🤌🏻🌮What Makes the Perfect Taco

By: Benny O'Bannion

To me there is not one perfect taco. It's more dependent on mood. Sometimes I want a light taco sometimes hefty. Sometimes soft, some times a little crispy. Sometimes I wanted it loaded and sometimes I just want the basics.

Tacos provide so many routes to perfection. Here's my break down of some things I look for👇🏻

🐷🐮🐔 Meat

Crispy but tender. The main reason I love carnitas. Its crispy from cooking in fat, but juicy and tender since it's slow cooked. When the taco meat is tender the tortilla wraps around it perfectly. The juicyness gives you that fat drip out of the back end of the taco that you hate to love.

Seasoned well. Seasoning properly with salt, spices, and chiles makes for proper tacos. Marinating the meats for an extended time before cooking, or cooking for an extended time in a well seasoned concoction is the way to go. The chile marinade is what makes al pastor/adobada so special. It's fruity and spicy and sweet and salty. Just makes your mouth tingle with all those flavors.

Cooked correctly. Low (heat) and slow (cook) or high (heat) and fast (cook) are the two rules I abide by. A pot on the stove or smoker or braising in the oven for hours makes for delicious meats. But so does a ripping hot grill or griddle or vertical spit. It just depends what you're looking for.

🏆My top taco meats in order:

1. Carnitas
2. Al Pastor
3. Asada
4. Brisket
5. Birria
6. Chorizo
7. Barbacoa
8. Cochinita Pibil
9. Suadero
10. Pollo

There's obviously more meats, but 10 felt like enough to list.

🌮 Tortilla

I'm a corn guy. I enjoy flour tortillas, but almost always prefer tacos on corn tortillas.

Hand made nixtamalized corn tortillas are my preference. They're the way to go for flavor and texture. You taste the corn and they're soft, fluffy, & pliable if made right. Even when they're not made great they're wonderful (I've screwed up plenty). So yeah, they're just always better than the store bought alternative.

With that being said, they take time and energy. Not to mention once made the shelf life is terribly short. So, if its too much you can purchase packs of tortillas

I don't always have the time to make tortillas so I do buy them. In my experience, 95% of store bought tortillas you cannot taste the corn. Go to a Mexican market to find corn tortillas that are much better than what is offered in grocery stores. El Ranchito and Paisano are my two preferred brands. Store bought tortillas must be reheated on a griddle, comal, or cast iron pan. In my opinion, cooking in some type of fat like lard or olive oil enhances a store bought tortilla.

So, if it's not hand made I always look that its a quality packaged tortilla and that its reheated properly. I hate when I get tortillas that are cold and falling apart.

🌿🧅 Toppings

Traditional taco toppings or "Con Todo" are: onion, cilantro, salsa, guacamole. These are the elite toppings in my mind (along with a squeeze of lime juice), but I do like to change it up here and there.

I like a nice flavored crema, not a dollop of sour cream which is sacrilegious. Something creamy and peppery and acidic that's thinner than sour cream. I love pineapple on an al pastor taco. Mango is another fruit I can get down with on tacos. Pickled red onion with asada or chicken is top notch. Salsa negra has been a go to taco sauce for me. Anything fire roasted it great. Lettuce on any time of traditional taco is a travesty.

Lets talk about cheese. Traditionally, tacos aren't served with cheese, but I find myself enjoying the creamy, salty, fatty flavor that the cheese adds. My preference is monterey jack cheese. When the tortilla is hand made I stay away from the cheese but I do believe it enhances the texture of store bought tortillas

With toppings I look for a nice balance of acidity, fat, and sharpness. Contrast is key! The meat and tortilla usually provide the umami and sweetness, so the toppings need to compliment.

🥇Top Two Tacos (at the moment)

• Meat: Carnitas (crispy and fatty), Tortilla: yellow corn hand made & hand pressed corn (light and pliable), Toppings: "con todo" - red onion, cilantro, salsa verde, guacamole
• Meat: Skirt steak (cooked on ripping hot griddle with salt and butter), Tortilla: blue corn homemade hand pressed corn (light and pliable), Toppings: monterey jack cheese, white onion, salsa negra, lime juice.

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