Instant Pot Shredded Beef Tacos. How to make instant pot taco meat for your next taco Tuesday. Full of flavour, so easy to make and can be made with cheap cuts of meat such as beef shin or a beef chuck roast. Even better, it makes an amazing taco sauce that you can use for dipping or serve with some of your other Mexican favourites.
Instant Pot Taco Meat
This instant pot beef taco meat was one of the last instant pot recipes that we made in Portugal, until we relocated back to England. One of the main things that we enjoy about being back in England is the amazing food choice. With many foods not available to us when we lived in Portugal. One of those meats that was not reasonably priced for in good supply was beef. It was always so tiny, tough, and overpriced for what you got. But there was one that stood out from the crowd and that was Portuguese beef shin. It was only available at Christmas and on Boxing Day when they reduced down all the Christmas meat, I would buy the beef shin in bulk. I said to Dominic as I defrosted my last frozen pack of beef shin, that I wanted to make something amazing with it and we both agreed that to celebrate going back to England and the last of Portugal, that it must be instant pot beef tacos. We would cook beef shin in the instant pot pressure cooker, then also make a thick sauce that will become a homemade barbecue sauce/beef gravy. We would then load it up and Sofia would run into the kitchen as she just loves tacos and that is exactly what we did! If you want a simple, tasty, and saucy way of doing instant pot beef taco meat, then this is it!
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What Kind Of Beef For Shredded Tacos?
My favourite cut of beef for tacos will always be beef shin. It has an amazing depth of flavour, is so tender after being pressure cooked, and it shreds perfectly. But beef shin isn’t always available and if you can not get shin I recommend braising steak or chuck roast as you call it in the US.
Instant Pot Beef Tacos With Salsa
I also recommend that you use salsa in your Mexican beef tacos. Because you are pressure cooking the meat, it can lose its flavour a little and by using salsa, instead of just tinned tomatoes, it can make it a lot more flavoursome.
How To Season Shredded Beef For Tacos?
There is no secret that when you make pressure cooker taco meat that the pressure cooker strips the flavour. The best way around this is to make sure you add more seasonings than you would normally do and then if its not flavoursome enough add extra after cooking. What I usually do is season the beef prior to searing and this starts the seasoning process. And then I cook the beef with salsa which adds extra flavour and then add some more extra seasonings too. Would you like easy & amazing instant pot recipes from instant pot experts? Click here and join the Recipe This Newsletter. We will then send you the BEST instant pot beginner recipes direct to your email inbox along with other useful instant pot resources.
Beef Tacos Instant Pot Ingredients
Beef – For the best pulled beef tacos I recommend a slow cooking beef that once cooked shreds easily with meat claws. The best are braising (also known as chuck), beef shin (what we are using) and the Mexican favourite which is beef tongue. Veggies – I recommend a mix of veggies that will work well as your homemade sauce but will also compliment the beef. I recommend onion, carrots, and celery and a small potato. The potato is then the special ingredient that will create a thick sauce. Stock – You can use any stock, but beef stock works best. Sometimes when I am out of beef stock, I will swap it for instant pot veggie stock. Seasonings – Then for seasoning for your pressure cooker tacos I recommend salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper and paprika. Then when you make the taco sauce I recommend adding in some salsa. Extras – Also if you are using the beef to make homemade shredded beef tacos then I would recommend your favourite wraps and some avocado. Then for the kitchen gadgets that we have used in this instant pot beef tacos recipe it has just been our Instant Pot. We have this one and its my favourite and great for speeding up the process of cooking tough meat. Plus, we recommend you head over to our instant pot recipes category as we have many electric pressure cooker recipes and have been using instant pots for 5 years.
How To Make Shredded Beef Tacos?
Prep – Peel and dice your carrot, onion, celery, and potato and put to one side.Season – Then season your beef shin with salt and pepper.Sauté. Load the beef into the instant pot pressure cooker with extra virgin olive oil and sauté until you have a nice sear on your beef.Veggies – Then remove the beef and sauté your vegetables.Deglaze. Next, I recommend a deglaze with your beef stock. You can keep the veggies in for this and make sure you scrape any bits of meat stuck to the bottom. If you don’t know how to do this, do listen to our how to deglaze the instant pot.Load. After a sauté and a deglaze its time to add your seasoning and place your beef back in.Cook. Pressure cook, then after a 15 minute natural pressure release remove the remaining pressure.Sauce. Then remove the beef from the instant pot and place on a chopping board to sit for a little while. Then place half your stock in the blender with a jar of salsa. Blend until smooth and then you have your sauce.Shred. Finally shred your beef and then load the taco meat into the sauce and then the taco meat in sauce into wraps and serve with avocado.
And I am sure you can see now why I love cooking taco meat in instant pot and why it has become one of my favourite taco Tuesday treats.
Beef Taco Tips & Tricks
Always allow the taco meat to rest. Both with a natural pressure release and with time on the chopping board. This will help make them more and more tender and juicy.
If you don’t want a taco sauce you can skip the adding of the potato.
You can also save any leftovers and make into a taco pie. The sauce also works brilliantly towards a stock for a future Mexican beef instant pot recipe.
Interesting Instant Pot Trick – Add in the garlic at the last moment before turning off the sauté. Garlic sticks to the instant pot (A LOT!!!) and it will save you a deep clean on your instant pot.
More Instant Pot Beef Recipes
Instant Pot Frozen Pot RoastInstant Pot Beef TongueInstant Pot Beef Cheeks RaguInstant Pot Brisket SlidersInstant Pot Beef Stew & Dumplings
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