The Barbacoa Burrito

Read on to see the best Mexican dish I’ve made yet. The flavors were far and away the best I’ve made in the Mex/TexMex realm: strong, authentic, and delicious. This turned out to be an all day Saturday cook… My wife was leaving for another week (Check out her Taking This Show On The Road post!), so I got to dirtying up the kitchen. And boy did I do a good job at that.

I took a ton of photos during this one. I tried to group them up so this wasn’t a forever drawn out post. Pictures sell, I get it – let’s get these words out of the way so you can see what was done. As always, recipe is up top for those that want to skip right to it. As credited in the recipe – check out MeatWave, I followed this recipe closely with some slight alterations.

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Recipe

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The Prep Table

Went shopping on a Saturday morning, and thought that if I left out the ingredients I would be using – the wife wouldn’t be upset. This is what she was left with. Unacceptable, I know – but I was going to get crazy this weekend. She was going to be a LONG way away – so it was going to be a show. Wasn’t going to use ALL those ingredients THIS time…I used a lot of these for those BBQ sauce trial runs.

This has been hanging around the freezer for awhile, and it was time to get used. I don’t really remember ever seeing “arm roast” as a cut before, but I was going to treat it as a chuck roast anyway. I think I like the term arm roast better. This was a local cut (hence the blacking out of the name) and obviously the not commercial-grade packaging. Let this thaw in the fridge for two days and it was time to get to work.

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You know I love my seasonings – so I was excited to build a new one. The local Mexican mercado had some great seasonings and put them to the test. When it was all said and done, it was beautiful! I mixed up some of my taco seasoning at the same time – but damn if I want to use this for all my Mexican beef dishes from now on. My taco blend doesn’t have such complexity – including brown sugar – but I’m willing to give it a whirl. I love that second picture above – great look!

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Pictures are a bit out of order – but it’s still part of the prep. After we prepped the seasonings, we have to prep the sauce. Toasted up the dried chiles and softened them up in a bath of chicken broth. Took about 20 minutes-ish to toast and boil/simmer but this was the easy part.

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If I was going to do a whole day prep/cook for a barbacoa burrito, I was going do some homemade guac as well. Nothing crazy other than the freshness that comes with homemade – Avocado, tomato, onion, cilantro, lime and garlic. Mix and mash and set aside.

I put this picture in because it was part of the prep. I did this at the very tail end of everything, obviously – but I didn’t go nuts with rice and beans – store bought from can/carton. Let’s move on to the Process and see what that meat cook looks like!

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The Process

Pre-heat your smoker to about 250ish. I let that meat get to room temperature and coated up that meat with the new seasoning. Holy cow (lame) this looks great. Take a minute and bask in the beauty of that complex rub upon that meaty background.

Now that you’ve gotten yourself together after that, we’re just throwing this roast on the grates and letting it go. I guess I could’ve probed it to see where it was at for a better recipe descriptor – but I totally didn’t. I threw it on and got to making the sauce (which took up a lot of time). I was cooking to color, as soon as you can see it’s not taking any more smoke. Hopefully these pictures tell the story.

Now that she’s on the grates, let’s get wild with the sauce:

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I got the dutch oven out and sautéed some onion/garlic. Once it got nice and fragrant, load in the seasonings and some chicken broth. Let that simmer until it’s reduced by half. Anytime you sauté that G&O – the kitchen gets smelling real good. Toss in those seasonings/broth, it’s a delight.

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Once it’s reduced and cooled off a bit, get that pot of broth/peppers and broth/garlic onion and throw it in a food processor. Hit that puree for about a minute or so until it’s broken down and has that thick gravy look. You know, this one:

Now that your peppers, seasonings, garlic, onion is beautifully blended, it’ll be ready to go in the braising phase. Depending on how long it took you to prep all this, it might have to sit out for a bit. Try to keep it room temperature if possible, don’t want a cold liquid to cover that smoky meat.

So maybe a couple hours on the smoker, we’ll say 2 or so – the meat grabbed that smoke. The color was coming out and it was ready to go. I took the now empty dutch oven and placed the meat at the bottom. Took the liquid and covered it, gave it a single flip to coat, and added a few bay leaves.

Now the waiting game. If you recall from my quesabirria post, I let this stage go for a little too long and cooked the consommé right out of it. I wasn’t going to let that happen this time around. I checked on it probably too much, but I was going in cautious after that.

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Side-by-side, you can really see this come together. The total time was about 3 hours, but I got the meat pretty close to 200 before taking it out. You can see the reduction, the color change, the concentrated flavors. It was gorgeous. Take your temperature probe and stick the meat – when it slides in like butter, you know you can pull it with no effort.

So I’ll mention here, as I’m sitting around and waiting – I thought why not add a Carolina reaper pepper to the guacamole? I like hot stuff, I like guacamole – let’s do it! (I really should back off the spicy shit one day, but today was not that day.)

Meat is done, guacamole has been upgraded – we’re about ready for the result. Viewer discretion advised, this thing is gorgeous. I was so very hungry at this point. I dragged the Blackstone out for the burrito, to put some heat on the flour torts, but that’s the only picture that’s really missing. Here we go:

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The Result

Took the meat out of the dutch oven and put it on the cutting board. Fired up the stove to medium-high and reduced the remaining sauce by half. I started to shred the meat and stopped. This was better that I had thought:

It was perfectly cooked. The smoke grabbed it, it was juicy. I took a quick bite, and so flavorful. I kept shredding and the resulting picture is one that should be framed:

I really don’t know if I could have done any better. That pink/red was vibrant, but that flavor. My goodness. I knew it only going to get better too. I really should’ve pulled out the prep table, because I was bouncing around like crazy at this point. I had the rice/beans cooked, the meat shredded, the consommé was good – it was just time to put it all together. Blackstone rolled out and fired up a burrito tortilla.

I have a small Blackstone (right now), so I normally just fire up one side to cook, another side to warm. After the tortilla was good to go, slid it over to the ‘warm side’. I took a spoonful of the shredded meat and dunked it in the consommé. Took it out with a slight drain and tossed it on the tort. Add guac, salsa, queso fresco, raw onion and cilantro and wrapped it up. (Yes, I forgot the rice and beans for this one – I told you, I was hungry!)

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Never a great picture pre-roll, and it really wasn’t that great of one post-roll. It was still crazy hot when I tried to roll, so the result wasn’t great. Plus, I forgot the rice and beans – dumb. Let’s try that again:

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Okay.. roll on point this time. I guess practice does make perfect after all. And yes, I put this on a paper plate. MrsForensicBBQ hates paper plates – she’s out of town – paper plates were used greatly. Let’s cut it in half and show you that burrito!

I ate the shit out of this burrito. This was the first one – no rice/beans but it was a better picture as you can still see that smoke ring on that meat. I know the roll wasn’t great – but the taste was out of this world. That first bite and I knew this was a keeper. I texted Wolf and said when the brick-and-mortar is real, this is on the menu. As any good food blogger/instragram food guy does, I made a second try for better pictures:

Yep.. my favorite Mexican dish has been made. I make tacos ALL THE TIME, so I’m glad to mix it up with a burrito. I’ll make these into quesadillas for the rest of the week reheated, but today was super special. So happy to share these with you, and I hope you have the same result!

Thanks for checking this one out – Sign up for the e-mails to get these in your inbox, and we’ll see you next week!

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The Recipe