Shredded Beef Tacos and Refried Beans (Pictures)

They said the weather on Sunday was going to be nasty, so I made a plan on Saturday to spend a good part of the day cooking. I decided to make shredded beef for tacos, loosely based on a recipe from the Bon Appetite cookbook. The recipe is for shortribs in a green chili sauce, but I didn't have shortribs, so I used an arm roast.

Saturday I thawed the roast and put a rub on it. The rub had cumin, salt, pepper, ground ancho, ground chipotle, garlic, and a little allspice.



Next I got everything ready for searing and then getting the meat into the crockpot. Roast, Anaheim chilies, canned tomatoes, lime juice, chipotles, onion, garlic, and not pictures some chicken stock.



First the sear:



Then cooked the onions and garlic:



Next was a deglaze with the chicken stock, tomatoes and chipotle:


After this, everything was put into the crockpot and cooked for about 6 hours. With about 2 hours left I chopped up the Anaheims and threw those in. After the meat was done cooking, as I shredded it, I reduced the juice/sauce on the stove. I didn't document those steps but here are a couple of pictures of the beef on the serving platter:






Sunday was also the first time I have ever made my own refried beans. I just grabbed a recipe off the internet. I used my pressure cooker to cook the beans.

Beans Pre-Pressure Cooker:



Beans Post Pressure Cooker (I think I may have slightly overcooked them, but they were going to be mashed up anyhow).



I cooked the beans with some onion and lard:


Onions cooking away in the lard:


The start of the mashing process:


And final product refried beans. I did add in a bit of cumin, salt and pepper:




And a picture of some plated food:





The beef turned out really well. I've been enjoying the leftovers this week. I had never used an arm roast before, but I got it with a 1/4 cow and thought that it made great shredded beef taco meat. The beans were pretty good, I've had better. They were simple to make, and really cheap, so I'll be honing my skills in the future on retries.

Thanks for a great, instructional post. It's definitely aat the Bridgestone-level.

Beautiful and informative pics; I have to dig some of Bossy out of the freezer and give that a try!

Thank you for the comments and compliments.

brandon_w wrote:Thank you for the comments and compliments.

Well deserved, beef tacos and refried beans look terrific!