Slow Cooker Barbacoa Beef Tacos with Pickled Onions and Pineapple Pico.
I’m almost embarrassed to tell you the overtime my slow cooker has been working lately.
Since I’m knee deep in book photos, we have a ridiculous amount of food in our house at the moment. I’ve been trying every shoot day to make sure that I’m making SOMETHING that we can eat for dinner that night, because after prepping ten+ recipes everyday, cooking something new is just not in the cards. I also figured that, hey! While my slow cooker is out, I might as well make any and alllll slow cooker recipes that are headed for the new book.
And I keep finding insane ones I love in the process.
So.
My slow cooker?
Five straight days. Five! Different meals of course. It’s not like it ran nonstop for five days. More like I cooked a recipe overnight for about 10 hours and photographed it in the morning, started a new one in the early afternoon, threw it in the fridge and started another one that night. P.S. This slow cooker has still saved my life in the process.
And this was one of my favorite recipes!
I love a delicious, tender, fall-apart barbacoa beef. I love it on salads, in rice bowls, in burritos, in enchiladas and especially in tacos.
Especially when those tacos are covered in pickled onions.
And pineapple pico!
And thinly sliced radish.
And cheeeeese.
Stuffed inside charred tortillas. That I char on my super fancy gas stovetop, like a freak. And occasionally almost burn the house down.
But guess what? This beef has so much flavor and I was so hungry as I was prepping it for dinner that I actually just ate the beef in a tortilla. Plain. Totally cheeseless. Salsaless. Cilantroless!
Apparently I was starvvvving.
Apparently I’ve lost my mind.
It is still super good, even without all the toppings. However… what is life without toppings?
The barbacoa beef is ridiculously flavorful in itself, like I mentioned. I went off this base recipe from serious eats because I trust them the most and having zero experience in making barbacoa (but lots of experience eating it), I wanted it to be perfect. Simple and loaded with flavor.
But it only gets better with a quick pineapple pico. It’s nothing new here and I love the flavor of it with beef. And the pickled onions?
Gosh. I never expected to like them so much. Even if I only like them because they are pink. But Eddie is obsessed with them and eats them right out of the jar. The whole combination is to die for!
We can eat tacos every day. Because I said so.
Slow Cooker Barbacoa Beef Tacos with Pickled Onions and Pineapple Pico
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons grapeseed canola or vegetable oil
- 1 4 pound beef chuck roast
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 4 garlic cloves
- 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
- ½ red onion diced
- 3 tablespoons adobo sauce
- 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons lime juice
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- corn or flour tortillas
pickled onions
- 1 red onion thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon coarse salt
- 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
pineapple pico
- 1 cup fresh pineapple cubes diced
- 1 jalapeño pepper seeded and diced
- 1/2 sweet onion diced
- 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
- 1 lime juiced
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Place the garlic, peppers, onions, adobo sauce, vinegar, lime juice, cumin, oregano and cloves in the bowl of your food processor and blend until combined.
- Season the beef with the salt and pepper. If you have a slow cooker that you can sear in, heat it to the highest setting. If not, heat a large pot or skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil (to either, whatever you’re using) and once it’s hot, add the beef and sear until deeply golden on every side, about 2 minutes per side.
- Place the sauce mixture in the bottom of the slow cooker (and if the beef was seared in there, just lift up the beef and pour it underneath) with the beef over top. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours, or until the beef falls apart.
pickled onions
- Place the onions in a jar or cup. In a bowl, whisk together the warm water, sugar and salt until the sugar and salt dissolve. Whisk in the vinegar. Pour over the sliced onions. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes to 1 hour. You can obviously make this ahead of time and once made, store it in the fridge in a sealed container or jar.
pineapple pico
- Combine all the ingredients together in a large bowl and stir. Let sit for 30 minutes or so for the flavor to develop.
Did you make this recipe?
Be sure to follow @howsweeteats on instagram and tag #howsweeteats. You can also post a photo of your recipe to our facebook page.
I appreciate you so much!
But why do I always JUST miss taco Tuesday?!
68 Comments on “Slow Cooker Barbacoa Beef Tacos with Pickled Onions and Pineapple Pico.”
Pingback: My Most Favorite Egg Salad. – Fruitide
Pingback: 20 Weeks of More healthy Meal Concepts! 140 of my Favourite Weeknight Meals. | Rumorfacts Breaking News Updates | Latest News
Can you tell me why my beef was bland? I followed the recipe. The meat is tender and looks amazing but it was ver bland. Any thoughts as to what I did wrong?
Hi,
I just made it today, what we did was just season the two big pieces of beef with salt and pepper (but then a lot) and sprinkled it a bit with flour before we seared it in a pan with butter.
After 7,5 hours we tried the beef and I must say the inside parts were a bit bland too, so we we shredded the beef, cooked it for a bit longer so that the insides could really soak up the sauce and after 30 min the beef was perfect!
I personally think, when you cook a large piece of beef, the flavors will stay on the outside. So normally I always cut the beef already in pieces of 2 x 2cm and this helps a lot.
I just made this and wow!! So spicy!! I have never used the chipotle in adobo before and I wasn’t sure how much to use as it was in a can. I pulled out what I thought was 2, according to the recipe, but it’s possible it was too much? The sauce was so thick and spicy that I ended up just rinsing it off the beef in a colander. But I love the pineapple pico which helped to balance it a little. The pickled onions didn’t do that much for me, but they weren’t horrible and worked with the dish.
Pingback: Tuna Melt Recipe - Tuscan Tuna Melt with Arugula and Pickled Onions - Kitchenpedia.co
do you leave the onions open in a bowl/jar while the hour of pickling or sealed at room temp?
Made these today for my husband and I. Wow, they are amazing! Definitely making this again for my family.
Made this yesterday and I don’t know what I did wrong. Overall the flavor was great but my beef never got soft or shreddable. It was so tough as if it had been terribly overcooked. Since it was impossible to shred tacos were out of the question but we sliced the meat as thin as we could with a big knife and served with all the toppings but over rice. Again, overall taste was great but I don’t know why it got so tough and couldn’t be shredded.
Pingback: 20 Deliciously Different Tacos - Family Fresh Meals
Pingback: Salad in a Jar - Greek Orzo Salad in a Jar - Salad in a Jar Meal Prep
Pingback: Citrus Avocado Salad – Up to Snow Good
Pingback: Slow Cooker Beef Barbacoa Recipes - Best of Crock