If you are looking for an easy way to cook up your taco meat try this method for Crock-Pot Easy Taco Meat. No chopping, no pre-cooking. Just simple & perfect!
Slow Cooker Easy Taco Meat
I’m all about making things as easy on myself as possible. One of the meals we have quite often is taco’s. Normally I just make the meat on the stove top, but decided I would try in the slow cooker but still make it super easy. It turned out super tasty, incredibly low maintenance, and the kids loved it!
There are only three ingredients in this recipe.
- Ground beef – I like to use extra lean ground beef with a fat content of 7% or less. I buy my ground beef in bulk when it goes on sale at my local grocery stores and freeze it. You can find some more great tips for ground beef here -> How To Prep Meat Ahead Of Time In Your Crock-Pot
- Diced onion – easy enough to buy a medium onion and dice it up yourself. But if you are short on time most grocery stores sell fresh diced onion in containers. You should be able to find those in the produce department. Additionally, you can also use frozen diced onion.
- Taco seasoning – I personally prefer to make my own homemade taco seasoning mix because I know EXACTLY what is in it. No hidden salt or MSG or any weird fillers. But that being said, use whatever brand of taco seasoning you like if making your own is not your thing. There are some great low-sodium brands out there if you just look.
Once you have your taco meat made you are ready making tacos. Gather up your favorite taco ingredients and have a taco bar for dinner where everyone in the family can assemble their own tacos for dinner. So much fun!
Taco Bar Ingredient Ideas:
- Tortillas – flour or corn your choice!
- Hard taco shells – can be found in the ethnic aisle of most grocery stores.
- Cheese – shredded cheddar, monterey jack, pepper jack, queso fresco.
- Lettuce – I usually buy a bag of shredded lettuce to save time.
- Diced onion – yellow onion, white onion or for a pop of color red onion.
- Diced peppers – colorful bell peppers or jalapeno peppers if you want to add some heat to your tacos.
- Salsa or diced tomato – Make your own salsa or use a brand you love!
- Guacamole or diced avocado – Can buy pre-made guacamole or make your own.
- Sour cream – To me a taco isn’t a taco without it!
What are your favorite taco toppings? Leave a comment and let us know!
Special Diets
Gluten Free | Low Calorie | Low Carb | Low Fat | Low Sodium | Low Sugar
This recipe for Crock-Pot Easy Taco Meat is Weight Watchers Friendly on the new Personal Points plan. You can see the WW personal points for this recipe here on the Weight Watchers website. Click here for MORE of our Weight Watchers Recipes
More Great Beef Slow Cooker Recipes:
- Slow Cooker Mississippi Roast
- Crock-Pot Sweet Sloppy Joes
- Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Chimichangas
- Crock-Pot Cheeseburger Joes
- Slow Cooker Corned Beef and Cabbage Dinner
Crock-Pot Easy Taco Meat
Ingredients
- 2 pounds Extra Lean Ground Beef
- 1 cup Diced Onion
- 3 tablespoons Low Sodium Taco Seasoning Mix (homemade OR 1 packet of store bought)
Instructions
- Place raw ground beef and onion in a 5 quart or larger slow cooker.
- Cover and cook on LOW for 4 to 6 hours, stirring and breaking up the hamburger meat every 30 minutes.
- Once the ground beef is fully cooked and no longer pink carefully drain off any fat and discard.
- Add taco seasoning and 1/4 cup water to cooked meat and stir to mix.
- Recover slow cooker and cook for an additional 30 minutes on LOW heat.
Nutrition
This sounds delish but the beauty of a crock pot recipe is to put in everything and forget it for 4-6 hours. If you have to stir this every 2 hours, I’d rather just brown the meat with the seasonings half an hour before dinner and be done with it. But, I do see several recipes on this page I’ll try, like the soup and chili. Thanks, Sarah, for your efforts to help trim down my time in the kitchen!
For those of us who are terrible in the kitchen, we need things spelled out to us.
I really needed to have some water in with the taco seasoning.
It was perty dry. lol.
Anyway, actually, it was more work than just the regular skillet way.
We haven’t been able to find any good ground beef locally for a really long time now. It has been really chewy or full of gristle. We had been using canned ground beef which was decent but then the store suddenly stopped carrying it. So, we had removed tacos from our weekly or bi-weekly rotation until it occurred to me that I might be able to make tender taco meat in a slow cooker. I looked at many recipes, but yours was exactly what I was looking for. I made it for supper last night and it turned out great! The only things I did a little differently was I used ground chuck and chopped it up while raw as much as I could with my Mix and Chop (an invaluable kitchen tool for ground meats) after I put it in the crockpot. I cooked it on high for 2 hours then removed the lid and chopped it up pretty finely, re-covered, then cooked about another hour or so. I then drained it thoroughly through a strainer sitting in a pan in the sink. After putting it back in the crock, I used about a 1/2 cup of water instead of 1/4 cup along with the seasoning packet and just a touch of lite salt and cooked for about an additional 45 minutes. I left out the onions this time because my husband isn’t crazy about them, but I will definitely be putting them in the next time along with a little fresh garlic and poblano pepper for added flavor. My husband is really picky and even he said it was good and tender. Thank you for this recipe!
So glad you enjoyed the recipe Lorrie! This really is a great easy recipe and can so easily be adapted to suit your needs.
I think the next time I make this poblano peppers are getting added for sure. That sounds so yummy!
I’m making this with 10 lbs of ground beef (90% lean). How should I adjust the cook time/temp?
Hi C-Max, I am not sure how long 10 pounds will take to cook but I would guess you would need to add at least an extra hour or two.
I would add several “shakes” of Worcestershire sauce…..it improves ANYTHING with its complex flavors. đŸ™‚
Adding some Worcestershire sauce might actually be quite tasty! Thanks for the suggestion!