Tacos. Mmmmmm. I realize that I already gave a recipe for pork tacos a few weeks ago. The problem is that we make a lot of tacos over here, and I post about what I cook. So, here comes another taco recipe.
We made these because we had leftovers from the Crock Pot Roast. However, I did not realize that Diran had eaten some of the leftovers for lunch, leaving us with not a lot of meat. Would it be enough for dinner? Maybe, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way that it wasn’t, so we added black beans. Black beans are delicious, filling, and a lot healthier than red meat. In fact, we probably should have just nixed the meat and stuck with black beans to begin with. An idea for another time. What I made tasted pretty good, and was just more proof that you can put almost anything in a taco and be happy (not that I needed more proof).
I admit, the black beans that I make are not really authentic. I don’t think that anywhere in my blog I purport to make authentic Mexican food, but I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re being duped. They are just really fast and easy (and healthy, and awesome). Same thing goes for these tacos. They are not authentic, they are just something I made up last night so we could eat quickly (a running theme through this blog). I can claim that they taste good because they do.
Due to the weird size of the tortillas that I bought, these tacos ended up being huge. You could also refer to them as mini-burritos. In the end, it doesn’t really matter to me what you call them. And, of course, feel free to add or subtract whatever you want from the recipe to see what good ideas you can come up with.
Beef Tacos
Serves 2ish
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 10-15 minutes (prep and cook kind of happen at the same time and account for making the beans, too)
Total time: about 15 minutes
Ingredients
About 1 cup of leftover beef (mine was from pot roast), shredded or cut into small bite-sized pieces
1 cup or so of prepared black beans (see recipe below)
Soft tortillas
1/2 small onion, diced
1 tablespoon cilantro, finely chopped
Sour cream
Hot sauce
Heat a small frying pan for a minute. Add the beef, and stir every 1-2 minutes until heated through. Make sure you scrape up the browned bits on the pan, because they taste really good.
At the same time, you can make the beans (see below) and, separately, mix together the onion and cilantro (make sure you prep the onion and cilantro for both recipes together to save time!)
To assemble, start with a tortilla. Top with beef, beans, onion mixture, and a little sour cream. Use whatever hot sauce you like to finish it off. I can’t give exact amounts of how much beef and beans to use because it depends on what size tortillas you have. Either fold in half into a taco shape, or fold over the ends and roll like a burrito. Enjoy!
Really Quick Black Beans
Makes 2-3 servings
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 10-15 minutes
Ingredients
1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup water
1/2 small onion, diced
1 tablespoon cilantro, finely chopped
1/2 packet of Goya Sazon (see note below)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
salt to taste
Place the beans, onion, cilantro, sazon, and cumin into a small sauce pan on medium-low heat. Stir. After about 5 minutes, as it starts to bubble, use a fork to mash some of the beans (this helps to thicken it a little bit). Simmer for 10-15 minutes, adding salt to taste. Use in the taco recipe above, or serve on the side.
Note about Sazon: Sazon is a mix of salt, garlic, cumin, coriander, and annatto (which makes it yellow). It also, unfortunately, has MSG in it. I don’t know exactly why Sazon makes things taste really good, but it does. Actually, it’s probably from the MSG. Darn. Anyway, if you don’t have it or don’t want to use it, you can use garlic powder, ground cumin, and ground coriander to taste and just add more salt at the end.
Possible substitutions, omissions, and additions:
- Use cooked ground beef instead of leftover beef
- Add seasoning to the beef (whatever you want. Taco seasoning might be good)
- Omit the black beans
- Omit the beef and use only black beans
- Omit cilantro (you can do that in almost any recipe)
- Add different seasonings to the beans
- Add garlic to the beans (I don’t know why I didn’t do this…usually I do)
- Serve the beans on the side, maybe with some rice
Corn tortillas > flour ones, but it helps to warm them on the griddle with a little oil, or microwave in covered container with moist towel. If one wants to avoid glutamate for yourself and family, don't breastfeed, and avoid parmesan, tomato sauce, mushrooms, soy sauce, seaweed, etc
I really like the flour tortillas better for this taco, but you can definitely use corn. Now that you mention all of the glutamate containing foods, it seems as though it would be impossible for me to avoid them!