In Episode 006 we are making Homemade Ground Beef Tacos for dinner. Susie shares a great way to make homemade tacos without a taco seasoning packet! All you need are some spices from your spice cabinet, a little tomato paste and some water. Dinner will be ready in under 30 minutes!
Transcript
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Intro: Welcome to Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can get on the table any night of the week. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: It’s Taco Tuesday. Do you know what that means? We are going to be making some tacos for dinner. These are going to be ground beef tacos, and I have a little PSA before we get started. Did you know that you can make tacos without buying that spice packet from the grocery store? If you have a well-stocked spice cabinet, you can totally make tacos.
This is a great budget-friendly dinner, one pound of ground beef, some taco shells, maybe some toppings, salsa, and your spice cabinet, and you have dinner made in under 30 minutes.
Tips and Tricks: Before we get to making this recipe, let me go over a couple of tips that I have for you when you’re making homemade ground beef tacos. First of all, is your ground beef. I recommend that you use 85/15 ground beef. If you have 80/20, it will totally work. I just find sometimes 80/20 in tacos can get a little bit greasy. The 85/15, or even 90/10 still has enough fat to be flavorful, but not so much fat that you’re going to have greasy taco meat. I recommend 80/20 for hamburgers, but that’s because some of the grease is going to drain out of your hamburger into the grill. Whereas with taco meat and stuff, you’re actually sauteing it in a pan and it’s cooking in its own fat. Which is actually flavor and delicious, but too much is not good. So 85/15 is my recommendation here.
Number two, this is a piece of equipment that I love and I use way more than I thought I would. I am not one who likes equipment in the kitchen just to have equipment. I like things that I use often. I’m not even sure of the technical name of this piece of equipment. I call it a meat masher, and it basically looks like a four-pronged spatula. It has a cross, and you literally can mash the meat up and crumble the meat really well. It works great for sausage which can sometimes be hard to crumble.
Ground Beef Tacos Recipe: Let’s get onto this recipe. So you’re going to want to take a large skillet over medium heat and add some oil to that pan about a tablespoon of olive oil or vegetable oil will work as well. Now once that’s hot, you’re going to add one pound of ground beef and get to crumbling that while it browns and cooks through. While that cooks, I recommend mixing up your seasoning in a little bowl. What you’re going to need for that is one teaspoon each of chili powder and cumin, half a teaspoon each of onion powder, garlic powder, and dried oregano. A quarter teaspoon of smoked paprika, and then three-quarters teaspoon of kosher salt, and a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. If you like a little spice, you could certainly add some red pepper flakes in there or some cayenne pepper.
Now mix that together with a fork and set that aside for just a minute. Go back to the ground beef and drain off any excess grease that has been collected in the pan. Then you’re going to stir in one and a half tablespoons of tomato paste. Get that coated on all of the ground beef, and then you’re going to sprinkle in your seasoning. Again, stir around the pan, and get everything nice and coated. Pour in a third a cup of water, and then just let that simmer for about two minutes and it will get nice, syrupy isn’t the right word, it gets nice and kind of thick and coats the ground beef and makes it look like taco meat. Now you’re going to remove that from the heat and it’s time to make your tacos.
So however you like your tacos, hard shell, soft shell, lettuce, cheese, sour cream. Salsa, guacamole. I’ve got a great salsa and guacamole recipe that I will link in the show notes for you. But however you like it, set it all out and let everybody make their own tacos.
Now, as far as side dishes, if it’s a busy night, put out some chips, salsa, and guacamole and call it good. If you want it more of a full Mexican-style dinner, I’ve got a great recipe for 15-minute refried beans, which let me tell you, the secret to really good refried beans is using a can of whole pinto beans and a can of refried beans. Mix it together. So good. Then I also have a great recipe for Mexican rice that I will also link in the show notes for you.
That does it for Ground Beef Tacos pretty easily, right? Of course, I will link the full principle recipe for the Ground Beef Tacos in the show notes for you so you can easily find it when you’re ready to make them.
That does it for today. If you are enjoying these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love it if you would subscribe or follow in your preferred podcast player. That way, all of our new episodes will show up right in your podcast feed.
Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier.
Recipes Mentioned
- Homemade Ground Beef Tacos
- The Best Margarita
- Guacamole
- Salsa
- Easy Mexican Rice
- 15 Minute Refried Beans
Equipment Mentioned
I don’t like having a lot of equipment and tools that I never use cluttering up my drawers. But this Meat Masher is something I use OFTEN! It is especially great when you crumble sausage, which can tend to be “sticky”.
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