Oh goodness! Those look delicious. Going to have to dig in the freezer and see if I have any pork roast in there. Thinking there is a small one left that I can make just for tacos. If so, will roast it w/ chipotles.

You know, tacos used to just be ground beef and seasonings on crunchy shells with lettuce, tomato and cheese, maybe salsa. Now it seems like tacos are made out of everything from fish to tofu! Fine with me, I like them that way.

It must be the season, we had tacos on Sunday made from left over pork roast. They were good but now you've got me thinking I should have made cole slaw.

Annie

Got a little pork roast left and got everything else necessary except I'll use flour tortillas. Sounds great!

stir_fry SE Mich -- I always heat (toast, cook) mine in an uncoiled cast iron skillet (think griddle at a restaurant) so they're not totally raw -- just not crisp like the tacos we were raised on.

Annie -- street tacos are closer to the tacos you find in Mexico than those seasoned hamburger filled crunchy shells that we call tacos. Taco Bell has helped perpetuate that sort of taco!

Martha, having been in Mexico, I know that's true, but my favorite tacos are still the burger tacos my Mom made when we were kids. I try the others and have made them, but they're not quite the same. :D

Jackassacres - my favorite tacos are deep fried, filled hamburger seasoned with cumin and salt (and included CANNED peas), then lettuce, salsa, tomatoes, cheese and canned Parmesan added. THOSE are the tacos of MY childhood. And I have managed to master them! But they are a MESS to make!

I've been making tacos with tofu and avocado since 1972. I had them first in Santa Cruz, CA. The ones I made on Sunday had smoked turkey, cheese, and guacamole. I always make them in soft corn tortillas, and sometimes I roll them rather than fold them. In Mexico, they generally have two soft tortillas and are folded, but I make mine with one tortilla and roll them. They're easier to eat that way. I have never put cole slaw on mine, and when I make or order fish tacos, I substitute lettuce for the cabbage.

Martha, I have to say that I’ve never entertained the thought of peas and Parmesan in tacos. :)

jackass acres -- try it!

Those look so enticing and your coleslaw over it is a perfect pairing... I had some leftover shredded pork and was tired of quesadillas, so made BBQ pork and onions over homemade mac and cheese (using roux). Wish I'd thought of tacos with coleslaw : (

Next time try grilled fish fillets - spice them up with a chile dry rub if you like 'em hot - with your heated soft corn tortillas. Known as "Baja Fish Tacos" in CA taquerias.

Dab them with Mexican crema if you have it, sour cream or yogurt if you don't. A squeeze of lime and you're all set.

Most folks add coleslaw with these, but we usually ask for lettuce on these. We think the coleslaw overwhelms the fish unless it's batter-fried.

Excellent way to use tilapia.

It's interesting to me that people call these street tacos. Where I live they would be tacos al pastor. And yeah, I know that in most of the US that means pineapple, but I've asked everyone I know in the taco biz and nobody, Mexican, USian, Guatemalan, etc. has ever heard of the pineapple around here.

Where do you live? Never heard of the pineapple.

Florida. If you look at the internet, pineapple is what makes a taco al pastor "al pastor". Just shows how much you can trust wikipedia et al.

Where are you, sushipup?

WTF??? Writersblock, I'm usually right with you, but pineapple??? I don't know what goes on in Florida, but "al pastor" means shepherd style, and is spit roasted. So I did an internet search, and didn't find references to pineapple (Google may give even recipes by location? (eta, I was avoiding Wikipedia)) and plenty to spit roasting.

(ETA, if it's not clear by inference, I have never ever had pineapple on a meat taco, even when pineapple salsa was trendy. I think I've seen it on fish tacos with other tropical fruits, but I don't eat fish, so don't know for sure. Al pastor is fab, but thanks for the warning about what's going on in Florida.)

(EagainTA, after more research looking specifically for "pineapple" I found references to it being done in New York as well, and to the preparation in Mexico City to include a piece of fresh pineapple and a piece of onion on the top of the spit. That, I believe. Some include pieces in the tacos. Obviously there's a lot more meat than pineapple being cooked! Al pastor isn't sweet here, and there's never pineapple in the taco. I also read some gripes from people who've eaten al pastor all over and were shocked by the pineapple on the east coast. Very interesting subject. Learn something new every day. But I have to say, I don't think I'd like it...)

I never heard of it, either, but:

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/tacos-al-pastor-242132

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/05/tacos-al-pastor-recipe.html

http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/tacos-al-pastor 

https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/tacos-al-pastor-2

Need I go on? I could, for pages, despite never, ever hearing of this, myself.

And no, it does not happen in FL, not even on the plate like a slice of watermelon or something, but evidently it must be going on somewhere to be in every internet recipe.

We just moved to PA from Northern/Central California coast. No pineapple in sight.

Thanks, sushipup.

Here's my feelings about tacos. They are a dish from an enormous country, Mexico, and have been exported all over the world. The cuisine of Mexico is quite varied by region. Where the taco has been imported, the locals have added their own ingredients and touches. You cannot be 'right' or 'wrong' about a taco. You can speak of the style of taco found in certain places, but if you call someone's fish taco wrong because it has lettuce instead of cabbage, well. I will disagree that it is wrong. Not authentic to a certain place, perhaps but not wrong.

I am amused by people asking for a "recipe" for tacos. I can offer several ways that I like the meat prepared, and offer a bunch of toppings that I like. But that is an assembly, like a sandwich, not a 'recipe' per se. Or is it?

Taco: Any kind of sandwich with delicious filling put in the middle of a flatbread, folded, and cooked/grilled/fried/made hot and scrumptious.

Sushipup, I agree with you, and it was the notion that pineapple made it
"al pastor" that I was saying no to. It doesn't bother me that those
people eat it that way (though the ones who use canned are suspect!).
Just the pronouncement that it is regarded as the single correct way.

Apologies Writersblock, I misunderstood you about the ubiquitousness of pineapple in al pastor in Florida. I could match your links by ten with ones that talk about spit roasting and no hint of pineapple, but I have to get up early. I did find similar when I searched for with pineapple. Example: The Epicurious recipe has way too much pineapple to meat proportion to be Mexico City style, and it's not al pastor at all, being grilled.

One source I found earlier traced the pineapple in the taco thing (I offer no opinions about the marinade) to a TV show with Anthony Bourdain in Mexico saying how delicious it was, and others referred to Bourdain as well, without specifically naming it an origin. There he was given a bit of the piece that was on top of the spit, which would be a special treat that few would get. It also would have absorbed a lot of flavor from the meat and the fire over a long time, not just be charred on a grill.

I do have a general disfavor toward pineapple in tacos, unless it's a grilled fish taco with a white wheat tortilla. The whole sweetness thing would work with that. Most tacos are made with corn tortillas, and I don't like the combination with pineapple.

One source I found earlier traced the pineapple in the taco thing (I offer no opinions about the marinade) to a TV show with Anthony Bourdain in Mexico

That would explain it, and also perhaps the way so many of the recipes (and Wikipedia) strive to show a shawarma influence, when I strongly suspect very few Mexican peasants of yore had ever heard of shawarma, even if they happened to come up with a similar cooking style for meat.

I am amused by people asking for a "recipe" for tacos. I can offer several ways that I like the meat prepared, and offer a bunch of toppings that I like. But that is an assembly, like a sandwich, not a 'recipe' per se.

Of course, and I think you're generally right about that. But people will often want to make a taco just like they had at xxx taqueria or restaurant, so I think there can be recipes, too.

When I was a child our favorite Mexican restaurant was one that served Mexican food interpreted for Cubans by Basques/Catalans, and I would love a recipe for those tacos now, because you would need a recipe for every single component, none of which were what you are thinking of. :)

I agree there are so many tacos. Growing up (other than the ones with peas), it was more of Taco Bell type in any restaurants here in the midwest -- spicy seasoned ground hamburger, crisp fried shell, lettuce and other toppings (cheese and tomato but some places would add other things). Then it happened and tacos changed -- first "fish" tacos (often called Baja fish tacos) and most were served with cabbage instead of lettuce and sometimes instead of salsa it was another type of sauce -- a creamy one -- sometimes they were fried, sometimes not and the shell was always corn and always soft not crisply fried. Now, here, we have "street tacos" and "tacos el pastor" at some more upscale Mexican restaurants. Other than Taco Bell, I'm not sure you get the same "recipe" for tacos at any two restaurants.

I will draw the line at flour tortillas. Now THAT is not a taco. I have been asked if I want flour or corn for a taco. No!

OK OK, maybe flour tortilla tacos are authentic in some places. But it's just wrong, I tell you, wrong!

Ha! Try telling my local small town grocery store that! I do use flour tacos... for quesadillas. I can't find a soft corn taco to save my life where I live. :-(

LOL! Sushipup, that's the thing. There are some northern places in Mexico where there just aren't corn tortillas. I wouldn't put al pastor in wheat. Fish tacos, which really are a Baja thing, as well as San Diego, are another story. And fry bread tacos are amazing!

Writersblock, from what I can ascertain, the al pastor story about the shwarma is as real as any origin story from the first half of the 20th C. can be. For instance, it's well known that the French Dip and Chili Size started in Los Angeles, but there are conflicting stories about who was the first, and how it happened. Nachos, however, only have the one story about the shopping ladies coming into the restaurant between service times, when the kitchen was mostly shut down, and Ignacio (i.e., Nacho) who was serving them throwing together some bits and pieces to make them something to eat. The actual name of the maitre d' in Tijuana, Cesar something, for whom the Caesar salad is named, is known. I don't remember his full name, nor if he invented it or if it was just named for him within the restaurant, but that's a known fact that can be looked up easily.

The story behind al pastor, from many unrelated sources, with sufficient drift to be pretty sure that they aren't recently from the same origin, is that there was an influx of Middle Eastern immigrants to Mexico City in the 1920's or '30's. They made schwarma. The vertical spit was embraced and adapted by their native Mexican neighbors. I suspect that it was originally lamb on the spit. That would be more consistent with what people from the Middle East would have eaten and would have spit roasted, and would make the name "by the shepherd" make sense. Easy for the Mexicans to substitute pork for lamb and add their own kinds of marinades.

Note: I think everyone agrees, now, that "chili size" came from Ptomaine Tommy's and that it referred to the size of the ladle, but a number of years ago there were a bunch of other stories floating around. At that time, there was an article published, which seems to have been seminal in settling the dispute, but at the time it was printed, I thought they'd gotten the meaning wrong, saying it had come from the smaller scoop. A chili size, as I knew it from childhood in SoCal, was not a chili burger. It was a burger, with or without a bun on the bottom, smothered in a dish of chili. Thus, the original call would have been "chili size" for the bowl of chili sized ladle of chili on what, in the beginning, might have been a proper burger that the patron wanted overflowing with lots of chili, and "hamburger size" for the amount normally put on a chili burger. That's a much simpler derivation that fits the evidence better, but I couldn't tell you for sure. Ptomaine Tommy's closed well before I was born!

This thread is entertaining me greatly. I never had a taco until I was in high school, when a very nice Hispanic couple named Rudy and Rosa opened a small bakery called "The Donut Hole". People started asking for sandwiches at lunch and they started making tacos. Rosa made the salsa and there was alway a "regular" and a "hot". The "hot" version was really, truly, tongue numbingly hot. Regular was still pretty hot, LOL. Anyway, The Donut Hole soon became The Taco House, and the original tacos were spiced ground beef with lettuce, tomato, cheese, salsa. Things got a little crazy and soft corn tortillas became available along with the hard crunchy ones. Then they started making (gasp) BURRITOS!! What was this completely foreign food? Flour tortillas with the ground beef taco filling, refried beans, rice, lettuce/tomato/cheese, covered with taco sauce and more cheese if you wanted them "wet". It was foreign, it was exotic, it was very...cosmopolitan. (grin)

Now, of course, The Taco House is gone, Rudy and Rosa retired and no one wanted to take over. We have Taco Bell and El Burrito, and quesadillas on the Applebee's menu. Smoked brisket on soft corn tortillas at Slow's BBQ in Grand Rapids and jalapenos growing in my own garden.

I'll never forget that first bite of Rudy's Wet Burrito, though. The chewy flour tortilla, the spice of the meat, the smooth refried beans, the cool crunch of the shredded lettuce, all covered in that smoky/spicy red sauce and strings of cheese, it was a whole new world of food.

Ahhh. Reminiscing time is over, back to the tacos! And now I want to take a trip to Slow's BBQ, those brisket tacos were amazing.

Annie

Finally! Found corn tortillas!

Martha Scott, thanks for the thread, we enjoyed catfish tacos night before last thanks to your inspiration and everyone's posts!