Taco Tuesday: Double-Decker Tacos

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.”

Spice Up Your Cooking the Quick Cook Way

Next week, JoAnn Smith Ainsworth, an Oak Tree Press author, guest posts for us. Stop in to see what she has to say about the difficulty of writing mysteries.

This is part of my continuing series on the Quick Cook Tips that I write about once a month in The Pinewood News, (page 7) a small town paper in Munds Park, Arizona. The series, on some of those tips, let’s you see how it might play out in your kitchen.

We eat pretty well. I am always trying out new ways, spices, and food combos. DH would eat--literally--the SAME thing every day. Thank goodness I came into his life decades ago or he’d be a frozen potpie by now.

So, sure, I can oven-roast or grill a chicken thigh. But, when I put one of my rubs on the thighs, they are elevated to company-quality. And I don’t even have to have company. I can treat my husband a meal that tastes like I spent forever cooking. But I didn’t. I am a quick cook.

One thing about spices is, unlike honey, they don’t last thousands of years. Do they go “bad”? No, but they do lose potency. Your cupboard is probably like most of American kitchens: lots of little spice bottles and cans that you used for one recipe. Or specialty spices like “pumpkin pie” or “taco seasoning”. But here’s a Quick Cook Tip: Don’t do that anymore.

You can save money--by combining the spices and not throwing them away. Don’t spend that money on spice combos you can easily create.

Right now. Take all your spices out and line them up alphabetically. Identify which spices you have that you can use in these recipes. If you don’t have some, fine. Omit them. It will still be tasty.

Then mix up the combos, store in labeled airtight containers, and use them up finally! You’ll have a lot more cupboard room. Next time I’ll give some recipes for using your new mixtures. Below are ideas for Pumpkin Pie Spice (PPS).

QC Tip #2

Always keep some basic seasoning mixes in the cupboard for quick cooking.

Poultry Seasoning (makes about ¾ cup)

You’ll never use that sage or marjoram again, so give them new life here:

2 tablespoons parsley

1 tablespoon sage

1 tablespoon rosemary, crushed

1 tablespoon marjoram

1 tablespoon thyme

1 teaspoon celery seed

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

¼ teaspoon onion powder

Taco Seasoning (makes over ½ cup); avoid the sugar & thickener of commercial taco seasoning.

2 tablespoons chili powder

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon onion powder

½ teaspoon red pepper flakes, crushed

½ teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon paprika

3 teaspoons cumin

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons pepper

Chinese Five-Spice Blend (makes about ¼ cup)

2 whole star anise

2 teaspoons peppercorns

1 teaspoon fennel

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 cinnamon stick, broken in fourths

Toast the anise, peppercorns, and fennel in small skillet over medium heat until fragrant. Toss in seeds and cinnamon stick. Cool. Grind to a fine powder.

Pumpkin Pie Spice--PPS (makes about ½ cup)

2 Tbsp ground cinnamon

1 Tbsp ground ginger

2 tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp allspice

½ tsp ground cloves

Use your PPS in:

Rub 2 tablespoons mixed with olive oil to make a paste onto 4 chicken or pork pieces and grill as usual.

Add to your favorite pumpkin soup or pumpkin pie recipe.

Cut up two Honeycrisp or other tart apple. Toss apple slices with 1 tablespoon PPS and fry in 1 tablespoon of butter as a side to pork or chicken.

Mix 1 tablespoon PPS with 2 cups confectioner’s sugar, 1 package cream cheese, ¼ cup honey or vanilla Greek yogurt, 1¼ cup pumpkin puree. Serve with pear and/or apple slices and crackers or graham crackers.

2 tablespoons PPS + 1 yellow cake mix + 1 can pumpkin puree; bake at 350°; glaze with confectioner’s sugar, milk, and 2 teaspoons PPS

I will share more spice combos you can make and ways to use them in a later post. Be sure to check back!