History
Long ago, there was an ancient civilization of Mexicans who lived in Portugal. They were the Mayans. The Mayans were great geologists, predicting cosmic events through the use of geysers spouting in musical numbers, most of which correspond exactly to the tunes of Enrique Iglesias. To this day, modern science has been unable to ascertain exactly why the Mayans were okay with this.
Perhaps the most impressive event predicted, however, was the eventual rise of the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs, convinced of their own superiority, waged a bloody war against the Mayans, forcing them to migrate from Portugal to Mexico. The dinosaurs thought the Spanish were pretty chill, so they got along, at least until Pope Ivory (sp) III began the Spanish Inquisition. Modern sources attribute the event to a meteor.
Once they had arrived in Mexico, the Mayans came to the sudden and terrifying realization that they had no idea what Mexicans ate. They decided, as a final proverbial middle finger to the dinosaurs who had led them to Mexico, they should use some of the dinosaur meat and some of the native fauna to make a dish to survive the ages. With this, tacos were born out of ground dinosaurs, and a very convenient selection of spices. They concluded that their stores of dinosaur meat would run out around the time currently decided to be the year two-thousand and twelve.
...Oh shit.
Making the Frugal Magic Happen
So, just as a forewarning, the pictures will include ground turkey for this recipe, but I actually don't think it's worth substituting for ground beef. The texture is off by enough that I don't think I can do so, but you may think otherwise! Anyway, LET'S GET COOKING! Here's basically the bare minimum, with not much spiciness (and what the pictures reflect, mostly, but I'll indicate where you can add more stuff):
Long ago, there was an ancient civilization of Mexicans who lived in Portugal. They were the Mayans. The Mayans were great geologists, predicting cosmic events through the use of geysers spouting in musical numbers, most of which correspond exactly to the tunes of Enrique Iglesias. To this day, modern science has been unable to ascertain exactly why the Mayans were okay with this.
Perhaps the most impressive event predicted, however, was the eventual rise of the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs, convinced of their own superiority, waged a bloody war against the Mayans, forcing them to migrate from Portugal to Mexico. The dinosaurs thought the Spanish were pretty chill, so they got along, at least until Pope Ivory (sp) III began the Spanish Inquisition. Modern sources attribute the event to a meteor.
Once they had arrived in Mexico, the Mayans came to the sudden and terrifying realization that they had no idea what Mexicans ate. They decided, as a final proverbial middle finger to the dinosaurs who had led them to Mexico, they should use some of the dinosaur meat and some of the native fauna to make a dish to survive the ages. With this, tacos were born out of ground dinosaurs, and a very convenient selection of spices. They concluded that their stores of dinosaur meat would run out around the time currently decided to be the year two-thousand and twelve.
...Oh shit.
Making the Frugal Magic Happen
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| Passive-aggressive tea mug. |
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| BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS. |
- Most importantly, ground beef (pictured as turkey, because I suck), minimum 1 pound
- Onions and other sorts of non-leafy vegetables that aren't potatoes. Pretty much any type of pepper will work here, anaheims and habaneros for maximum intensity
- The following spice names have been mostly jacked from this recipe I found a while ago and loved
- Cumin
- Chili powder
- Garlic salt
- Basil
- Oregano
- Cayenne pepper (not strictly necessary, but who wants tacos that don't have a bit of a punch at all?)
- For extra spicy, red pepper flakes
- Shells of some sort, or, you know, tortillas
- Whatever you like on tacos, yo! I can't eat them without cheese and salsa. I think sour cream is blasphemous, but I know some people appreciate destroying their food...
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| This is how I feel in the morning. |
This one's hella easy. Take yo meat and brown it, which is basically putting it in a pan with some oil (see right) and breaking it up into smaller little bits. Flip around (safely, with a spatula and stuff) for even browning of meatiness. While this happens you can chop your onions and peppers and stuff, preferably into fairly small pieces so that you don't have to worry about that when you're nomming this deliciousness.
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| This is how I feel after sitting on a frying pan for fifteen minutes. |
Once you've browned it (and it should look similar to the picture at right), the hardest part is basically done. At this point you just add some spices (I never actually measure, but use your best judgment - basil and oregano are fairly strong compared to the other stuff, so use them with a bit more sparing than the others. Chili powder and cumin are the more important ones here, so don't be afraid to use a decent amount), the veggies, and just a touch of water, enough to let everything mix up a bit, and then you go back to stirring it around over heat for a few minutes.
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| THE FINAL STAGE |
When that's done, you should get something very similar to this, at right. The second hardest part is now done, and oh man does it look fantastic. I like to let mine heat up long enough that most of the extra juice has evaporated, as I'm not a fan of messy tacos, but if you're doing something else with this like taco salad, you might want to keep it.
With this done, you have no more actual "cooking" left to do - it's all funsies from here!
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| Tell me you ain't jelly. TELL ME. YOU AIN'T JELLY. |
Take a tortilla (or for taco salad, your chips) on a plate, spread some amount of excellence on it, top with cheese, salsa, sour cream, whatever you like, and BOOM. Best part? You know what's in this taco, and it's all good.
This stuff is great for parties (obviously use more meat though), although that being the case you might want to get some more hot sauces (Mexican and Indian stores would be good for this, they're generally cheaper than supermarket varieties, and a lot more effective) and maybe even consider getting/making hard taco shells for those strange people. (Link here - note that when using allrecipes.com, the comments are just as valuable as the actual recipe, someone suggested just spraying tortillas with cooking spray and baking draped over the oven rack until crispy, which sounds legit to me).
So, now that the method is done being described, let's do some cost analysis!
Frugality
- Ground turkey - $2.20/lb, assume ground beef is about $1.20 more per pound? $3.40/lb, I can get two meals out of a pound, so $1.70/meal
- Onion - $.58/1, $.29 to use half
- Tortillas - $1.79/8, 4 per pound -> 2 per meal -> $.45
- Cheese - $1.59/bag, 10 meals out of this would equate to $.16 per
- Salsa - Not sure, but I don't think $.25 per meal is too much to estimate
- Spices - psh
Add it all up, and you get something in the neighborhood of $2.60/meal. Peppers are pretty cheap (I can get anaheims at $5/lb and habaneros at $1.20/lb at the Kroger nearby, and you don't need anywhere near a pound for these), and hot sauces would be in the same "psh" category as spices since they should last at least a year or two and cost becomes close to negligible. So, maybe not the most frugal option that will ever be on here, but still pretty good compared to, say, campus, or Taco Bell. Plus, the options are limitless, and you can have a lot of fun just mixing and matching various ideas at pretty much any point in the game.
So, that's frugal homemade tacos for you! Hope you've enjoyed this entry of the Frugal Undergrad College Kitchen, and feel free to leave any comments down below. I think when I made the last entry it was restricted to only people with Google accounts, so that's been changed I believe, so you can make anonymous comments now. Happy Fruncoking!
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