Today is National Taco Day, the most hallowed of culinary days in my cocina (kitchen). I can have tacos morning, noon, and night. So read on, and you'll know what I mean - just click on any taco name or highlighted text to see all the tasty details from my blog post recipe or review. And click here or check out your local Mexican joints and gringo fast food Taco Bell, Del Taco, and others to see local taco deals.
In the morning, it's spicy Mexican chorizo with scrambled eggs and refried beans nestled into a warm corn tortilla.
And my Chorizo & Egg Taco is about as cheap as you can get. I get Mexican chorizo from my local Latin grocer, natch, and all kinds too, like beef, pork, and even soy (which is a recent favorite).
The simplest breakfast taco to make is one made of Scrambled Eggs & Refried Beans. You can use canned refried beans or make my Homemade Mexican-style Pinto Beans.
My recipe for a Shrimp, Jalapeño & Egg Taco is based on one from Josie's Mexican Food Cantina in Port O'Connor, Texas, a small seaside town where my mother is from.
Check out my version of a Shrimp Taco below, which blows other breakfast tacos out of the water!
For Breakfast Tacos, it's all about the salsa toppings. I like salsa from a jar, but sometimes I just gotta go for it and make my own Homemade Salsa, and it's easy to do.
My Mango Salsa recipe with yummy photos and tasty text is right here, but you can check out the video below:
I'm ready to party on this auspicious day, and when this cheap$kate does it, you can bet pennies will be pinched without a sacrifice in flavor. For my backyard soirée, my favorite taco is slow-cooked pork Carnitas. Just check out my video below to see what I'm writing about.
I buy a 5 to 6-pound budget pork shoulder, and I can get a couple of dozen tacos out of it, so no one leaves hungry.
And boy, it's the perfect budget recipe that your friends and neighbors will line up for. You let them do most of the work -- they get to build each taco to suit their taste. I like to set out some chopped onion and cilantro. You can make your taco bar any way you like. Go ahead and add a bowl of shredded cheese, chopped lettuce, and tomato, and a cheap jar of salsa, too.
Some palates can't handle pork, so I noticed at my local Latin grocer's deli case, they serve Carnitas made from Turkey. Well, it works, especially the 99 Cent Chef recipe way. I make mine flavored with Mexican Cola. Sweet and succulent slow-cooked turkey leg meat is delicious not just on Taco Tuesdays, but every day!
Chicken is still one cheap protein. My Chicken Tinga recipe will have your guests coming back for seconds...and thirds! Chicken Tinga is a stew simmered in tomato sauce with a can of spicy chipotle peppers, but you can make a milder version with a can of enchilada sauce.
Chicken Tinga
One of my most unique tacos came about one summer while on vacation at our spectacular national parks in Utah. I stopped to eat and had an Indian Frybread Taco. Frybread is flour dough that's rolled out and deep-fried. You top the frybread with chili beans, lettuce, tomato, and cheese.
Carne Asada, or grilled steak, is a favorite taco of mine. Just make my marinade for thinly sliced steak, let it sit for an hour, then slap it on the grill. After the Carne Asada is done, you chop it up and serve it on a corn tortilla
The marinade is a simple mix of lime juice, oil, cilantro, cumin, garlic, salt, and pepper.
Drive anywhere in Los Angeles , and you will see taco trucks, sidewalk taco vendors, and taquerias on almost every street. And I've stopped at many of them. What follows are a few of my faves - with a few recipes I cribbed from them, too.
When I moved to Los Angeles over 50 years ago, I discovered the taco truck. Boy, have they evolved over the years. In the beginning, it was just hamburgers and tacos made with ground beef. Well, that all changed in the year 1991 when a hotel chef named Roy Choi was down but not out. Rebounding from couch surfing, to start Kogi Taco Truck.
A fellow co-conspirator came up with the idea of a Korean taco, and chef Roy Choi assembled the taco ingredients of Korean barbecue short ribs with a kimchi-style coleslaw, served on corn tortillas. His truck was an instant hit, and Kogi jump-started the nouveau taco truck renaissance.
Kogi is still around, and I still love them. Check out my video below, where I hang out night and day, for L.A.'s most uniquely mouthwatering taco.
Inspired by Kogi's mashup of Korean BBQ and Mexican Tacos, I came up with the Loxaco, which combines Jewish and Mexican cuisines.
A Loxaco is composed of homemade lox (cured salmon) in a fast-food crunchy taco shell, topped with cream cheese and thinly sliced red onion. I introduced this preposterous concoction at a book signing in Libros Schmibros, a lending library in East Los Angeles. How did it go over with book lovers? The following video is a twofer: you get a recipe plus a literary happening scene -- even the late great food critic Jonathan Gold makes an appearance - while his wife and kid tried them, Jonathan gave them a pass )-:
After a double feature at my fave art house cinematheques like the Egyptian Theater or the Academy Museum, on the way home, I swing by Leo's Taco for a couple of Al Pastor pork tacos. They just cost $2.50, and the line can be long, now that the word is out.
This is porcine perfection on a paper plate. It's tender and flavorful grilled marinated pork, that's cooked in front of a gas grill called a trompo. A cook manning the grill slices off thin slivers, finishing the taco with flair: a flying slice of pineapple. Check out the yummy action below.
I've followed the Two Hot Tamales from the beginning, when the Border Grill was in a storefront with half a dozen tables on Melrose Avenue. Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken are fixtures on the L.A. dining scene who jumped on the taco truck train, bringing their neuvo take on Mexican cuisine to four wheels.
My Tacos El Primo video review has gone viral. That means this YouTube video gets thousands of hits per month - right now it is pushing a million total views. Why? I'm not sure. Let's see... in this video, I review Buche and Tripas tacos, or tacos made from slow-cooked stomach and intestines. Gross right? One thing I noticed is that half my visitors are from Mexico, so maybe half my audience is curious about how gringos react to offal.
That doesn't seem interesting enough, really, but hey, what do I know? I'll take it. I did the taco review because Tacos El Primo was a midnight munchies stop on my return home from various Hollywood treks.
When you have a neighborhood food stop, you eventually dive deeper and try eats that you would not normally taste.
Well, join the multitudes and check out my Cheap$kate video review of Tacos El Primo.
Deep-fried Fish Tacos are one of L.A.'s great culinary contributions. These battered depth charges of crunchy perfection are based on the street food of Baja Mexico and other coastal communities. If you like British Fish & Chips, you will love Fried Fish Tacos.
The battered fillets of fish are typically served on corn tortillas and topped with a white crema (similar to a mild sour cream) and chopped cabbage. I have my own recipe for Fish Tacos, which you can see by clicking on the recipe name.
And this is the best taco deal in town: Today (Wednesdays) is $1 Fish Taco Day at Tacos Baja! Yeah, that's what you heard - don't believe me? Just watch the video below and see it for yourself. (The Wednesday Special is now $1.59.)
I like a gringo-style hard-shell taco from local fast food joints like Taco Bell. They usually come with shredded lettuce and American cheese, with seasoned ground beef. You can blame California for introducing this type of taco to the masses.
My go-to Taco Tuesday deal is from Del Taco, because I can walk to it. They have an afternoon-to-evening special.
I like to add a slice of avocado, chopped onion, and tomato to my fast-food Taco Tuesday special.
It's easy enough to make your own gringo taco. Hard corn shells and all the other ingredients come cheap enough.
Do celebrate National Taco Day with me. Hey, celebrate it any day now that I've shown you a slew of taco recipes you can make easily and cheaply.
And, what the heck, I'll end with a queasy taco review, from of all places, fast food Jack in the Box's 2-for-99-cent tacos...ugh, watch it with a barf bag. (The price has increased since I made the video review.)
For this final summer holiday here at the Institute of Penny-Pinching, I'm getting out the BBQ grill for a backyard blowout. So read on and click on any highlighted recipe name below, and you'll be directed to my original blog post recipe page of eats, illustrated with yummy photos.
