Picadillo or potato, pepper, and onion tacos.
The first thing you're gonna do is take a potato.
That's a large russet potato, like 10 to 12 ounces,
three quarters of a pound.
You only need one.
We want a nice dry potato going into the pan
with just a little bit of olive oil,
canola oil, doesn't matter, okay?
And we're going to slide the potato out,
add the meat,
and we're going to brown and crumble it.
This is ground sirloin and beef chorizo.
See how I have it kind of sectioned off. Why is that?
Well, because the chorizo is already of course,
very heavily seasoned.
So we're gonna add a little smoked paprika,
a scant palmful, about a tablespoon, okay?
About the same amount of cumin.
(pan sizzling)
And then the mildest chili powder, ancho.
You can also use a chili powder blend,
of course, your favorite, but this is nice and mild.
We're gonna add a little bit of oregano.
This is Mexican oregano.
It's larger leaves and super fragrant.
And then just to the beef, I'm gonna add a little salt,
not a lot, you're gonna get a lot of salt
out of your chorizo.
And a little black pepper as well.
That's why I separated this out,
so we can see what's going on.
And then we take a flat edge of any kind of paddle
or kitchen spoon,
just get the edge in there and start working this.
You can also use a potato masher
and you just want to work it for a minute
to get the spices incorporated into the beef.
Let's go to the peppers.
I have a silicone lid over this bowl
because I charred two poblano peppers.
One I've already chopped.
This one we're going to peel and seed.
And then just chop it up.
Now to the meat or your plant based substitute,
we're going to add the onions,
the peppers,
a bay leaf.
And I'm gonna grab my grater
and grate in a little garlic.
Now we're going to add a little squirt of tomato paste
and it's been sitting in a tube
so we want to cook out the tomato paste as well.
We gotta kind of wake it up
so work that right into the center of the pan
and get it going.
I'm using sherry vinegar.
You could use dry sherry from your bar,
splash of wine.
You can skip the whole thing and add the juice of a lime.
You just want a splash of acidity in your sauce.
So we're going to add a little beef bone broth or stock
to the pan.
Or you can add vegetable if you're using
plant-based, of course.
And then we turn the heat down to simmer
and just let it go, baby, go.
It's really thickened up beautifully.
And now we're just gonna add the potatoes back.
So for the salsa,
this is so important for both pico de gallo,
which is what we're making, just basic salsa,
and for guacamole.
You take acid, in this case lime juice.
You put the acid on the onions.
One clove of garlic, one jalapeno pepper,
half of an onion is what I have in the bowl here.
You let the acid and some salt sit on that
and you start to collect this juice.
See this juice? That's what makes it delicious.
A little bit tomato got in there, but whatever.
Over here, I have some seeded,
and you want like one per person
and then add an extra,
plum or vine tomato that I've seeded.
Okay, there's the herbs.
Done and done.
Okay, so a little cheese in each taco.
That one's aggressive.
We'll spread it around a little more.
And then we're gonna warm the tacos and melt the cheese
at the same time in the oven.
Okay guys, here we go.
Here's some warm shells with some melty cheese.
These are picadillo or potato, beef and chorizo filling.
We put in some lettuce, the pico de gallo.
Cool it out with a drizzle of crema or sour cream
over your tacos.
(light music)