Tacos de carne molida - 130

I don't know about you, but I grew up eating tacos out of hard taco shells (Old El Paso, Lowry's Rosarita), and they were usually stale. But if you didn't know any different... Mom always fried up some greasy ground beef, seasoned it with a packaged mix of taco seasoning (which was totally full of MSG), and there began our tacos. On the table she would put an array of mismatched bowls full of shredded iceberg lettuce, grated Longhorn cheese (how Mexican!), and diced tomatoes. We would assemble our hard shelled tacos with the beef on the bottom of the shell, followed by the lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes. The order depended on when you could grab the bowl of one of the items, grab a handful, and get it into the taco shell before the next bowl became available.

But here's the really good part of my taco story: Mom served our tacos with a bottle of ketchup on the table. No salsa, not even Tabasco sauce - ketchup! I can't say there's anything magical about the taste of Longhorn cheese mingling with ketchup and greasy ground beef in your mouth. But again, if you didn't know any different...

The first time I traveled to Mexico, I learned that a taco was anything that was served in a corn tortilla. It could be shredded chicken, beef (shredded, stewed or grilled), pork, fish, or even animal parts, such as the famous Mexican tacos de cabeza or tacos de lengua. One of my favorite ways to eat tacos in Mexico was to order tacos de carnitas - pork that was cooked on a vertical spit, then shaved away at with a very sharp knife for each individual order. But, ground beef?? The only time I ever saw ground beef in Mexico was in an albóndiga - a meatball!

Javier and I had a pound of grass fed, antibiotic free ground beef in the freezer, and not knowing what else to fix one evening - and craving tacos - we decided to make our own version of the ground beef taco. We cooked the meat with bell peppers, onions, and an all-natural taco seasoning from SAVORY in Denver. We bought some fresh corn tortillas and warmed them up on the comal. We crumbled some queso fresco, mixed up some guacamole, shredded some lettuce and made a nice tomato salsa from scratch.

I enjoyed the hybrid - a taste for US-style ground beef taco filling mixed with more authentic Mexican ingredients in a fresh, warm tortilla. Neither of us was disappointed!