>> Hilah: Hey dudes!
I am Hilah.
Welcome to Hilah Cooking.
So you’ll know that I love tacos and Tex-Mex, and Mexican food, but today I am gonna show
you the mother of all Tex-Mex dishes and that is the crispy beef taco, and I am super-excited
about it.
This is one of my favorite things in the world to eat, and I’ve got a cool little trick
to show you to make your own shells.
Ca, ca, ca, crispy tacos, a crispy taco, the crispy beef tacos!
All right, the first step is we’re gonna sautee our onions until they are translucent.
All right, let’s give these about five minutes or so.
Okay, now it’s time to add my cumin seed and I don’t know I just use this whole cumin
because that’s what I always have on hand, and I am too lazy to grind it up.
So you can use ground, whatever, but I am going to put these in the hot pan and kind
of let them get a little bit toasty.
It’s gonna really bring out their aromatic oils, and then I’ve got my chili powder,
and this is just like an ancho chili powder, but whatever you got on hand.
We’ll do just fine, and then got jalapeno and garlic and three peppers, and I am gonna
put in a little bit of crushed red chili flakes too.
You can leave that out if you want to keep it a little milder, and you can also see the
jalapenos if you want to keep it mild, if you’re serving the little chilluns.
Okay, now we put in the meat, and kind of break it up a little bit, and now I am gonna
show you the trick to get like super-fine little ground beef crumbles like they have
at Taco Bell which I use to love crispy Taco Bell tacos when I was a kid.
I have not had one in years, but I can make them at home now.
So, screw you Taco Bell.
We’re just gonna add some water, maybe half a cup.
You could use beer also, or broth, but water works just fine.
So kind of get this all mixed up, and the water is just gonna help it, help you be able
to kind of like break it into smaller pieces and it keeps it real moist, so even a lean,
ground beef here, 90% lean, okay, see how this is already starting to look a little
bit like Taco Bell, okay, not really, right now it looks a little bit gross I know, but
just give it about five or ten minutes, and I am gonna add some salt and I am gonna add
some tomato paste, and actually if you wanted to just use tomato sauce instead of the water,
that would take the place for the tomato paste and the water both.
You want to give it a little nice color, a little depth of flavor.
Okay, cool, so I am just gonna let this simmer for about ten minutes, keep an eye on it,
stir it once in a while, keep it moving around so it stays in little tiny pieces, and then
we’re going to make some crispy tacos, crispy tacos, I’ll stop singing that song.
All right, so the meat is actually cooked now.
There’s still a lot of liquid left.
Now I am gonna add the oregano, dry oregano.
I just want to crumble it up when you throw it in to bring out more of those flavors,
and then we’re just going to let this cook for maybe another five minutes until the water
has evaporated out, and then we’re going to make tacos.
Okay, so I’ve got these shells here that I baked, and all I did was sprinkle some corn
tortillas with a little bit of water, stick them in the microwave for like 30 seconds
just to steam them and soften them up, and then spray them down with some, you know,
non-stick cooking spray or whatever, or you could use a little basting brush with some
oil on there, and then threw them in the oven, laying it over the rack bars like that, and
baked them for like nine minutes and then pulled them off of the racks, put them on
a cookie sheet, and then turned the oven off and left them in there just while the oven
cooled off, and that’s just to make sure that they get extra crispy and kind of like,
you know, crisp and not just like chewy and weird.
So, anyway you could totally buy shells, but I don’t know.
I thought this was a pretty cute little idea, and they’re low fat too, so excellent.
Okay, and then a little taco shell guy, get a little bit of my taco meats.
Yay!
The fun thing is they are so messy, and then you can put whatever you want, but I like
cheese, and tomato, and I put the cheese down first so it gets a little melty, and lettuce
or in this case, I am actually using shredded cabbage because that’s what I had on hand,
and I like to put a little bit of my homemade green salsa, and I’ll post a link for that
too fi you want to make that.
It’s delish.
Okay, here I go.
World’s messiest food is about to get all over my dress I think, probably, hopefully
not.
[crunch] Mmmmmmmm!
All right, well I hope you try this recipe.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below and I will get to them as soon
as I can, and thanks so much for watching, and I hope you enjoy these crispy beef tacos.