Why You Should Add Chorizo to Your Ground Beef Tacos | Today's Special

[Music] we've all made those tacos with the help of a boxed kit but they've got nothing on my weeknight ground beef tacos i developed this recipe back in 2019 and it's still one of my go-to's so we're going to start with the ground beef and today i'm going to be using 90 ground beef which is a little leaner than i would normally use for tacos and that is because we are going to use some chorizo sausage let's talk about that for a little bit now there's two different types of chorizo sausage that you're gonna find in the grocery store this is spanish chorizo it's harder and it's already cured so technically you could just slice it and eat it as is but this is mexican style chorizo and unlike the spanish style this isn't cooked but when it cooks it crumbles nicely just like the ground beef and it also comes with a good amount of fat which is why we're going to be using 90 lean ground beef today to make up for that and it does come in a casing so what you want to do is just use a paring knife and run it right down the sausage link just like that and the reason i'm taking the casing off is just so that it doesn't stay in you know nickel sizes when cooking with the ground beef it's all going to blend in really nicely together and we're adding it to our weeknight tacos because it's just going to add a ton of extra smoky flavor i'm going to go wash my hands real quick and clean up for whatever reason you can't find chorizo you can substitute spicy italian sausage but you're going to need a few other ingredients and for that recipe just go on our website before we get cooking i'm going to add some salt and pepper i went ahead and pre-ground this because it's a good amount of black pepper it's a teaspoon then i'm gonna add some salt three quarters of a teaspoon all right so i'm going to put the meat mixture there into this 12 inch non-stick skillet i'm going to put this over medium-high heat and cook it until the beef is no longer pink which should take six to eight minutes and i am going in there with a wooden spoon just to break up the chorizo just to help it along its way because as i said it will crumble really nicely and you'll notice i didn't add any oil or fat to the skillet before adding the meat and that's because again it does have a good amount of fat content so six to eight minutes while the meat is browning i'm going to go ahead and prepare some more of our ingredients here i have one onion and a poblano pepper i'm going to finely chop our onion so naturally i'm going to cut the onion in half keeping the root end intact peel back that onion skin and i'm going to run my knife parallel to the board and turn it the other way and then run my knife perpendicular all the way through and then turn it back around run my knife across the onion and if you think you got any big chunks of onion simply run your knife through it a couple more times i think that looks pretty good and i'll repeat for the second half let me go stir the meat oh this looks so good i'll turn my heat down just a little bit while i finish up the pepper so the poblanos are so good they have a really nice vegetal flavor and they're not too spicy but if you wanted you could always remove the seeds and the ribs right here because that's what makes a pepper or chili pepper spicy and if for whatever reason you can't find poblano peppers in your grocery store you can substitute a green bell pepper but i would maybe add a little jalapeno or chili pepper to that as well so again i removed the seeds and the ribs and now i'm just going to run my knife through the length of the pepper and turn it 90 degrees and finely chop with my claw my claw which ensures that you don't get anywhere near your fingertips now i'm going to add this to my meat which has been cooking six to eight minutes and it's no longer pink so i know it's ready get everybody in there i'm going to cook these until the vegetables are just softened which should take another six to eight minutes when we come back we're gonna continue to build the flavors of our tacos and then it's gonna be time to eat we're gonna move on to the tomatoey aspect of our tacos so i have four plum tomatoes that i want to core because we're going to use the juice and all so when i core tomatoes i like to cut them in half first and then i'm going to make a v right where the core is you can also use a paring knife for this and then i'm going to cut them into quarter inch pieces this is a sharp chef's knife so it's going to work for the tomatoes but you also can use a serrated knife put these aside and a half a cup of water i'm going to cut up some cilantro that's been stored in the fridge okay so for the remaining ingredients we have some garlic some chipotle and adobo and some cumin so chipotle and adobo are one of those flavor bombs that you can add to something like this especially so they are smoked dried jalapenos and when they sit with this beautiful adobo sauce they take on so much flavor but they're also a little on the spicy side so i'm going to give these a good cut because you want them to get minced and i'm only going to be using a couple teaspoons but if you have a few people in your family or some of your friends that aren't huge spice fans i would maybe leave this part out but i don't want to scare you because you really should make it with them and we've got some cumin which is one of the usual suspects in those boxed kits so that's three teaspoons which is also a tablespoon of ground cumin and then i'm going to mince four cloves of garlic so since i'm going to be putting them in a garlic press i am just going to use the flat side of my knife and that just releases the paper from the garlic but it keeps it pretty much intact so i'm just going to mince the garlic cloves with the help of our garlic press and then just use my knife just to shave off any bits that were hanging out there hanging out for the party okay i'm gonna head back to the stove and add our aromatics here and let them cook until fragrant it should take about 30 seconds i'm just stirring them just to incorporate them throughout the beef mixture oh it smells so good so now i'm going to add a half a cup of water and our tomatoes [Music] i'm going to bring this to a simmer put the lid on the skillet reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until the tomatoes are beginning to break down which should take about 10 minutes while that's at a simmer i'm going to char our tortillas now the recipe calls for warm tortillas so you can either do that in the microwave or you can do what i'm about to do which is char them directly on the stovetop and these are corn tortillas but you could also use flour tortillas [Music] okay i'm gonna turn off the heat [Music] oh my goodness that smells so good and now just off the heat i'm gonna stir in some chopped cilantro oh my goodness and as you can see the tomatoes have broken down and softened and kind of become a nice slightly thickened sauce at this point let's eat as you can see there yum yum yum when you char tortillas or toast tortillas it helps to kind of bring out that flavor so in this case it's corn corn tortilla so it's going to taste like a really nice toasted corn flavor i've got my platter here i'm just gonna arrange a few tortillas some people double up i'm just gonna go single tortilla just divide that evenly but i think i'm just going to do one just so i can taste it for quality assurance it's the least i could do you know what i mean i've got some garnishes here got some chopped tomatoes some sliced iceberg shredded iceberg rather and some cheese you could also add some hot sauce sour cream whatever you want this recipe makes 12 tacos so it should feed about six people it's not going to be pretty but i'm going in this is what you want the boxed taco kit to taste like and it never does it's smoky a little spicy texture of the meat and the chorizo is perfect nice and tender not too pebbly with just a little extra prep and some key ingredients these tacos are so much better than any box kit you could buy [Music]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 66,862

Keywords: americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated, cooks country, ground beef, ground beef tacos, chorizo, cooking, weeknight recipes, one pan recipes, taco recipes

Id: axuxNrm7IuM

Length: 10min 25sec (625 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 20 2021