Welcome to my annual recipe crush. Each February I
choose a theme, and provide one or two recipes each day for the whole month.
This year the theme is Weekly Menu Planning. What are the categories, you ask?
We have Sunday Special, Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Worldly Wednesday,
Thrifty Thursday, Fishy Friday, and Celebrate Saturday.
A bunch of restaurants do
Taco Tuesdays. Now you will, too, but I stretch the category a bit sometimes. I
mean, what is a taco? Filling in a tortilla, right? That covers a lot of
Mexican dishes, even, some might argue my chicken enchiladas. However, my rule
is you have to be able to pick it up to eat, thereby ruling out enchiladas. Now
a burrito, that’s a taco by my definition. A quesadilla could also be in the
taco family, in my definition.
You see how flexible I am?
That variety helps keep Taco Tuesday, well, varietal!
Back in the day, taco meant
hard shell corn tortilla. Thank goodness we now have hard and soft corn and
flour tortillas. It’s lovely to have the options. And for tonight’s meal, I
used hard and soft, flour and corn tortillas. This was fun!
Easiest Taco Meat
Filling
Rather than spending a long
time cooking my taco meat with spices and simmering to get infused flavors, on
a busy night I use already-cooked meats and make a five-minute filling.
Of
course with more time, you can use your own (or my recipe) for taco seasoning
and let it simmer for an hour or so. But the above is the quick taco my family and
our schedule sometimes required.
If you have the time, and want more authentic flavors, season the meat with taco seasoning and simmer.
Taco Seasoning (makes
almost three tablespoons)
1 tablespoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon dried minced onion
½ teaspoon dried minced garlic
¼ teaspoon crushed red
pepper flakes
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon paprika
1 ½ teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Mix well and store in
airtight container until used. Brown meat. Season meat to taste with taco
seasoning. Add ½ cup water. Cover, turn on low, and simmer for an hour. Seasons
one pound of meat.
I typically set out
ingredients, taco bar style, so each person makes shis own to taste. This is
could be a taco bar set up so each person makes shis own taco(s). This version
took a bit more time, but it was dramatic to have the soft chew and hard crunch
in the same bite.
For easier tacos, use leftover meat of any
kind, chop into small pieces and put into small skillet along with picante
sauce. Add enough picante sauce to have a sloppy joe consistency. Heat through
and use in tacos of your choice.
Blend a can of drained black beans in the mini-food processor to make a paste of them.
I used shredded cheese as
the glue on half and mashed black beans with cheese on the other half.
Double-Decker Tacos
Choose your favorite meat
filling (beef, chicken, pork, or fish)
Have two tortillas for each
taco: soft flour and hard corn shell.
Spread hot mashed black
beans mixed with cheese on a soft flour tortilla. Wrap hard shell in soft tortilla and let the bean "glue" set.
On the other, put mixed Mexican cheeses
on the flour tortilla and and melt the cheese in a 400 degree oven for a few
minutes. Put hard corn shell on top of the flour tortilla and fold the edges up
to stick to the side of the corn tortilla.
Putting them in cute taco
holders will give the cooling tacos time to stick together.
Fill the taco with
meat and cheese. Add toppings or choice.
DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up
To match sizes, of corn
taco shells to similar-sized flour tortillas, I had to buy the jumbo corn
shells. These were big babies. One ought to do you!
To be honest, we each took
one of each kind of taco, but I only ate one of them. DH ate both. And he
complained later. “I shouldn’t have eaten both of them. It was too much. But
they were both good! Very different.”
