lost. I will try this very soon, and hope to find more autentico offerings from you when you can!

~ Cynthia

wold630 8 years ago

Let me know how you like it if you decide to make it and post a picture too!!

Haxx3 8 years ago

My grandma used to make this for us as kids in Mexico. Also what set of knives is that?

jessyratfink 8 years ago

That looks soooooooo delicious. I'm trying to do more slow-cooking dishes to give me extra time to embroider in the evenings, so this is going on the menu for next week! :D

wold630 8 years ago

Let me know how it turns out! You're gonna love it!!