Venison Barbacoa Tacos Recipe

I've said it before (literally every time I make tacos) and I'll say it again: tacos are the perfect food. What's not to love about flavorful meat tucked inside a warm tortilla with fresh toppings and a squeeze of lime? Wash it down with a cold cerveza and you can't go wrong. This slow-cooked venison barbacoa makes the best tacos. You'll see.

What is barbacoa?

Barbacoa is Spanish for "barbecue" but traditional barbacoa is actually cooked in an underground oven. The standard American version is usually cooked in a crockpot with a few seasonings. There are many variations of barbacoa out there ranging in cooking methods and ingredients used but the common ingredient in all of them is time. Traditional barbacoa is a labor of love while the common barbacoa recipes you see are fairly simple to make. This recipe is somewhere in between. It takes a little more effort to make the chile sauce rather than dumping a few ingredients in a crock pot. But once you get the chile sauce made, it's a fairly simple process as it is made in a crock pot as well.

The chile sauce starts with some softened pasilla chiles, garlic, onion, tomato, chipotles, orange juice, lime juice, apple cider vinegar, and lard. That mixture gets blended up and added to some stock. A few other spices are added in and it's ready to work its magic on a venison roast.

How to slow cook venison:

Venison is best cooked either hot and fast or low and slow. There is no in between. Since it is such a lean meat, it either needs to be served rare to medium-rare to keep its tenderness or cooked completely for many hours to break down the muscle tissue. Once you've gotten into fully-cooked territory, it will need some time and moist heat to become tender again. This barbacoa sauce/marinade is great for tenderizing venison because it's full of flavor, has some citrus to tenderize the meat, and has some lard added in for extra moisture. The lard melts into the sauce and meat and helps create the illusion of using a fattier meat like beef or pork.

Toppings for venison barbacoa tacos:

I'll be the first to admit that I go a little crazy on toppings for tacos. But I've been trying to tone it down lately. For these barbacoa tacos, I chose a few simple toppings so that the focus is on the meat. First, I warm up some of my favorite corn tortillas. They're made with a mixture of corn and wheat so they have the softness of a flour tortilla with the flavor of a corn tortilla. They're perfect! Add a good amount of shredded meat to the tortillas. Remember, the focus is on the meat, not the toppings. For toppings, these tacos have a bit of diced onion, radish slices, cilantro, and salsa verde. Squeeze some fresh lime over the top and enjoy!