Quesabirria Vampire Tacos

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Huge fan of birria tacos. When traveling to California or Texas or anywhere else where I can "trust" the Mexican food, it's one of my "go-to" meals because it's usually outstanding.

So how do you elevate a comfort food that someone's grandmother perfected decades before you were born?

Subtle little things, honestly. I may not have had a Mexican abuela cooking these for me, but I did grow up in California surrounded by outstanding Mexican food. In fact, my first serious girlfriend would invite me over before Christmas for the family tamale parties, so I definitely feel like I have a bit of experience with it.

First, I make the meat in a pretty traditional way, albeit with an Instant Pot instead of a full day with a crock pot. Everyone sears it, but I dice it up to get more surface area for more Maillard effect, and more of that caramelization of the beet proteins.

Second, for the consommé, I take a page from the The French Laundry Cookbook and lean into straining it and building flavors in the broth while trying to keep the mouthfeel amazing. More conservation of accumulated flavors - we're not discarding what the chinois picks up - but we're making the consommé the most ridiculously silky thought possible.

Third, I lean into both some keto habits - albeit this is not a keto recipe - and some wonderful experiences drinking beer at The Yard House eating Vampire Tacos. Crispy cheese is a decadence unto itself, but when combined with the spicy meat and the consommé for dipping, trust me that two of these are usually enough for a full meal.

Fourth, I used a lot more Mexican cheeses than just Oaxaca. Five Mexican cheeses, plus, because Costco puts cheddar in their Mexican cheese blend, we get a bonus British cheese.

The results are just an amazing mixture of flavors and definitely one of our favorite tacos.

And we know our tacos. We rotate them often:

1. The "traditional midwestern" type with fried (blue) corn tortillas, seasoned ground beef, chunked beefsteak tomatoes, shredded lettuce, sour cream, shredded cheddar, Monterey Jack and cotija cheeses. This is our six-year-old son's favorite.
2. Slow cooked homemade carnitas lightly fried with orange juice (so some are crispy, most are tender and moist), on lightly warmed corn or flour tortillas (great either way), with Key Lime juice pickled red onion, diced cape gooseberries, and shredded cilantro. I absolutely love these, especially in the summer with a sparkling citrus margarita.
3. Breaded cod deep fried in avocado oil, with avocado crema, shredded cabbage, and lightly sweated sweet yellow onion on flour tortillas. Our nine-year-old loves these, even with the avocado crema.

On Cinco de Mayo this year, we made all four of these simultaneously, which was a heavy lift - the kind of thing you maybe do once a year or even every other year (we didn't have cabbage for the fish tacos, but we did have homemade flour tortillas!)

But even then, these quesabirria tacos were the star of the show.

Like most good recipes, the real effort lays in attention to detail, and in our case, also having a few extra things. A good blender (we have a Vitamix 5200), a large Instant Pot (we have the 10qt), at least one chinois (if you've got a 1950s era apple saucer with a chinois and matching conical pestle, even better), a large flat ladle, and several prep bowls (I used no less than four 8" 54oz stainless prep bowls for this) in addition to a few frying pans (I used both a 10" cast iron and pair of modern non-stick omelet pans) as well as a large baking tray and some taco racks.

So worth it.

This will take about two hours from walking into the kitchen until serving on the plate, and it pairs phenomenally with a keto sparkling margarita; lately we've made things interesting by packing a 20oz glass half full of ice, adding reposado tequila to the halfway line (albeit, most that volume is actually the ice), a tablespoon of cold pressed fresh lime juice, and the rest of the glass is a 50/50 mix of San Pellegrino limonata soda and White Claw or Topo Chico alcoholic seltzers of any given flavor (White Claw Peach, White Claw Mango, Topo Chico Hard Seltzer Strawberry Guava, and Topo Chico Margarita Prickly Pear are all particularly delicious).

Most importantly, every step is about execution. This is a lot of steps. Feel free to make this multiple times, skipping parts that seem excessive until you master the entire thing. Or do this with a spouse or a friend (or even a date early in a relationship if you want to test stress levels). Making it with someone you love will make it even better (making the four tacos with not just Laura and Ben but also my dear friends SALSA and Crystal back on Cinco de Mayo made them possibly the best tacos of my life. And objectively, I'd done a better job on most of them in the past.)

Recipe

Ingredients

Steps

1. Prep the beef. Cut the beef into 1.5-2" cubes, and season with salt and pepper. Fry on cast iron with just a tiny amount of avocado oil spray first, on high heat, turning regularly as you fry for the Maillard effect. You're not cooking the meat, just searing the outside, so don't worry about making the meat fully cooked.
2. De-seed the chiles and toast them on a pan, careful not to burn them. Set aside in small prep bowl.
3. Peel and halve a large white onion. Peel 1" of fresh ginger and cut in half. Place the chiles, half the onion and the ginger in the Instant Pot.
4. Add five peeled garlic cloves, the tomatoes and four cups of water to the instant pot and set to high sauté, boiling for approximately 10 minutes.
5. Put approximately two cups of the liquid in the blender, then strain the rest and add all the solid material to the blender and blend, along with some extra salt, the apple cider vinegar, oregano, cumin seeds, and ground cloves. Blend until smooth.
6. Pour the blended ingredients - don't strain yet - into the emptied (don't worry about cleaning it thoroughly) Instant Pot. Add the seared beef cubes, five cups of beef broth (reserve one cup), thyme sprigs, beef tallow (or lard), bay leaves and cinnamon stick to the pressure cooker. Lock it down, set to custom, high pressure, and 45 minutes.
7. While the cooker is going, dice the other half of the onion finely, chop (or use herb scissor) the cilantro, as well as cut the limes into wedges. Take the Oaxaca block and shred into 18 small piles (one for each taco). In a large prep bowl, combine the Mexican four cheese (Monterey Jack, Asadero, Queso Quesadilla and the tragically non-Mexican cheddar) with the shredded cotija and the adobo seasoning and toss together.
8. When the cook time is up, let the pressure naturally release for 15 minutes. Quick release any remaining pressure.
9. Remove the beef with a large slotted spoon and put the chunks into a bowl. Leave the Instant Pot set to "warm." Remove bay leaves, thyme sprigs, and cinnamon stick and discard. Pour all the remaining content back into the blender, and return the empty Instant Pot back on warm still.
10. The immediate cooling of the blender should force a layer of fat to the top. Strain it off (along with no more than 1/4 cup of consommé) and save in another bowl. Then blend the consommé on medium continuously while shredding the beef with two forks in another bowl.
11. Pour the blended consommé through a chinois into another bowl (bowl #2). Pass this back through the chinois into another bowl (bowl #3). Clean the bowl #2, and pass back through chinois into bowl #2. Clean bowl #3, then finally, pour back through the chinois again into the bowl #3 and reserve in a warming oven at approximately 135° F. This is the finished consommé.
12. Scrape the contents of the chinois back into the blender along with the last cup of beef broth. Blend on high for a minute or so and return to the warmed Instant Pot. Add the shredded beef back to the instant pot in the spiced beef broth.
13. Dip the tortillas in the fat, and cook on a heated griddle (I use a pair of non-stick omelette pans, doing two tacos at a time). Add a small amount of beef, then Oaxaca cheese, then more beef into the taco, close it and fry on both sides at ~350° F until crisp. Should be about three minutes per side. Remove from heat, put on a baking pan and put into the oven at ~135° F (same as the consommé.)
14. After all tacos are done being fried, clean out the omelette pans (or the griddle) and add a small sprinkle of cheese to the hot pan, and let it begin melting. When bubbling and melting together, put a taco down and it should "stick" to the cheese. Flip the taco, with the cheese attached to it, and make sure it crisps on both sides. Remove from heat and let rest on a taco rack (no need to return to oven). It won't take long per-side. You may need slightly more cheese + adobo seasoning depending upon how much you use per-taco.
15. Plate and serve immediately with the consommé for dipping.

Nutrition Facts