Beef Tacos with Pickled Onion and Fresh Salsa
Ingredients
6–8 servings
- Tortillas
- Tortillas (wheat or corn) 6–8
- For the filling
- Beef (lean veal is best) 150 g
- Bell pepper 1
- Chili pepper 1
- Olive oil 1 tbsp
- Salt, ground coriander a pinch each
- For the pickled onion
- Onion 1
- Lime 1
- Cilantro, parsley 1 bunch
- Garlic 1 clove
- Salt, sugar, dried herbs a pinch each
- For the tomato sauce
- Tomato (very ripe) 1
- Chili pepper 1
- Olive oil 1 tbsp
- Salt, sugar, dried herbs, chili powder to taste
Step-by-step recipe
Tortillas and pickled onion
Make the tortillas: 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.
Get the filling ingredients ready. 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.
Hot tomato sauce
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.
Filling
Finely chop all the herbs and mix with the marinated onion. Add a finely chopped garlic clove and stir.
Fry the meat with the peppers. 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.
Assembling
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.
Serving
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.
Calories and macros
275 kcal
Serving ≈ 170 g
- Protein11 g17% of kcal
- Fat11 g36% of kcal
- Carbs31 g47% of kcal
100 g164 kcalProtein 6.7 gFat 6.3 gCarbs 18.4 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
To Get It Right
What meat to use
Lean veal or beef with no fat or membranes is best, and grind it yourself. Readers also do it differently: they fry the beef in one piece, pull it into shreds and mix it with barbecue sauce.
Keep the filling dry
Fry the meat and peppers over above-medium heat with the lid off until almost all the moisture has evaporated, then let it cool. A wet, hot filling will make the tortilla soggy.
Heat to taste
Heat is a traditional feature of Mexican food, but it’s easy to control: the more carefully you remove the seeds and ribs from the chili, the milder the flavor. Not hot enough? Add chili powder to the sauce.
Sauces for tacos
Salsa comes in many kinds: roja (red), verde (green), negra, pico de gallo. Hot salsa and avocado guacamole go well with tacos.
Have your own trick for this recipe?
Questions and answers
What are tacos?
A taco is a Mexican snack, a half-open sandwich: a tortilla rolled up or folded in half around a filling. It’s usually eaten on the go, with your hands.
Taco or tacos: which is right?
Taco is singular (Spanish taco), tacos is plural. One filled tortilla is a taco; a serving of several is tacos.
What tortillas do you need for tacos?
Corn or wheat tortillas. Wheat ones are every bit as good and much easier to make; store-bought work too. What matters is that they’re fresh and bend without cracking.
What goes in a taco filling?
Meat, chicken, homemade sausage, fried peppers, onion, herbs, cheese, sauces and seasonings. In this recipe it’s ground beef with peppers, pickled onion with herbs and a hot tomato sauce.
How do you make tacos with ground beef and corn?
Add the corn to the meat at the end of frying, the way our readers do. The filling can be anything you like, beans included.