Chorizo
Spicy Mexican sausage crumbled with potato and topped with queso fresco.
How to Make
Chorizo- ½ lb Mexican chorizo, casing removed
- 2 medium potatoes, diced small
- ½ white onion, diced
- 2 garlic cloves
- Queso fresco, crumbled
- Corn tortillas, salsa verde, cilantro
- Boil diced potatoes until just tender, about 8 min. Drain.
- Cook chorizo in a skillet over medium heat, breaking it up, until browned.
- Add onion and garlic, cook 2 min. Fold in potatoes and cook until crispy edges form.
- Serve on warm tortillas topped with crumbled queso fresco, salsa verde, and cilantro.
La Historia del Taco
The origin story behind every option
Rooted in the cattle ranching culture of Sonora and Chihuahua, carne asada dates back centuries to vaqueros cooking beef over mesquite fires on the open range. It became the defining taco of the Tijuana–San Diego border food scene in the mid-20th century and remains the undisputed king of northern Mexican street food.
Born in Michoacán in the 16th century after Spanish colonizers introduced pigs to the Americas. Local cooks discovered that slow-simmering pork in its own lard — borrowed from French confit technique — created impossibly tender meat with crispy edges. Michoacán still holds its title as the carnitas capital of the world.
One of Mexico's greatest culinary mashups. Lebanese immigrants brought the shawarma spit to Mexico City in the 1930s–40s. Local cooks swapped lamb for pork, traded Middle Eastern spices for dried chiles, and added pineapple. The trompo — the vertical rotisserie — is now an icon of Mexican street food culture.
Grilling over fire is one of humanity's oldest cooking techniques, and pollo asado simply brings that ancient tradition to chicken with a Mexican citrus-and-spice marinade. It rose to taquería dominance mid-20th century as chickens became widely available — now a staple of family cookouts from Oaxaca to Monterrey.
One of the oldest foods in the Americas — the word barbecue itself is derived from barbacoa. Long before the Spanish arrived, indigenous Mexicans slow-cooked meat in underground pits lined with maguey leaves. Sunday morning barbacoa tacos remain a sacred ritual in Mexico City and across Hidalgo state to this day.
Born in Jalisco in the 16th century — Spanish colonizers left behind goats locals refused to eat, so cooks slow-stewed them with dried chiles until they were irresistible. By the 20th century birria had spread nationwide. The quesabirria taco with its bright red consommé went globally viral around 2019 and never looked back.
The beer-battered fish taco traces its roots to Ensenada and San Felipe in the 1950s–60s. Some credit Japanese immigrant fishing communities who brought tempura-style battering to the Baja peninsula. Surfers carried the gospel northward through California in the 1970s, and the Baja fish taco became forever synonymous with surf culture.
Pacific shrimp have been harvested along the coasts of Sinaloa and Sonora for centuries. Coastal fishing communities turned the daily catch into simple, vibrant tacos seasoned with chiles and lime long before mariscos became a restaurant category. Today camarones tacos are a staple from Mazatlán to Puerto Vallarta.
Spanish colonizers brought cured sausage traditions to Mexico in the 16th century, but Mexican cooks reimagined it entirely — swapping Spain's smoked, cured chorizo for a fresh, raw sausage packed with dried chiles, vinegar, and garlic. The result is so distinctly Mexican it shares little with its ancestor beyond the name and the pig.
Beef tongue has been eaten in Mexico since before the Spanish arrived, rooted in the indigenous tradition of using the whole animal, nothing wasted. By the early 20th century lengua had become a fixture of taquería menus across Mexico. Many old-school taqueros say it plainly: if the lengua is good, the whole taquería is good.
Cactus has been a cornerstone of the Mesoamerican diet for over 9,000 years. The Aztecs cultivated nopales extensively and considered them sacred. Mexico remains the world's largest producer and consumer of cactus today. A nopales taco is one of the most direct connections you can have with pre-colonial Mexican cuisine on a tortilla.
This beloved vegetarian taco originates in Central Mexico, particularly Puebla and Mexico City. Poblano peppers — named after Puebla — have been roasted and stripped into rajas since colonial times, when Spanish dairy traditions merged with indigenous chile culture. Simple, rich, and deeply satisfying, it is proof that you do not need meat for a great taco.
Don Chuche
Taco Philosopher · Est. 1981
Born Jesús Guadalupe Villanueva-Robles in a small kitchen off Avenida Ruiz, Don Chuche learned to make tortillas before he learned to tie his shoes. He spent twelve years traveling Mexico in a borrowed Cadillac, eating at every roadside taco stand he could find, filling three notebooks with recipes, opinions, and strongly worded critiques of bad salsa. He never published those notebooks. He says the knowledge belongs to the streets. His life has not been without struggle. He has spent decades on the front lines of two battles he considers deeply personal: the unholy rise of the hard shell taco, and the epidemic of salsa que no pica (not spicy) — that watered-down, flavorless red sauce they hand you in a plastic cup and call hot. He has never recovered from either insult. Today he sells nothing. He runs no restaurant, holds no Michelin star, takes no reservations. Don Chuche has one mission and one mission only: to educate the people about the dangers of hard shell tacos and salsa que no pica, before it is too late.