Most People Are Making Tacos Wrong! Try These Mexican Tricks for Perfect Tacos Every Time

📖 Get La Cocina de Bertha, every recipe in this kitchen written down (372 pages): berthascookbook.com Come here, mija. Close the door. It is about the tacos. I know what taco night looks like in your house: the yellow box of hard shells, the pound of ground beef, the little packet of orange powder, and then the bowls of cheddar and iceberg and sour cream. And the shell cracks on the first bite, and you eat it with a fork, and you have called that a taco your whole life because the box said taco on the front. Let me say the first thing before anything else: that box is not your fault. Somebody sold it to your mother with a commercial and a mariachi, and she fed it to you with love. You were simply never shown the real thing, because the real thing does not come in a box, and there is no money in showing you. A real taco is five things, and every one of them is cheaper than what is in that box. And the first one is not the meat. ⭐ THE 7 TRICKS 1. THE TORTILLA IS THE TACO. Not the meat, not the toppings. In this country the tortilla is treated like a plate. At the stand it is half of what you are eating: the tortilla is a partner, not a sack. So: CORN, small, palm-sized. Thirty seconds a side on a hot dry comal until it bends and smells like corn again (cold tortillas crack, warm ones bend, the oldest tortilla law there is). Then DOUBLE it, two warmed tortillas, one on the other. That is why the taco at the stand never falls apart. And the taquero's move you never saw: he touches the tortilla to the FAT on the plancha for one second before the meat goes on. That shine was never a secret spice. 2. THE MEAT IS DICED, NEVER GROUND. Ground beef was never in a taco until somebody needed something cheap that would take a powder. Thin bistec, the asada cut, on a plancha hot enough that a drop of water skitters (a thin cut has ONE chance; on medium it steams and goes gray). Two minutes a side, off with a crust, then chopped FINE on the board ACROSS the grain (the knife decides tender or rope), then back on the hot plancha for one minute so every cut edge browns. That is bistec a la plancha. 3. THERE IS NO PACKET. Read the orange packet: salt, chili powder, cornstarch, maltodextrin, and something to make it orange. The taquero seasons with four things you already own: salt on the meat before the plancha · a squeeze of lime ON the plancha so it sizzles into the meat · a little chile into the fat · and the ONION INTO THE FAT, sliced, fried in the meat juice until soft and sweet, folded through the chopped bistec. Not in this kitchen: seasoning packets, jarred salsa, boxed taco shells, garlic salt, and anything with a fake grandmother on it. 4. ON TOP: ONION, CILANTRO, SALSA. NOTHING ELSE. Chopped white onion, chopped cilantro, a spoon of the salsa we made, red or green. Every bowl of cheddar, lettuce, sour cream and tomato is doing one job: hiding a meat with no flavor. When the meat has a crust and the tortilla has fat, you do not bury it. And the cheddar: that orange cheese has never once been near a taco in Mexico. It was put there so the taco would look like a cheeseburger. It worked. It is still not a taco. 5. SMALL. THREE BITES. A taco at the stand is the size of your palm, eaten in three bites standing up, then the next one. The filling is a SPOONFUL, not a pile. Two modest ones beat one bursting one every time. Overfill it and it breaks, and you are back at the fork. 6. BUILT IN THE HAND, EATEN IN THE SAME MINUTE. The taquero builds one, hands it to you, you eat it, he builds the next. A taco waits for nobody. At home, everybody stands at the stove or the comal comes to the table on a board. Same law as the chilaquiles and the huevos rancheros: some food is like a mariachi, magnificent for exactly as long as it is playing. 7. THE HONEST ONE. The hard shell is not wrong. It is just not this. The crunchy shell with ground beef and cheddar is its own food, an American food, invented in this country for this country, and if your children love it, eat it. There are nights the box is right. But do not call it a taco, and above all do not think a real taco is HARDER than the box. That is the lie under the whole aisle. A real taco is five things, and every one is simpler than the packet.