Everything that fits in a taco (and you can make at home)

If we heat a nixtamalized corn or wheat flour tortilla and put things on top, we will get a taco;

If we fry it, it will be a tostada, if we previously roll it it will be a flauta, if we cut it into pieces, it will be tortilla chips and if we use two or one folded with cheese in between, it will be a quesadilla (and so on until we have a number of variations to eat everything without never get bored, as this video explains well).

During the Porfiriato - a period in Mexican history in which the government was under the control of the military and politician Porfirio Díaz, between November 28, 1876 and May 25, 1911 - tacos were considered “food for the mob.” ”.

Luckily those times of dictatorship and contempt for such a delicacy are behind us, and now the taco is celebrated and exported as the most representative 'appetizer' of its gastronomy.

Today we review some of the almost infinite preparations and ingredients that a tortilla can contain, with ideas for cooking at home and using leftovers from other dishes, using less noble cuts or preparing quesadillas and vegetarian options.

The charm of simplicity

The original taco - which I recommend trying when you have a freshly made nixtamalized tortilla on hand, with its characteristic aroma and elasticity - only has a few grains of salt, and is used to kill hunger between meals (or while you are waiting for it, in some taquerias). They also offer tortillas to eat with the house sauces).

Little more is needed to prepare a fried or scrambled egg taco, as is or with a quick sauté of onion and tomato that will turn it into Mexican eggs perfect for breakfast.

Antonio Luna, partner and cook at Taco Alto who already taught us how to put delicious things on tortillas and organizes a biweekly event called 'The taco revolution' that confirms our theory that everything is

taquitable

, also tells us about the tabletop taco. 'of rice with beans, or avocado, which is used as an accompaniment to any stew (performing the same function as the bread here).'

When the yolk is broken, the party is onCity Foodsters

Meats and birds

They tell of the skills of Mexican butchers to turn any part of a beef into edible ones that “from head to tail, everything is ball steak,” and that is perfectly reflected in the taco universe.

The noblest parts are simply prepared by sautéing or grilling, as in the pirate taco, which can be prepared with steak, beef, entrail or any tender cut of beef accompanied simply with melted cheese and avocado.

They can also be cooked previously marinated as in the taco al pastor, where the filleted pork head is marinated with annatto, assembled around a “sword” and cooked on a trompo - but they can also be prepared at home cut into strips and sautéed. - or the chicken thigh.

If you want to prepare a version of the popular Taco Alto Safari at home, cut some chicken thighs into bite-sized pieces, season to taste and sauté with tricolor pepper and onion: it will take almost less time to prepare them than to eat them.

If instead of chicken you use a mixture of beef and fatty pork - for example, bacon - and insert all the ingredients on a long skewer, you will get wires (perfect for pre-preparing and cooking, for example, on a barbecue).

You can also prepare them in the pan, without prior threading.

If you sauté chopped onion and garlic with a lean cut of pork or beef and chorizo ​​- some recipes also add bacon - you will have tacos known as campechanos.

The toughest, most fibrous or dry cuts find their place in stew tacos such as cochinita pibil, stewed chicken tinga with tomato or enmolado chicken.

In the first, the meat is cooked in marinade or sauce for a long time so that it becomes juicy, in the second, the chicken breast is crumbled and mixed with sauces that provide the juiciness it lacks.

With mole you can also prepare some juicy meatballs that are perfectly taquitable, just like these in a walnut sauce like the festive - and laborious - chiles en nogada.

To finish this section, let's remember that some Big Mac-style hybrid tacos recently invaded the networks, which, to be honest, were not bad at all.

They are viral and they are very deliciousMònica Escudero

Vegetables and vegetarian versions

The golden flautas or tacos - filled, shaped like a eclair, closed with a toothpick so that they retain their shape and fried in oil with a neutral flavor - achieve a crunchy texture that makes them perfect for filling with legumes and vegetables.

A simple and very tasty version is refried beans, which can include cooked potatoes and different cheeses, and is usually topped with shredded iceberg lettuce - replaceable with cabbage rather than another lettuce with less body - and fresh cream.

We can improvise a filling with any combination of vegetables that is well sautéed, with roasted vegetables - the combination of pumpkin with leek or mushrooms is highly recommended -, breaded or breaded.

Cauliflower floret tacos steamed for a couple of minutes and then coated with a dough made from chickpea flour, water, spices and baking powder have nothing to envy of shrimp tacos (especially if served with a julienne of crispy red cabbage and spicy mayonnaise).

Juan Pescador declares himself a fan of “poblano chile tacos stuffed with cheese, which are prepared grilled or capeado (battered) and sometimes served with tuna or shrimp stew.”

Neither a little varied nor boringWikimedia Commons

If what we are looking for is to replicate the texture of any of the preparations in the previous section in a vegetarian or vegan version, we can use seitan, medium-sized textured soybeans or Heura strips and similar (in the case of dehydrated textured ones, we can add an extra flavor of the dressing if we put it in the broth with which we regenerate them).

To eat well without fussing in the kitchen, we can use foods that we can buy ready-to-eat such as huitlacoche, a corn fungus with a disturbing appearance but delicious flavor, commonly found in tacos and quesadillas that is easily found canned in Latin food stores, just like nopales or nopalitos (edible cacti peeled and preserved in brine).

Fish and seafood

Any fish or seafood coated in bite-size pieces—or a larger piece if it breaks easily when bitten—is likely to end up as a taco filling.

From Roman-style squid to breaded hake, including prawns or white fish in wheat and beer dough for the classic Baja California-style Ensenada tacos.

Everyone will win with a fresh and crunchy ingredient such as traditional pico de gallo or with one of the variations that we proposed in this video.

A spicy mayonnaise - later we will tell you how to prepare it - also tends to go well with this format.

Juan Pescador, popularizer of pre-Hispanic gastronomic culture from his METL project, dreams almost daily about tacos “typical of Durango, next to Sinaloa, which are served closed with a marlin stew - a small shark similar to the dogfish. smoked stewed with tomato, onion, chili and a little spice (and also in quesadilla).”

I have had the pleasure of trying an empanadilla version prepared by Esther Ortiz - the mother of Tonatiuh Cortés, who runs Cloudstreet Bakery -, accompanied by a pico de gallo-type sauce with radish and a very spicy chili and absolutely delicious.

Beach tacos for all tastesAntonio Luna

Grilled fish or seafood can also be used to taquear, as is or with a previous marinade of garlic, a little mild oil and some spices, and a splash of lemon to accompany (probably the quickest and easiest version). .

Salmon, sea bass, cuttlefish, bonito, octopus, aligote, sea bream or sea bream: if you can remove pieces without bones, it will work.

If you have a nice onion or with tomato, stewed cuttlefish and even a good can of pickle or squid in its ink, go ahead too.

Will they be the most canonical?

No. Will they be great?

Sure, and that's the important thing.

If what you want is a fresh bite with a raw product, aguachile is the solution: you can prepare it with an elaborate broth, like this shrimp broth, or make it simpler with a dressing based on pickled jalapenos, lemon and a touch of cucumber and crispy onion.

They are perfect to satisfy your craving for ceviche, which is much more elaborate, and if you serve it on some tostadas - fried and crispy tortillas - they are a real delight.

They also give them to you with cheese

The base for the quesadillas are two corn or wheat tortillas - extra point, since they are easier to find in supermarkets - and cheese or a mixture of several.

The tender tronchón, the havarti, the mozzarella or the queso de pelota, previously grated, are a good base on which to build this melting bite (since the canonical Oaxaca, Chihuahua or Mexican Manchego are more difficult to find around here).

From here you can add ham and sour cream to get synchronized ones, fresh chorizo ​​chopped and sautéed, spiced potatoes, avocado, grilled mushrooms, beans as is or refried - the addition of onion and pepper is great in this format - and any roasted or sautéed vegetables.

Quesadillas don't give you nightmares.

Carlos Roman

The fried chicharrones or torreznos from the bag that are usually eaten as an appetizer also go well in a quesadilla and, although the combination sounds strange, the grilled shrimp and cheese are the stars of the taco governor, which is served folded in a single tortilla .

Also try meat stews and stir-fries that we have talked about before, such as cochinita pibil;

delicious with sautéed mushrooms and avocado, or the pork al pastor, with which the mythical gringa quesadilla is prepared.

If you prefer something that you can bring to the table at once and everyone helps themselves, try the same cheeses we talked about before, melted and mixed with cream and slices of poblano chili - which you can mix with green pepper if they seem too much for you. spicy- sautéed with onion to which you can add other ingredients such as cooked shelled corn, chicken or chorizo ​​(I recommend passing it in the pan or microwave first so that it releases some of its fat).

For every 200 grams of cheese, add 100 grams of cream, mix until completely integrated and adjust the texture to your liking.

Serve it very hot in a thick container that can withstand this heat - the colder the cheese is, the less malleable and pleasant its texture will be - and wrap the tortillas previously grilled in a clean cloth so that they do not cool down.

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Use kitchen

Tacos are just as valid as cannelloni or croquettes to use up any type of leftovers, as is or accompanied by sautéed vegetables or avocado (a perfect option to extend them if more people show up to eat or we have some leftovers).

Juan Pescador tells us about something that may sound strange at first glance - until you stop to think that here we eat potato tortilla sandwiches -: “the spaghetti taco, a very improvised and casual canteen taco, which is normally served with the overcooked pasta and a sauce with cheese that, honestly, seems brutal to me.”

Along the same lines, he remembers the dry fideo - dry soup -, which in his area is prepared "with seafood, quite similar to fideuà and is served with fresh cheese and chile pasilla with avocado, which is also delicious."

When what you have are four meatballs, just a plate of stew, some goo from the stew, or a medley of roasted vegetables orbiting in the fridge, the taco is always an option.

If what worries you is that meat, poultry or fish stew that has gone stale and no one can eat it, chop it up or mix it with sauces as we told you a few sections above.

My grandmother's sea and mountain stew turned into a tacoMònica Escudero

Offal, ins and outs and offal

Beef head tacos are also very popular in all the states of the center of the republic: in the New Mexican Cook in the form of a dictionary they recommend preparing it whole “in the barbecue oven”, but it also accepts other long cooking techniques and at a gentle temperature. (That's why in homemade taquizas they are usually served at snack time).

From there they get the brain, cheek, neck or gizzard tacos, and the various ones that include a little of each.

Beef or pork tongue, well cleaned and simply boiled with bay leaf and onion, and later chopped and grilled or fried, is very common throughout Mexico.

There are few things as delicious as a stew of tripe or very melty

cap i pota

served on some tortillas, with a little garden - a mixture of chopped onion and cilantro - and some chopped nuts on top.

Pig ear, whether in its soft version, grilled or fried and crispy, is also an excellent taco filling, and goes very well with sauces with a touch of acidity that compensate for its cartilaginous texture.

If you ever go to Durango and you like viscera, Juan Pescador recommends visiting “Taquería los Hernández, a temple where they have display cases with all types of cow offal unimaginable here: eye, udder, brains, meat or lip (which It's brutal, crazy).”

As we said at the beginning, everything fits in a block;

Look for what you like or what you have on hand, get a sauce and heat the pan for the tortillas: it's easier than you think.

Let them put sauce on it

“A taco is made up of tortilla, content and sauce: the Holy Trinity of Mexico,” says Alejandro Escalante in

La Tacopedia.

Taco Encyclopedia

, where they also clarify that “the tortilla is a vehicle, but also a substance,” and the sauce is an unavoidable element.

Except in preparations such as Swiss enchiladas, where it is already part of the dish during its preparation, the sauces are served separately and each diner adds them to taste.

You can use anything from the soft and fresh green tomatillo, to the red or taquera with chile de arbol, the borcha - very tasty, made with tequila and beer - or the morita with chipotle.

Although it is not canonical, snack sauces such as Valentina in any of its versions or Cholula, with a lighter texture and vinegary flavor, and others of more recent creation such as spicy or citrus mayonnaise, which go very well with fish fillings, are also useful. and seafood.

To prepare them you just have to mix homemade or jarred mayonnaise with a little of your favorite hot sauce and a splash of juice and lime zest (you can also use it to accompany some Roman-style squid, a shrimp cocktail or some slices of raw fish , like a creamy ceviche). 

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