Making Your Own Taco Seasoning at Home is Easy
Once upon a time, a taco restaurant coined the phrase ‘Taco Twosday’ as a gimmicky way to get customers in the door on an otherwise slow night for dining. Movie theatres did the same thing with ‘Two Dollar Tuesdays.’ Back then, Tuesdays were a dream night for the cheap and the broke.
Things are considerably more expensive now than they used to be, but the clever catchphrasing has stuck around. Companies that make taco shells and seasoning encourage everyone to ‘Taco Tuesday.’ Marketers are brilliant - you know that tons of homes enjoy tacos once a week - probably on Tuesday because it rolls off the tongue like a jingle.
In our home, we eat a variety of tacos - fish, shrimp, pulled pork tacos, braised beef, chicken, vegetarian and black bean tacos. We'll make it a taco if you can slap it in a taco shell or tortilla. Mike even bought us an authentic tortilla press and fancy divided plates that keep your taco standing. Sometimes, we bust these things out, but when I want to walk down memory lane and enjoy the kind of taco I adore, I go for the old-school ground beef taco. The type that transports me back to ditching class to hang out with my friends at the food court to smoke cigarettes and eat Taco Time.
Those tacos are simple and most resemble the type Old El Paso wants you to eat. The toppings are simple. Seasoned ground beef, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, taco sauce and a few tomatoes - wrapped in a tortilla or stuffed in a shell. A teenager can quickly eat half a dozen. I can eat one, maybe two, so I have to make sure they are good and take me right back to my good old days.
I make my own seasoning to control the heat and sodium content. And I have a trick to make the ground beef Taco Time authentic:
After browning the meat and adding the spices, I mix ¼ cup of water with a tablespoon of cornstarch and stir it into the ground beef. Quickly, the cornstarch slurry turns the seasoning in the pan into a rich sauce that clings perfectly to the ground beef.
The rest is easy. Load your taco with meat, cheese, and preferred toppings - you know what to do.
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