Even when I was little, I had little idea how to eat cutlets, pilaf, salad with my hands, without a knife and fork, without cutlery at all. And eating soup without a spoon is generally fantastic.
As it turned out later, in the Caucasus, often unleavened bread-flatbread - lavash, serves as both a fork and a spoon, Asian sticks are excellent replacements for cutlery (I even learned how to use them), Mexican tortillas - tortillas made from corn or wheat flour replaces a fork, spoon and knife for Mexicans ...
With the help of these tortillas, they pick up sauce or hold pieces of meat, pick up salads, and in general, tortilla is the basis for so many Mexican dishes - enchilada, burrito, fajitas ,. The filling is wrapped in flat cakes or served as bread for many dishes. They eat with them.
Tortilla (Spanish Tortilla) - "round tortilla", a thin tortilla made from corn or wheat flour, eaten mainly in Mexico, the United States, Central America and Canada. Corn flour cakes were baked by the ancient Maya Indians. And the Spanish conquerors gave them their name from the Spanish word tortilla, which means omelet, because the appearance of the yellow cornmeal tortilla really resembles an omelet.
Tortilla is baked without oil over an open fire, in earthen pans (komal) or flat baking sheets. And then, right in the heat, roll up the cakes with filling, usually spicy, and dinner is ready. The recipe is taken from a Mexican cookbook.
Tortilla. Step by step recipe
Ingredients (6 tortillas)
- Corn flour 1 cup (130 g)
- Wheat flour 0.5 cups
- Fine salt 0.5 tsp.
- Vegetable oil 1 tbsp. l.
- The number of ingredients is very arbitrary. Exclusively to show roughly the proportions. Usually up to 1 kg of flour is used.
- Although little used in our traditional cuisine, cornmeal is available in stores. Usually, cornmeal is not as finely ground as conventional wheat flour, it looks more like bran. Nice light yellow color. It is worth taking flour of a finer grinding.
Corn flour
- Sift 1 cup (200 ml faceted) cornmeal into a large bowl. Considering that corn flour has much lower stickiness than wheat flour, and if you've never baked with corn flour, it's worth adding 0.5 cups of regular wheat flour to the corn flour. Adding wheat flour will give a certain "head start" in rolling the tortilla, they will not fall apart.
Mix corn and wheat flour, salt
- Add 0.5 tsp to the flour. fine salt "extra". Stir the flour and salt thoroughly to make the mixture as homogeneous as possible.
- Pour 120 ml of warm water into a glass - 35-40 degrees. Add 1 tbsp. l. vegetable oil and shake with a fork. Next, pour the liquid into the flour and knead the dough. The dough is likely to be slightly runny, so add cornmeal in small portions to achieve a very soft dough.
Mix 120 ml warm water and vegetable oil
- Roll the dough into a ball, cover with a napkin and let stand for 30 minutes at room temperature.
Roll the dough into a ball and leave for 30 minutes
- The dough will turn out to be approximately 350 grams. Divide the dough into 6 pieces by rolling up balls.
Divide the dough into 6 pieces
- Put the pan on the fire. The pan must be dry, i.e. no need to pour oil. By the way, it is very convenient to use a pancake pan.
- Next, you need plastic wrap or a regular bag.
- Put a ball of dough on a piece of polyethylene and press down with your palm - flatten it to make a cake. Cover the dough with a second piece of polyethylene and roll out the dough with a rolling pin between two layers of polyethylene into a round cake with a diameter of 15 cm. Approximately like a CD.
Roll out the dough into a thin cake
- Remove the top polyethylene sheet, turn the cake over into the palm of your hand and remove the bottom polyethylene sheet. Next, gently put the cake on a hot dry (!) Frying pan.
- Bake for 1.5-2 minutes on each side. The edges of the cake can be slightly curled up, this is normal. Slight bloating is also acceptable. The tortilla will turn deep yellow and bake well.
Bake in a hot dry skillet
- Put the finished tortillas in a pile, on top of each other and cover with a napkin to cool. Tortilla, if not overdried, bends well and folds in half.
Tacos are a traditional dish in Mexico. Mexican cuisine is renowned for its spiciness, which is why tacos are usually prepared with a very spicy sauce for a savory taste. For the first time this dish appeared even before the opening of the "New World" due to the fact that it is very simple to prepare, but satisfying.
The taco recipe in Mexican cuisine is corn or wheat tortillas (tortilla) stuffed with fried minced meat, vegetables, and a hot sauce. Although there are now many recipes for this dish that use different vegetables or less spicy sauce, the Mexican taco recipe is considered a classic.
Step by step video recipe
I first tried tacos at a themed party in the office and now I also often delight my guests with such a simple and delicious dish. If you also decided to cook something unusual, then read on how to make a classic chicken taco recipe.
Ingredients:
How to choose the right ingredients:
- Choose a sauce that is hot enough to taste good but can be eaten.
- Take a good, lean mince or make your own from chicken fillet.
- Find delicious tortillas or make your own.
Cooking process
- Wash and finely chop the peppers and onions.
- Fry them lightly in hot oil and then add minced meat to them. Cook for 5 minutes, then add spices and hot sauce. Stir and pour in some water.
If you don't know what the tacos look like, or just want to make sure you get it right, watch this short video. The tacos look extremely appetizing on it, and their preparation is very simple.
Mexicans eat tacos all the time. They can eat it along with a soup or side dish, like bread, however, in this case, they have almost no filling. Tacos are eaten with a variety of sauces and are generously poured over with lemon juice. If you decide to have a themed party, then buy tequila and limes for tacos, and you are guaranteed success.
To make your tacos not only tasty, but also convenient to eat, follow these guidelines:
- Don't add a lot of filling.
- You can roll the tacos and dip them in the sauce instead of adding them to the minced meat.
- Use only quality tortillas. The best way to do this is to find a theme store.
Other options
Tacos, like pizza, are made from whatever is at hand, because there are hundreds of taco recipes. It can be just cakes with cheese, with completely different vegetables, meat, sauces. The tortillas themselves can be soft or hard and crunchy. You can cook a tortilla recipe yourself and make it the way you like it. If you cannot find corn tortillas, you can use Armenian lavash instead, although this will not be a classic Mexican dish. But you can make other interesting dishes from it, for example, lavash sandwiches or lavash chips.
The simplest and most common Mexican snack is tacos. Taco (Spanish taco) is a semi-covered sandwich. A tortilla made from corn or wheat flour is a tortilla rolled or folded in half. Inside there is a filling of meat, chicken, homemade sausage, fried peppers, onions, herbs, cheese and God knows what else.
Sauces and seasonings are added to the filling. Tacos are believed to be fast food. But, to be honest, the language does not dare to compare these amazing and delicious delicacies with fast food. With all the variety of kitchen masterpieces made according to the principle “the filling is wrapped in bread”, the most famous is shawarma.
Shawarma, shawarma, shawarma, shaorma, prtush, شاورما, שווארמה, çevirme, doner kebab, donar, döner kebab - all these, despite the different name, are very similar in principle, but not always in content, dishes oriental cuisine. Pita or lavash stuffed with minced fried meat (lamb, poultry, pork, veal), with the addition of spices, sauces and fresh vegetable salad. Even with us it is enough to walk along a busy street, and you can confidently and more than once stumble upon a tent with shawarma. Typically, shawarma is generously seasoned with ketchup and mayonnaise.
I am not a fan of this dish. But, I can say one thing: in the East, shawarma is different from ours, as the sky is different from the earth. Fillings wrapped in bread are popular all over the world. By and large, Italian pizza is bread with a filling. But the real inventors of such dishes are the Mexicans. A Mexican burrito is a wheat or corn tortilla (tortilla) with a variety of fillings. In the Mexican quarter of San Francisco, I tried a burrito with minced meat, beans, tomatoes and cheese. With sauces - and.
Tacos are usually eaten on the go. Natural, freshly cooked with natural meat and natural vegetables and herbs. There is nothing superfluous and artificial. No sausage of unknown origin, no ketchup and mayonnaise, no processed cheese.
Making stuffed tacos is as easy as shelling pears. It is important that the tortilla is prepared ahead of time, not necessarily made from cornmeal. I must say that wheat tortilla is just as good, and it is much easier to cook them. It is also important that by the time the tacos are prepared, all the components of the filling are ready, laid out in separate bowls or plates.
Tacos. Step by step recipe
Ingredients (6-8 servings)
- Tortillas (wheat or corn) 6-8 pcs
- Beef 150 g
- Sweet pepper 1 piece
- Hot pepper 2 pcs
- Onion 1 pc
- Tomato 1 pc
- Cilantro, parsley 1 bunch
- Garlic 1 clove
- Lime 1 pc
- Olive oil 2 tbsp l.
- Salt, coriander, sugar, dry aromatic herbs, chili taste
- Tortillas are corn cakes and are easy to make. You need good quality finely ground cornmeal. If there are difficulties, it is quite possible to bake cakes from wheat flour, or a mixture, by frying them in a dry frying pan. Tortillas are baked quickly, it is important that they are fresh and plump.
Tortillas made from a mixture of wheat and corn flour
- The composition of the filling is optional, but meat is desirable. And the spice is still a traditional feature of Mexican cuisine. You will need fresh bell peppers - red or green, a couple of hot pepper pods, an onion, a ripe tomato, lime and a bunch of greens. However, turn on your imagination, delicious additives are quite appropriate.
Beef, vegetables and herbs for the filling
- Cut the onion into thin strips, add the juice of half a medium-sized lime, a pinch of salt and sugar, and a pinch of a dry mixture of aromatic herbs rubbed with your fingers. Put the onion in the refrigerator for half an hour to marinate. Then squeeze the onion from excess liquid.
Pickle spiced onions in lime juice
- Prepare fresh tomato sauce if you cannot use homemade preparations. But don't use a bag of ketchup. Tomato - very ripe, scald with boiling water, remove skin and seeds. Finely chop the pulp with a knife. Thoroughly clean one hot pepper from seeds and white internal partitions. Chop the pepper very finely with a knife.
Grind the tomato pulp and hot pepper for the sauce
- Heat 1 tbsp in a skillet. l. olive oil and fry a mixture of pepper and tomato on it, adding a pinch of salt, sugar and dry aromatic herbs. If the sauce is not hot enough, feel free to add dry chili powder. As a result, the sauce should be very thick, aromatic and spicy.
Spicy tomato sauce for the filling
- Finely chop all greens and mix with pickled onions. Add the finely chopped garlic clove, then stir. Meat - veal without fat and films is preferable. Grind the meat with a meat grinder, making minced meat. Pepper - sweet and hot, which remains, peel and chop with a knife, slightly coarser than hot peppers for the sauce.
Mix herbs, pickled onions and garlic
- Heat 1 tbsp in a skillet. l. olive oil and fry the minced meat and chopped peppers in it. The heat under the pan should be above medium and do not cover the pan with a lid. Meat and vegetables should be roasted, not stewed.
Fry the minced meat and all the peppers in olive oil
- Add a pinch of salt and ground coriander 5 minutes before the end of frying. The time for frying meat with pepper is 15-20 minutes. It's enough. It is necessary that practically all the moisture from the minced meat evaporates. Then the minced meat should cool down to room temperature.
Traditional taco is a Mexican dish that has smoothly migrated into Texas cooking. For cooking, thinner and smaller cakes are used than in, the filling is placed in the center, after which the tortilla is folded in half.
Classic Taco Cake Recipe
The basis of the traditional taco recipe is crispy, thin cornmeal tortillas. But for greater plasticity, it can be mixed with wheat:
- 200 g corn flour;
- 50 g wheat flour;
- 1 tsp melted pork fat or butter.
Sift flour, add a teaspoon of fat and grind. Then pour in a quarter glass of warm water, knead the dough. It should be soft, pliable and uniform, sticky from the hands. Roll up a ball, cover with a hot, damp cloth and set aside for 10 minutes. Now the ball needs to be rolled into a sausage and divided into 6 parts. Form a small cake out of each.
Taco cakes are barely 15 cm in diameter. You can buy the product in the supermarket if you don't want to mess with it in the kitchen.
Fry each flat cake in a dry frying pan for 30-40 seconds on each side. After cooking, stack them and wrap them in foil.
Bell pepper and veal tacos
To make 7-8 Mexican stuffed tortillas you will need:
- 400-500 g of beef tenderloin;
- some lime juice and corn oil with vinegar for frying;
- 2-3 sweet peppers;
- 2 heads of onions;
- greens to taste;
- chili to taste.
Making a beef snack is very simple:
- Cut the meat into cubes and fry in oil, adding onions, a spoonful of vinegar and a pod of red pepper.
- Add greens 2-3 minutes before cooking, salt and pepper the filling.
- Place in tortillas, bend them and serve with tomato sauce or guacamole.
Pork can be substituted for beef. A spoonful of lime juice added to the filling before serving will add a special flavor to the dish.
Classic tacos with beef and beans
One of the variations of the classic tacos is the recipe with minced meat, beans and vegetables typical of Mexican cuisine:
- 4 cakes;
- 400 g ground beef;
- 200 g of cucumbers and tomatoes;
- 200 g of green salad;
- 100 g of bell pepper and the same amount of onions;
- 3 t. L. canned red beans;
- parsley to taste;
- salt, vegetable oil and pepper.
To make the filling perfect in consistency, follow the technology of its mixing:
- Fry half of the onion with minced meat until cooked.
- Chop the remaining half with cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes, tear the lettuce and chop the parsley.
- Heat the cakes in the oven for 3-4 minutes, then put the vegetable mixture and minced meat on them. Can be drizzled with hot tomato sauce.
Serve on a beautiful dish immediately after cooking - warm tacos are tastier than chilled ones!
Tacos with chicken and avocado
The chicken snack is light and flawlessly paired with a wide range of ingredients:
- 10 tacos cakes;
- 200 g fillet;
- 1 PC. onions, 3 cloves of garlic;
- 250 g of tomatoes in their own juice;
- unrefined olive oil;
- 100 g red beans in tomato sauce;
- 1 lime and 1 avocado each;
- 50 g of Cheddar cheese or other hard cheese;
- dried chili, black pepper, salt and brown sugar to taste.
Follow the recipe step by step and you will have the perfect chicken tortillas:
- Chop the onion and garlic, fry them in olive oil for 1-2 minutes, immediately add the chopped chili.
- Chop the fillet into pieces, roll in wheat flour and fry until tender.
- Tomatoes in their own juice are already peeled, mash them with a fork and add to the meat.
- Salt, pepper, add a little sugar and beans, stir and simmer for another 10 minutes on low heat.
- Heat the cakes in the oven and immediately fold them in half to keep their shape.
- Cut the avocado into slices or strips, drizzle with lime juice, olive oil and a little salt.
- Grate the cheese and start assembling the snack: first put a spoonful of chicken and beans, then the avocado and cheese.
A similar recipe can be used to make tacos with turkey, duck, or even a rabbit.
For tacos, you can use any “basic” Mexican sauce: red chili, avocado guacamole, or pico de Gaio with chopped tomatoes, onions, cilantro and fresh chili peppers. Also popular is a green tomato sauce stewed with cilantro and green chili.
Light tacos with chicken and crab meat
If you want to make an unusual tacos recipe at home, then take the following ingredients:
- 100 g of crab meat and chicken fillet;
- 2 taco cakes;
- 5-6 iceberg lettuce leaves;
- 2 tbsp. l. Greek yogurt (white without sugar);
- 2 tbsp. l. canned corn;
- some dill.
Chili can be added as desired, but without it you get a more delicate recipe:
- Chop the boiled chicken fillet, cut the salad into long strips and chop the dill.
- Mix foods, add corn and spices to taste.
- Heat the cakes in the microwave or oven for 1-2 minutes.
- Put the filling in the middle of the flatbread, fold in half.
Serve the dish immediately, otherwise the cakes will soften and become tasteless.
Fact! Originally, the term "taco" was understood as a piece of paper in which gunpowder was wrapped to explode ore in the 18th century on the island of Yucatan.
Tacos is a simple and delicious Mexican snack that can easily replace your meal. It is prepared with minced meat and minced meat, mixed with vegetables and red beans, spreading the mixture on small tortillas made of corn or wheat-corn flour. Lime juice and hot chili, added directly to the filling or to the taco sauce, add a special piquancy to the dish.
