- The kitchen literally smells
like a Taco Bell right now. Everyone's nodding disappointingly, because apparently they don't like working in Taco Bell smell, that's fine, I do. (upbeat music) After 35 years in the permanent menu it is with great sadness in my heart, that I say my final goodbyes
to the Mexican pizza. However, let us not dwell on
Taco Bell's cruel treatment of one of its original beloved menu items. And let us not dwell on
their cruel treatment of other favorites, ahem,
Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes, ahem. No, today's a celebration. Though the Mexican pizza is
gone from Taco Bell menus, it is given a second life, in the hearts and kitchens
of all of you at home. Pour out the first sip of Baja Blast for the Mexican pizza and
let's get cooking, amen. (Josh imitates bagpipes) Is that what a bagpipe sounds like? And if you are cooking this at home, we've broken the recipe
down into three easy steps, you can grab the time codes right there. We also got a full written
recipe in the description. What are we waiting
for, let's beef her up. Beef me up, Scotty. Much like Taco Bell has done
a disservice to everybody, I realize that we have
done a disservice to you, the viewer, at Mythical Kitchen cause we have never published a true Taco Bell copycat beef recipe. But this to me is the
definitive version of it. I'm gonna add a little
bit of oil to the pan, get that heating up a little bit, then we're going to
start sauteing our beef. When most people deal with
Taco Bell copycat beef, they're just adding spices to ground beef. But what Taco Bell actually does, their beef is only 88% beef, they add like oat flour and
water and other things to that. And that's why they beep
is so soupy and delicious. It's almost like a Tex Mex bolognese. And so that's what we're doing here today. So we got that heating up, and then I'm gonna take a
pound of 80/20 ground beef. You got to drop it from high up, that's how they do it at Taco Bell. And most people will tell you to just try and break up
the beef really finely, which of course you should do, but you don't need to chop it
up to finally because we are gonna throw it into the food processor. Again, Taco Bell beef, one of the most wondrous things about it is that it almost has the texture of like a thick smoothie. That's why you can take,
like, a Taco Bell beef burrito and you can just push the insides up through the tortilla and go (Josh slurping) and just sort of wring it out, and it's a great way to get
less carbs in your diet. Beef is slightly broken up right now. If you don't want to go full pull on this, you can get a bag of, like,
Lowery's taco seasoning. It's a lot of the same things, there's gonna be some extra
little fun chemicals in there, citric acid, a little bit
of thickener, all that. But this is my spice mixture, so we got garlic powder
and we got onion powder. These are two things that are in just a lot of processed foods. And then we're gonna go
ahead and add in our cumin. And I like to toast all these spices in the actual fat itself. And then we got chili powder. Yeah, cumin, it smells a
little bit like body odor but in a good way, you know? When like you smell
someone who's really ripe and you're just like, I want
to get to know them better. We have paprika, it's gonna
give it a nice red hue, and again, it's gonna
make it taste like red. And then we're gonna add a
little bit of black pepper. Of course, a hefty amount of salt. And again, the recipe's in the description for all the actual measurements on these. And then we're gonna mix that up. Yeah, when you toast
spices in the beef fat as it's cooking it's just gonna get all the more aromatic and fragrant. When I think of Taco Bell, I do think of aromatic and fragrant. Like, people don't put enough respect on the Taco Bell name for how
tasty their food actually is. All right, and then, a couple
other secret ingredients that you can use to make your beef taste even more like Taco Bell, and really stick it to them for discontinuing the
Mexican pizza, cocoa powder. Cocoa powder, you're not
gonna taste it too much, it's gonna add to all
those different aromas. But what it's gonna do is
make your beef more browner. That's actually what Taco Bell does to give their beef that beefy look. Cause I guess it wouldn't look
enough like beef without it? And then another thing you
can do is chicken bouillon. So, we're using Caldo de
Pollo from what is it, Knorr? Yeah, we're using Knorr
brand Caldo de Pollo, this is chicken bouillon, it's soup mix. It's basically just a
bunch of like salt, MSG, and different flavorings in it. And that is a lot of what's in Taco Bell. Let's add a little bit of that, then once this beef is
like kind of par cooked, we're actually gonna pull it. And then we're gonna get
this into our food processor and just pulse it a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Oh, food processor, always an adventure. Is he gonna figure it
out on the first try? No. Is he gonna figure it out
in the ninth try? Find out. Toss all that beef slop in there. because Taco Bell beef is like, there's no big beef curds I guess, it's like a very smooth mixture. We're not gonna like fully puree it, yeah? We're just gonna pulse
it about eight times. It worked, I didn't expect
it to turn on, but it did. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. Yeah, that is exactly
what we're looking for. If you can see that, it's just
all nice and kind of like, I don't know what you'd call it. It's like a freshly
tilled soil in my mind. We're gonna add all of our
meat back into the pan. Oh yeah, we got the fine
curds of Taco Bell beef, what we don't have yet is the soupiness. You want your beef to be soupy, and so we're gonna add a
little bit of hot sauce just to get a little bit of spice in there and then that acid as well. And then we are gonna take water and we're gonna add to here. The water is your soup ingredients. You're gonna see, it's
gonna kind of create a bit of a sludgy consistency. We're gonna add some thickener to it in the form of oat flour. Taco Bell actually does
put oats in their beef, which like, that makes it healthy. It's basically you're eating oatmeal, whenever you eat it a chalupa. As long as you go, (Josh slurps) and suck it out of the chalupa hole, instead of eating the whole thing. But, if you don't want to use oat flour, you can use normal white flour. You can just pulverize
some, like, oatmeal packets, try not to get the
apple cinnamon flavored, but hey, that might taste good. And then this is gonna thicken it up and really like hold all of
those flavors close to the beef. And again you see this thickening up, it's just gonna take about three minutes to really tighten. But like, this is my look of
Taco Bell beef that I want. The kitchen literally smells
like a Taco Bell right now. Does it not? It does smell like it, everyone's nodding disappointingly because apparently they don't like working in Taco Bell smell, but that's fine, I do! All right, we got our beautiful
copycat Taco Bell beef but, what's the copycat beef
without a copycat sauce? Yeah, sure we're gonna make that. As is often the case with life, we don't truly appreciate
something until it's gone. And I don't think I ever truly appreciated the Mexican pizza sauce. Cause I mean, one, it's just
soaked into the tortilla and covered in cheese and you got all the beef and beans and all that, but, after like actually reading the Taco Bell ingredients label, I realized that if you
want to make it a home, you can just combine a
can of enchilada sauce with equal parts Ragu tomato sauce, because that's pretty much what it was. So, we're gonna start this
by adding in green chilies. So, this is again coming straight
from the Taco Bell label. We're gonna add in some water to that, and then getting some
tomato paste right in there. So the Taco Bell Mexican pizza sauce was literally like a combination of a taco sauce and a pizza sauce. Cause there was a ton of
sugar and tomato paste, but also chilies and spices. So, green chilies, tomato paste, we're taking onion powder, garlic powder, again in like literally
everything at Taco Bell. We're also taking some
cumin and chili powder, and that, you can use any
chili powder you want, like, you know, not gonna
be picky on that one. And then we're gonna
add some salt and sugar. And we're just gonna cook
this down for a little bit, just to get everything sort of combined. And then we're gonna
blend it and our blender, strain it, and sort of thicken it up. I feel like people didn't truly appreciate the genius of the Mexican pizza. And this is a 35 year old menu item, which is crazy because when
we think about Taco Bell now, we think of like the Crunchwrap Supremes, the cheesy core burritos,
and the TripleLupa. It was a human centipede of chalupas just going front to back, their thing. But like 35 years ago, Taco Bell didn't have
those crazy menu items, like the Mexican pizza to me was the first gen gatekeeper
that opened the doors. It was like how you
wouldn't have had Skrillex without Caspa and Rusko. Don't laugh at my dubstep references! That's a key dubstep! Nicole liked it! Now
we're going to take this, we're gonna put it in our blender just to blend up those chilies. And then we're gonna thicken it with a little bit of cornstarch to sort of hopefully give it
that smoothness of Taco Bell, you know that Taco Bell smoothness. That's what Rob Thomas
featuring Carlos Santana were actually singing about. They were singing about the smoothness of Mexican
pizza sauce, fun fact. We're just gonna light this blender up, hopefully you don't die. (buttons clicking) Augh, what the fruit? I don't know what happened,
but it's working now. All right, so we're blending up the sauce. Yeah, crank it on high,
really blend those chilies up. Give it a little taste, that's Mexican pizza all right. You'd strain it if you want to, you're gonna get even smoother. But I mean, honestly, it's
got all that sweetness, all that spice in there. It looks like Taco Bell,
it smells like Taco Bell. I feel ready to run into a Taco Bell and protest the loss of the
Mexican pizza, I'm into it. Now all's we got to do is make it, the Taco Bell. (energetic music) We have all of our Taco
Bell mise en place, we got some nice soupy beans, that's just canned refried
beans mixed with water, the perfect Taco Bell copycat recipe, although they use a powder
that they mix the water, whatever. Then we got a
beef, we've got our sauce, cheese, tomatoes, now the tostadas. So I have these hybrid
corn and flour tortillas, that is actually what Taco Bell uses. They're not their normal
corn tortilla shells. And so you can find these,
I dunno, Amazon, somewhere. If you wanna use corn
tortillas, absolutely do that. I've had these dehydrating
in an oven at 250 degrees. For just about like 25 minutes, just to get some moisture out. Now I'm just gonna fry them
in oil until they're crispy. Then we're gonna take them
out, we're gonna layer them, we're gonna get the sauce on,
we're gonna get the cheese on, we're gonna put them in the oven and then we're gonna
stick it to Taco Bell! So you try and press the tortillas down when they're in the oil, just to prevent them from like curling up, try and keep them flat. If you have a tostada
frying press, use that. I don't know how many home cooks have a tostada frying
press, I wish we did. But we're just gonna fry them up until they're nice and
golden brown and crispy, just for a couple minutes,
yeah, yeah there we go. (timer rings) Oh yeah, yeah. These are nice, I'm gonna pull these, nice and golden brown, just take them out of the hot oil, get them right there. Gonna
flip them a little bit, give them the old dab. But honestly, I mean, if you're recreating Taco Bell at home, don't dab too much of the oil off. They wouldn't want that, they
wouldn't do that for you. So we got to get a little shmear of beans going down first. So you'll take some of
these watered down beans, which I do love, I water down my canned
refried beans at home. (Josh laughs) I feel like
whenever I talk about what I cook at home, it's just sad. I've watered down my beans, makes them stretch farther for the dollar, but I do, I like a good soupy bean, I shouldn't be mocked for that. I've always fantasized about being able to go behind
the counter at Taco Bell and actually make my own food, so I can like, you know,
make sure all the sour cream isn't at one end of the burrito, and really be able to control the ratios. And when you're doing it at home, that's exactly what you can do, which for me, is exciting, that's what I get excited about it. I fantasize it's about Taco Bell and I get excited about making it home. All right, we're gonna
get some beefs on there, that's good. I love how the beef is more
spreadable than the beans, that's how you know you've done a good job on Taco Bell beef. Oh, another fantasy I've had, I always wanting to just put a bunch of Taco Bell beef into a boba cup, and slurp it through one
of those big thick straws. I can achieve that fantasy, I can do that, I'm an adult, I can drink boba beef. So now we're gonna put a
little hat on, yeah yeah. And then, we're gonna take
our Mexican pizza sauce, and we're just gonna
spread it edge to edge. That's nice, that
beautiful deep red color, that's what we wanted. All right and now, a blend of yellow and
white cheese is reason, a little bit of medium Cheddar and Monterey Jack. You can use that Mexican
shredded cheese blend that somehow everyone
in Southern California grew up with in the fridge, Nicole's nodding over there, she knows. We're just gonna get some of this on top, and then we're just gonna
melt it in the oven. And typically you'd take
it straight from the oven, and put it in a box,
and let it all kind of steam together until the
tortillas just dissolve like chilaquiles into
the soupy beef and beans. You can choose to box it or not. All right, so I'm taking this,
I'm gonna fly it in the oven for just about four minutes
to melt this cheese. (timer rings) Whoa, whoa, whoa, no burns today. And look at that, that
cheese is perfectly melted, I mean this looks like a Taco Bell item. There's only one more step, and that is to take
the least ripe tomatoes you've ever seen in the entire world, these are almost too red, you want them to be whiter on the inside. And we're just gonna dot
these around, yeah, yeah. And that's really the key to this, is the freshness of that raw tomato cutting through the richness
of all those soup beefs. That's it, we've done it. Like Lazarus, the Mexican pizza has been risen from the dead, and we are its progenitors. Thank you so much for joining us, this has been the David Blaine magic hour. Cloud of smoke, do it in post. Ah, crap, my hips popped. (upbeat music) Honestly, this looks super incredible, looks very Taco Belly. I'm gonna go in with a pizza cutter. Whoa, you got a slice in your quarters, that's how Taco Bell does it. Bring up one of these quarters, yeah this is nice and thick and hefty. I'm gonna go cheese
first upside down on it. It's honestly, it is
pure Taco Bell flavor. The beef is dead on, that's
all the spice that he uses, that little bit of sweetness
and Mexican pizza sauce. This is a dead ringer for
a Taco Bell Mexican pizza. But, you shouldn't just
take my word for it, you should take Mythical Chef Trevor's word for it
because, Trevor is Trevor. Look at, that face can't lie. I'm gonna use our Mythical
Chef spork harpoon to spork poon Trevor's Mexican pizza. Trevor- - How are you gonna spork me? - Well, I'm gonna spork
you as best as I can, I'm a spork with great tenderness. Now we got it. - [Trevor] This seems a little convoluted. - No, no, no, it's coming. Hey Trevor. Airplane into the hanger. - Come on, give me the good, good. - I feel as if I were eating
a Taco Bell Mexican pizza right now from Taco Bell. - Yeah, like you're parked
in the alley, you know - [Trevor] Yeah - You don't want to wait to get home. - I just like, I never
really cared that much for the Taco Bell Mexican pizza, so I'm like- (Josh laughs) - We should have found someone,
Annalise stop, next time. Well, I mean, hey, that's
what we're going for, it is an exact replica of
the Taco Bell Mexican pizza, which I cannot stress enough is now dead. Thank you so much for killing
the Taco Bell Mexican pizza, thank you for watching Mythical Kitchen. We got new videos out every week, we got new episodes of our podcasts, The Hot Dog is a Sandwich
out every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Trevor's scooping some beans. It is up on Instagram at Mythical Kitchen with pictures of your
Taco Bell Mexican pizza's under hash tag dreams become food. See you all next time. You can cook up your
own feast while wearing the Mythical Kitchen apron
available now @mythical.com.
Thank You!!!
I was JUST cursing our beefy father about getting me hooked all for them to get snatched away.
This is the first legit Taco Bell copy cat recipe I’ve seen and I’ve been searching for years!!
So I made just the beef recipe with beyond meat to make it vegan, and it is legit! Totally brought back taco bell vibes. I used it for nachos, but I plan to make the full Mexican pizza at some point.