Smoked beef birria tacos filled with shredded chuck roast and homemade ancho chili broth. This spin on quesabirria is the best way to enjoy BBQ tacos on your backyard smoker.

Birria tacos are a great way to enjoy smoked tacos at home for barbecue beginners and seasoned backyard cooks alike. Made with smoked chuck roast covered in a simple consommé (or broth, to you and me!), this hearty beef filling has the right amount of heat to make the perfect BBQ taco filling.
One of the best things about beef chuck is that it only needs minimal preparation before cooking on your smoker. Just like with our smoked chuck roast recipe, we’ll just apply a liberal amount of salt to the meat before smoking low and slow for the ultimate pull-apart shredded beef, perfect for taco fillings. No need for brines or marinades here.
From making the perfect consomme to shredding beef, discover how to make smoked birria tacos today. Let’s get cooking!

Birria Tacos Explained
Birria tacos (also known as quesabirria) are a twist on traditional Mexican birria, which is a slow-cooked stewed often containing goat or beef. For birria tacos, we’re creating our own version of the filling and then serving it in a corn tortilla and topped with cheese and cilantro.
While traditional birria is slowly stewed to break down the meat and collagen, we’ll be cooking it low and slow on the smoker to recreate that tender, pull-apart meat texture. We’ll then top with our own homemade consommé using beef broth, chilies, and spices, and then more conventional taco fillings, like shredded cheese and onion.

Smoking Wood
The best woods for smoking chuck roast are robust hardwoods that carry deep, earthy flavors to match the rich, savory taste that most beef cuts carry. This includes oak, hickory, and mesquite.
For our shredded beef chuck filling, we’ll be using hickory wood. It’s a mild hardwood that has the exact aroma and flavor profile we want to smoke our chuck roast.
Times & Temps
Any smoked meat is only cooked once it reaches our target temperature, and in the case of beef chuck, we want to go for between 190-205°F (88-95°C).
This is a little higher than most types of beef, but we want the chuck to reach a consistency at which we can pull the beef. Aiming for 195°F helps the connective tissues in the meat render and break down, so we can achieve that ideal melt-in-the-mouth feel that we want.
How long to smoke chuck roast for birria tacos? Well, this will depend on when the beef hits our target internal temperature, which can be determined by factors like meat size and smoke temperature. On average however, chuck roast takes about 1 ½ hours per pound of beef at 225°F (107°C).
