Our Favorite Weeknight Ground Beef Tacos.
I have ground beef tacos for us that can come together in about 15 minutes.
Seriously, cue all the exclamation points!
Our favorite seasoned ground beef for tacos is here! This is what I prep on super busy weeknights – and I even prep it ahead of time too. In 15 minutes this seasoned beef will be done and you’ll want to eat a taco or nacho every single night.
In case you don’t want to already.
(If you don’t, how are we friends?)
I grew up eating ground beef tacos almost every single week.
If you were a kid of the 90s, did these kind of tacos make their way on to your weekly menu?My mom used the grocery store spice packets to season the beef and served them with both soft tortillas and hard shells, tons of lettuce, tomato and sour cream. Just like you’d think in the 90s.
I loved them then. But now?
Those seasoning packets taste like straight cumin + salt. They are actually the reason I don’t love cumin. I don’t enjoy side dishes or meals that are heavily flavored with cumin. Because all I can taste is those old school tacos! Not into it at all. It may just be my weird taste buds, but the overwhelming cumin flavor and scent is permanently etched in my senses.
My control freak ways probably play a part in wanting to use my own seasoning blend. So there’s that.
I’ve been seasoning my own ground beef for tacos and enchiladas for years. Week in and week out, I don’t measure a thing because I’ve been making them for so long that I can eyeball the spices and judge by tasting. I have a ground beef seasoning in these enchiladas and it’s how I do it for tacos too!
But here’s the thing. In my family, there are two very distinct camps when it comes to ground beef. Some people like it to be saucy. You know? I think that with the old school seasoning packet, you’d fill it up with water or something and dump it in – and the seasoning would have a thickener already added. As a result, you’d end up with super saucy taco meat. That’s how we grew up eating it!
I’ve seen some recipes add tomato sauce or even a can of salsa.
These days, however, I prefer a slightly “drier” ground beef. I hate to even use the word dry because that is not exactly what I mean. It’s just not… saucy. It’s a seasoned, crumbled beef. It almost reminds me of a chorizo!
When I make these in our house, each dish can be a little different. The beef and the seasonings stay the same, but sometimes I add a diced sweet onion and bell pepper. That stretches the beef a bit and also makes it a bit juicier. I also use this exact same recipe with ground turkey. And often, I mixed ground beef and ground turkey to double it!
While it may not be authentic at all, it’s the way we love to eat ground beef tacos best!
It’s the perfect weeknight meal.This seasoned beef freezes well. It lasts a few days in the fridge. I absolutely LOVE it over taco salads. If I make this for dinner, I often use it up for lunch leftovers, throwing it on top of lettuce, some avocado, any extra pico and a few crumbled tortilla chips. Those are key.
And another reason that this non-saucy beef is so delicious? You can use lettuce leaves for it too. If it’s not overly saucy, that means it isn’t as heavy and will sit nicely in an iceberg or butter lettuce leave, leaving room for toppings. It’s incredible!
Finally, it’s also the beef that I use for nachos, any sort of quesadilla and to stuff those mini sweet peppers. Adore it.
With these weeknight chicken tacos being one of our most used recipes (and one of your favorites too!), I’ve wanted to share our beef version for a long time. Of course, if we ever have shredded pork or beef on hand, we love to make tacos with that too. Same with seafood, usually going with shrimp or cod.
The recipe for ground beef tacos below is as basic as it gets.It’s the simplest recipe for seasoned ground beef – just the beef and seasonings! You can sauté minced garlic, diced onion and bell pepper in the skillet before adding the beef if you wish. Make it your own.
These days, I’m more of a quick pico-and-cilantro person when it comes to toppings, and of course I’ll never pass up a little grated cheese. If I have pickled onions in the fridge, I love to throw those on top too!
And the truth is that I will NEVER tire of tacos. Never ever.
Weeknight ground beef tacos that are anything like the 90s! These are made with a homemade taco seasoning and served with the perfect toppings!
I use a slurry to make my homemade ground beef saucy. Fill a shaker cup with ½ cup cold water or beef/vegetable stock. Add 1 ½ tablespoons all-purpose flour, masa or whole wheat flour to the liquid and cover it. Shake for at least 30 seconds. With the skillet on low heat, slowly stream in the slurry while stirring with a wooden spoon. Stir often and cook over low for about 10 minutes.
quick picoToss the tomatoes, onion, cilantro and lime juice together in a bowl. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper
Taco exhaustion just doesn’t exist.
The post Our Favorite Weeknight Ground Beef Tacos. appeared first on How Sweet Eats.
This might be the best tempeh recipe I’ve highlighted to date. It features a simple ginger and garlic-spiked orange glaze that plays off the nutty, earthiness of pan-fried tempeh beautifully. Unlike many other tempeh recipes, there is no need for a long marinade time with this one, making it great for a last-minute weeknight meal.
The recipe comes with a bit of a story, originates in a book I suspect many of you haven’t seen yet, and started with an email I received one morning last September from Australian cookbook author (and natural foods enthusiast) Jude Blereau. It read,
Dear Heidi, My name is Jude Blereau and I’m a Natural Foods Chef and author from Western Australia. I’m currently in San Francisco, having a fabulous time(…) I’d love the opportunity to have a chat with you and meet you. We do similar work I think, though with our own different slant. Hoping we can meet…
The name sounded quite familiar to me, I did a quick scan of my cookbooks, and spotted her book immediately. It was a thoughtfully composed volume of natural food recipes that I had tucked into my suitcase on my journey back from New Zealand a couple years ago. The minute I discovered Wholefood in a bookstore in Wellington, I knew I was reading along with a cook I had much in common with. Flash forward a couple years (and emails) later and we are chatting over coffee and croissants at Tartine Bakery here in San Francisco.
We talked about all sorts of things, and I asked Jude if she’d let me highlight one of her recipes here on the site. She told me she had a new book just published in Australia, and that she’d send the new one to me upon her return. Today’s tempeh recipe is from Jude’s new book – Coming Home to Eat: Wholefood for the Family published by Murdoch Books. It is beautifully written, delicately designed, brimming with great recipes, and punctuated by a handful of photographs (by Geoff Fisher and Michelle Aboud) that help set the aesthetic tone of the book perfectly.
My hope is that Coming Home to Eat will get U.S. distribution sometime in the near future, but as far as I know, that could take some time. Meanwhile, you can follow Jude through her site or her blog. And if you find yourself in Perth looking for a cooking class experience or natural chef training program – Jude’s the one to track down.
And thank you for reaching out Jude, I look forward to visiting you in Perth someday. You books an inspiring, and your enthusiasm infectious. I hope our paths cross again soon. -h
Continue reading Orange Pan-glazed Tempeh on 101 Cookbooks
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