Reverse-engineering the taco.
Jan. 20th, 2003 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unbibiumI decided to make tacos more or less from scratch this evening, having received no instruction whatsoever. And since the store-bought taco shells are always cracking apart when you try to put stuff in them, I thought I'd make my own.
Seasoning the beef was the easy part; add some cumin and salt and coriander and that's enough. Everything else is just shredded cheese and lettuce. The real trick is the tortillas.
I tried one without any oil first, just to see if I could skate by without it. Didn't quite work. So I added a bunch of corn oil to the skillet and threw one in. Great! It fried all right, and if I dried it on a rack long enough it wasn't even greasy anymore. But it wasn't taco-shaped.
OK, so now I have to fold it before I put it in... damn, it broke. OK, now it worked but I didn't leave it in long enough, and oh now it's too tight and there's grease trapped in there...
Oh, wait, these tortillas I bought are small enough that I can use the smaller skillet. I think I'll just pour all this into the little skillet without letting it cool down.
After somehow doing that without killing myself, I got an even dumber idea, that I figured would give me a good shell-shaped taco. So I pinched the two ends of the tortilla together and dip it hinge-side first into the hot, hot oil, so that would firm up first. And it worked slightly better than anything I've tried before. I did this without tongs. I should get some before I try this again.
The oil started smoking so I turned the stove off and gave up. I managed to get exactly two shells that could facilitate ground beef and sundry, and I have a big mess to clean up now, and I'm lucky I didn't start a big grease fire or disfigure myself.
I think I need some guidance in the future.
Seasoning the beef was the easy part; add some cumin and salt and coriander and that's enough. Everything else is just shredded cheese and lettuce. The real trick is the tortillas.
I tried one without any oil first, just to see if I could skate by without it. Didn't quite work. So I added a bunch of corn oil to the skillet and threw one in. Great! It fried all right, and if I dried it on a rack long enough it wasn't even greasy anymore. But it wasn't taco-shaped.
OK, so now I have to fold it before I put it in... damn, it broke. OK, now it worked but I didn't leave it in long enough, and oh now it's too tight and there's grease trapped in there...
Oh, wait, these tortillas I bought are small enough that I can use the smaller skillet. I think I'll just pour all this into the little skillet without letting it cool down.
After somehow doing that without killing myself, I got an even dumber idea, that I figured would give me a good shell-shaped taco. So I pinched the two ends of the tortilla together and dip it hinge-side first into the hot, hot oil, so that would firm up first. And it worked slightly better than anything I've tried before. I did this without tongs. I should get some before I try this again.
The oil started smoking so I turned the stove off and gave up. I managed to get exactly two shells that could facilitate ground beef and sundry, and I have a big mess to clean up now, and I'm lucky I didn't start a big grease fire or disfigure myself.
I think I need some guidance in the future.
