Homemade Beef Tacos with Lime Pickled Onion and Chili Salsa
The simplest and most widespread Mexican snack is tacos. A taco is a half-open sandwich: a corn or wheat flour flatbread, the tortilla, rolled up or folded in half. Inside is a filling of meat, chicken, homemade sausage, fried peppers, onions, herbs, cheese and heaven knows what else.
Sauces and seasonings go into the filling. Tacos are considered fast food, but honestly, I can't bring myself to compare these amazing, tasty treats with fast food. Of all the kitchen masterpieces built on the “filling wrapped in bread” principle, the best known is shawarma.
Shawarma, shaverma, shawurma, shaorma, prtush, شاورما, שווארמה, çevirme, doner kebab, donair, döner kebab: despite the different names, these are all Middle Eastern dishes that are very similar in principle, though not always in content. Pita or lavash stuffed with chopped fried meat (lamb, poultry, pork, veal), with spices, sauces and fresh vegetable salad. Even here, a walk down any busy street is sure to lead you past a shawarma stand more than once. As a rule, our shawarma is generously dressed with ketchup and mayonnaise.
I'm no fan of that dish. But I can say one thing: in the Middle East, shawarma is as different from ours as heaven from earth. Fillings wrapped in bread are popular all over the world. In a broad sense, Italian pizza is bread with a filling. But the true inventors of such dishes are the Mexicans. A Mexican burrito is a wheat or corn tortilla with all kinds of fillings. In San Francisco's Mexican quarter I tried a burrito with ground meat, beans, tomatoes and cheese, with sauces: avocado guacamole and fiery salsa.
Tacos are usually eaten on the go. A real tortilla, freshly made with real meat, real vegetables and herbs. Nothing superfluous or artificial: no sausages of unknown origin, no ketchup and mayonnaise, no processed cheese.
Making filled tacos couldn't be easier. The key is to have the tortillas ready in advance, and they don't have to be corn. I must say wheat tortillas are every bit as good and much easier to make. It's also important that by the time you assemble the tacos, all the filling components are ready and laid out in separate bowls or plates.
Ingredients
6-8 servings
- Tortillas (wheat or corn) 6-8
- Beef 150 g
- Bell pepper 1
- Chili peppers 2
- Onion 1
- Tomato 1
- Cilantro, parsley 1 bunch
- Garlic 1 clove
- Lime 1
- Olive oil 2 tbsp
- Salt, coriander, sugar, dried herbs, chili to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Tortillas are corn flatbreads, and they're easy to make. You need good-quality, finely ground corn flour. If that's a problem, you can make them from wheat flour or a mix, cooking them in a dry pan. Tortillas bake quickly; what matters is that they are fresh and pliable.
- The filling is up to you, but meat is preferable. And heat is, after all, a traditional feature of Mexican food. You'll need a fresh bell pepper, red or green, a couple of chili peppers, an onion, a ripe tomato, a lime and a bunch of herbs. That said, use your imagination: tasty additions are quite welcome.
- Slice the onion into thin strips and add the juice of half a small lime, a pinch each of salt and sugar, and a pinch of dried herbs rubbed between your fingers. Put the onion in the fridge for half an hour to marinate. Then squeeze out the excess liquid.
- Make a fresh tomato sauce if you don't have a homemade one on hand. But don't use packet ketchup. Scald a very ripe tomato with boiling water, then peel and seed it. Finely chop the flesh with a knife. Carefully remove the seeds and white inner ribs from one chili pepper. Chop the pepper very finely with a knife.
- Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan and fry the pepper and tomato mixture, adding a pinch each of salt, sugar and dried herbs. If the sauce isn't hot enough, feel free to add some chili powder. In the end the sauce should be very thick, fragrant and hot.
- Finely chop all the herbs and mix with the marinated onion. Add a finely chopped garlic clove and stir. For the meat, lean veal with no fat or membranes is best. Put the meat through a grinder. Seed the remaining peppers, sweet and hot, and chop them with a knife, slightly coarser than the chili for the sauce.
- Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan and fry the ground meat and chopped peppers. The heat should be above medium and the pan uncovered. The meat and vegetables should fry, not stew.
- 5 mins before the end, add a pinch of salt and ground coriander. Frying the meat with the peppers takes 15-20 mins. That's enough: almost all the moisture from the meat should evaporate. Then let the meat cool to room temperature.
- Put 1-2 tbsp of the meat and pepper mixture on each tortilla, 1 tbsp of the marinated onion with herbs, and chili tomato sauce to taste. Fold the tortilla in half so the filling spreads evenly inside. Fill all the tacos this way.
- And that's it, the tacos are ready. If you make a lot of them, garnish with herbs and serve with cold Mexican beer and a wedge of lime. You can make tacos in advance, but freshly made ones are still the tastiest.
| Serves: | 6-8 servings |
| Calories: | 150 |
| Prep: | 30 mins |
| Cook: | 30 mins |
| Total: | 1 h |
| Category: | Snacks and Sauces |
| Cuisine: | Mexican cuisine |
| Rating: |
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4.8
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