Birria Taco Slow Cooker Hack

If you follow me on Instagram you know that I am a proponent of the old school slow cooker. I know that kids are all about the Instant Pot these days, but I also know that an Instant Pot is just a smartly-branded pressure cooker, and those things are still terrifying to me. I, however, am perfectly willing to trust that I can turn on my slow cooker and go out and leave it unsupervised in my house all day, and I’ll come home to delicious, tender stew and a house that smells amazing but hasn’t been blown up.

When I make any sort of meat in my slow cooker, I always make enough for at least two meals, and one of those meals is always tacos. But I recently realized that said slow cooker meat could not be more perfect for birria tacos. “Birria” refers to a type of meat stew in Mexican cuisine, but apparently the hot new thing for the taco scene here in California is birria tacos, in which the corn tortillas are dunked in the glorious meat liquid of the stew before being stuffed with the tender meat and lightly crisped on the griddle/comal. There’s a taqueria near my house that takes it ones step further into the realm of awesome and melts a layer of cheese onto the tortilla before stuffing it. That’s the version that I recreated here.

In this episode of awkwardly vague recipes, I’ll attempt to explain how it did it. Also, please excuse the sub-par photos, which were only meant to be used for my Insta Stories before I started to get questions about how to make them.

How to Make Easy Birria Tacos from Leftover Stew

Simmer your leftover stewed meat and braising liquid/broth from your earlier slow cooker or Instant Pot adventure. I made this with brisket that had been stewed in a homemade BBQ sauce that had some notes of Mexican seasonings (mainly, canned chipotles in adobo sauce) but I honestly think it will work with most stews, and you can always add some taco-appropriate hot sauce at this step.

Heat up a non-stick flat griddle, which will stand in for a comal. Take a corn tortilla, fully coat it in the broth, and place it on the griddle. Top it with shredded cheese—I recommend mozzarella, jack, quesillo, or queso chihuahua.

Once the cheese just starts to melt, flip the tortilla and cook the cheese to your desired level of golden brown.

Flip the tortilla back over, top with stewed meat. Fold in half to form the taco and continue to cook until the tortilla shell reaches the desired level of crisp.

Serve with chopped cilantro and onion.

Easy Chili Oil Noodles

Welcome to the first installment of a series I am going to call “Awkwardly Vague Recipes by Lily Morello”. Most of the time, I don’t measure when I am just cooking for myself/my household, so when anyone asks me how I made something, this generally sums up the nature of my trying to recall and explain what I did after the fact. Except now people actually want to recreate the dishes that I share on my Instagram account, so I know I really need to get better at, at least, taking notes while I cook.

The problem is, some recipes are really not meant to be confined to a strict recipe. At least not with measurements and a specific order of operations, or any of those details. A lot of cooking involves seasoning and balancing flavors to taste—to match the preferences of the chef, or the eater. I may like things spicier or more sour than the next person, and I’m not going to be the one to dictate how much seasoning to put in a sauce for someone with different seasoning preferences than mine. In these cases, awkwardly vague is the only way to go.

I put together this recipe as a last minute idea for a Lunar New Year themed dish. I happened to have Hokkien-style noodles already open in my fridge, so that is what ended up in the dish. I grew up eating noodles at celebrations to promote longevity, and golden-colored things for prosperity, so I think these noodles fit perfectly in the Lunar New Year spirit.

This time, I took photos to help visualize all the unmeasured ingredients (please ignore the reflection of my camera mount). But seriously, feel free to add more or less depending on what you like!

How to Make Super Easy Chili Oil Noodles

Get a pot of water boiling. You can use this for your noodles, and any vegetables you feel like blanching to include in the dish.

Select a bowl from which you’d like to eat your noodles. You’ll be able to mix the sauce and eat out of the same bowl, so there’s fewer dishes to be done! To that bowl, add some black vinegar, a scoop of chili oil, some sesame oil, and a drizzle of kecap manis (Indonesian dark sweet soy sauce).

Mix everything together to make your sauce.

Add your piping hot noodles to the bowl, and mix everything together. You can really use any noodles you like, as long as you know how to cook them to the texture you desire. You could even use pasta!

That’s honestly it. At this point, you could add blanched vegetables (I used broccoli rabe), or a poached egg, or whatever toppings and mix-ins you desire. Maybe add a flourish of chopped scallions or herbs, or a dash of sesame seeds for garnish if you are plating it for the ‘gram, but otherwise, there are really no rules. Just yummy, spicy, tangy, sweet noodles.