Best Ground Beef Taco Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the best ground beef for tacos? ›

85/15: Ground Round

It's cut from the back of the cow and isn't as flavorful as ground chuck. Because it lacks flavor and moisture, it is best in recipes that mix it with other ingredients. Avoid it for burgers, but it's great for soups, stews, sauces, and tacos.

Boiling ground beef is the best way to cook it so that it comes out in small, fine crumbles. Trust me, this is the secret to all those amazing tacos and pasta sauces at your favorite restaurant! It's also a healthier option, because the boiling process helps separate the fat from the meat, and it comes out quite lean.

Acidity and fresh toppings provide a refreshing counterpoint to the richness of taco meat, cheese, and sour cream, and a bit of fresh lime juice squeezed over the top goes a long way.

Using a traditional 6-inch tortilla or traditional size hard taco shell, you can use about 2-3 tablespoons of taco meat per taco. That means that depending on how much you load up the ground beef tacos with other ingredients, one pound of beef could serve between 8 and 12 people.

Once the beef has rendered its fat, it's time to generously add your mix of seasonings — granulated garlic, granulated onion, ground cumin, and cayenne powder. These seasonings absorb the rendered fat, bloom, and beautifully transform the beef.

Ever wonder why some taco meat found at restaurants or in chili is ground SUPER fine and how they get it that way? That is the result of actually boiling the hamburger first. This method of cooking brings the temperature of the meat up slowly and prevents it from clumping, keeping it finely ground.

Potatoes!! The potato skin to be exact. I asked the waiter about this and he said that's what gives it its creaminess and that his mother used to add potatoes (and sometimes pinto beans) to their ground beef to make it go further. They had a lot of mouths to feed and potatoes were a lot cheaper than meat.

What you're doing when you add water is helping the cornstarch create a smooth sauce flavored with the spices. The heat then activates the cornstarch, thickening the mixture.

Carne Asada is the most common taco meat. Photo by Travis Yewell on Unsplash. Carne Asada is certainly the most popular meat for tacos, and it's plain to see why.

How to make your tacos even better? ›

“Salsa and guacamole are great, but look to mix it up with fresh radish, chicharrones, or pickled onion. A fresh, warm tortilla is made better by a crunchy counterpart.” One of Romero's favorite toppings is a morita pepper and peanut salsa, which lends a spicy, smoky, crunchy lift to any taco.

Lime is probably the most essential of authentic Mexican taco toppings. A squeeze of lime adds a dash of acid that brings out the other flavors in a taco beautifully. Onions, cilantro, pico de gallo, sliced radishes or cucumbers, avocado, and chili peppers are also standard toppings for authentic tacos.

Each taco shell or small soft taco-size tortilla fits about 2 ounces or 1/4 cup of meat. If you add diced onions, you could stretch a pound of ground beef to make about a dozen tacos. With just the meat and spices, you can make about 8 tacos from a pound of meat.

As a general rule, you should plan for about 1/4 to 1/2 pound of meat per person when making tacos. So for a family of four, you'll need around 1 to 2 pounds of ground beef.

Flank steak is one of the most well-known kinds for anything that requires thin steaks. This thin cut works well for slicing, as required for tacos and fajitas. It's also relatively affordable compared to top-of-the-line steaks like ribeye and New York strip.

Taco Recipe Ingredients

Ground Beef: I like to use lean (93/7) ground beef for this recipe. Garlic & Onion: fresh garlic and onion help to give these ground tacos the most delicious flavor. Apple Cider Vinegar: a little of this goes a long way to add the perfect flavor to the tacos.

Chuck is the most commonly used cut of beef in burger blends. Marbled throughout and well-balanced in flavor with a decent lean-to-fat ratio, chuck steak is generally the primary cut used in burger blends and is supplemented with one or two other cuts of meat. Sirloin or Tri-Tip.

Americans love their tacos filled with ground beef, but it is not a standard authentic filling. When it comes to tacos, nearly anything can be used to fill a tortilla and still be called a taco. In Oaxaca, Mexico, fried grasshoppers are still a popular filling!