I Compared The Viral Birria Bombs To A Full Recipe—Here’s My Honest Opinion

It’s world—we’re just living in it. The traditional savory braised stew has roots in Jalisco, but you can find versions of it all over Mexico. And since birria blew up on a few years ago, it’s safe to say that everyone in the U.S. is still obsessed with it.

You can use goat or beef. You can serve it in , , or . You can now even find it at , Del Taco, and El Pollo Loco. But whether you’re sourcing your birria from local spots or national chains, it’s easy to forget how much time and labor goes into making it. takes over five hours to transform humble cuts of beef into the decadent final dish.

One user and small business owner, however, took on the task of making birria simple. posted several videos on the platform to promote her , a sphere of spices that does all the hard work for you and shortens the cook time. All you need to do is add the Birria Spice Bomb to some beef, onions, and garlic, and let it braise.

Her most popular video racked up over six million views before it was taken down following from a competitor. She’s since rebranded, and her account is still accumulating swarms of fans.

TikTok users have flooded the comments section to share their thoughts. One user wrote, “I hope u put a patent bc ur a genius and u could make so much money”

Honestly? It almost sounded too good to be true. So in the spirit of science, I decided to buy a Birria Spice Bomb and compare it to our own .

Birria Queen’s spice bomb retails for $14.99 plus $3 shipping. I didn’t mind the price when I used a corporate credit card. But if I were spending my own money, I probably would have balked at the cost.

I received the Birria Spice Bomb four days after placing the order. The package included the shrink-wrapped sphere along with a set of instructions.

The directions were relatively straightforward—with the exception of the onions and garlic. Are we supposed to chop them? Throw them in whole? I ultimately had to make an educated guess and slice the onions and cut the head of garlic in half.

I browned my meat before adding my onions, garlic, and water. Then, it was time for the spice bomb to work its magic. It was a lot more delicate than I expected—but admittedly, my frame of reference was a bath bomb from Lush.

The loosely packed spices were easy to incorporate into the liquid, so all I had to do was wait.

A few hours later, it was time to test. And with the help of our Test Kitchen Manager, , we had a homemade batch of ready for comparison.

I subjected our team of food experts to a blind taste test. The verdict? It was basically a draw. While a few of our editors preferred one recipe over the other, most of us agreed that both birrias were delicious.

But we liked each one for different reasons. Our culinary video producer and the brains behind our own birria, , put in a lot of time and research to develop the recipe. And he argues that a good birria shouldn’t be spicy.

That’s not to say that there aren’t chilis in our recipe, but most of them are mild and earthy guajillos. The backbone of our consomé is savory and balanced, which allows for the other flavors of cinnamon and cloves to shine through.

Birria Queen doesn’t disclose the exact peppers she uses in her Birria Spice Bomb, but the finished product is much spicier than our recipe. It’s still savory, sure, but the spice is the predominant flavor. Allegedly, there’s cinnamon in the Birria Spice Bomb, but you can’t really taste it over the spice.

But aside from those minor flavor variations, the only difference between the two recipes is the convenience. Using the Birria Spice Bomb shaved several hours off the cook time. While you have to spend $17.99 and wait a few days for the spice bomb to arrive, it’s still a solid dupe if you don’t want to go through the effort of making the birria from scratch.