Best Beef Cuts for Tacos
Tacos are forgiving, which is why they are the dish most people cook on a Tuesday. The cut you choose decides how long it takes and almost nothing else, so pick by the time you actually have.
Pick by the clock. Twenty minutes, three hours, or ten minutes with a hot pan. Each one has a cut.
Twenty minutes: ground beef
The weeknight answer and not a compromise. Brown it hard, season it properly, and it is on the table before anything else would have thawed. We have the full method and a seasoning mix written up separately.
Three hours: chuck
“Uh, and I can't prove this, but, uh, muscles that get used, get flavor and muscles that don't get used, stay tender. And that's why the tenderloin, those back muscles on the animal, back muscles on a four-legged animal don't get used much. That's where the saying living high on the hog comes from.”
Gray Shipley
Chuck is the shoulder, so it is full of connective tissue, which is exactly what you want for anything shredded. Brown it, braise it with something acidic, and pull it apart with two forks. It is better the next day, which makes it the right choice when you are feeding people on Saturday and cooking on Friday.
Ten minutes: a thin steak
“I go for the lesser-known cuts. But to me, I'm more interested in things like the flat iron and the chuck eye and the bavette steak that people know a little bit less about.”
Gray Shipley
Flat iron, bavette, skirt or flank, cooked hot and fast and sliced thin across the grain. This is the version that tastes like somewhere rather than like dinner, and the slicing is not optional: along the grain it is chewy, across it is tender.
What to avoid
- Lean cuts cooked long. No connective tissue to convert, so they just dry.
- Expensive steaks. A filet in a taco is a waste of a filet and not better than a flat iron.
- Pre-sliced stir-fry strips cut along the grain. Check the direction.
“And then, you know, let the flavor do the work and don't try to do too much.”
Gray Shipley
One pound packs of dry-aged ground beef. Four quarter-pounders or three third-pounders to the pack.
View Product
Dry-aged boneless chuck roast. In early, left alone, and it will be the thing people remember.
View Product
Dry-aged flat iron. Gray rates it above a ribeye for tenderness, and it costs considerably less.
View ProductThe weeknight version is in easy ground beef tacos, the slow cuts in best beef cuts for slow cooking, and the thin steaks in hanger vs skirt vs flank.
- Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature, FoodSafety.gov
Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.
Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.
Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and left his words alone.
Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to FoodSafety.gov, and we have linked their page above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
Shipley Farms
Stories, recipes and news from Shipley Farms.