We have always enjoyed tacos. Beef tacos, pork tacos, fish tacos – we love them all. when making them at home for years we bought one of the boxes of preformed corn taco shells at the supermarket and just loaded them up with the protein and all the fixings. At Beth’s suggestion we recently tried a different approach – and we really liked the results.
We bought a package of flour tortillas and quickly toasted both sides on the gas grill. The three pictures below show: the package of tortillas, a set of them just put on the grill, and then after they were flipped to toast on the second side. You can see a little color on the tortillas in that last picture.
On my grill I do this at high heat, generally after I have grilled the protein that will be in the tacos, and it is resting for a few minutes. I do them on one side for about 30 seconds and on the flip side for about 20 seconds. This gets them crisp with a nice texture. One time I did about 40 seconds on each side, and they ended up just being a large cracker with no ability to fold them around the taco fillings. Don’t do that! Maybe try one tortilla on your grill the first time so see how much time you want for each side. The goal is just a little bit of color and foldable, but a little crispy.
Our most used protein for tacos is skirt steak which has been marinated at least for a few hours and then grilled on high heat for 2 minutes on each side. It then rests for 5 minutes to let the juices be absorbed by the meat. I use one of those minutes to quickly toast the tortillas. More time if I need enough tortillas that it takes more than one batch based on how many tortillas I need. My grill is fairly large and I can do six of the flour tortillas at a time. I slice the skirt steak on the diagonal into thin slices, against the grain of the meat. Skirt steak has long ridges that run down the meat which indicate the grain. Slicing against the grain means slicing across the long ridges. Slicing it with the grain would have you slice it in parallel to those ridges, and those slices will be much less tender than those sliced against the grain.
The thin slices of skirt steak are tender and easy to eat and very flavorful. But some grilled fish would be great as well. Even if you are using ground beef that you cook in a fry pan, you can still fire up your grill and quickly toast the tortillas. We have only tried this with flour tortillas. I see no reason why it would not work with flat corn tortillas, but I cannot suggest what the timing would be for those. You might have to experiment with one or two to find the right time for each side. If you have success and enjoy having toasted corn tortillas, please post a comment so others will know how long it will take to toast the corn tortillas. I think we are locked into using flour tortillas.
I hope you give this a try and provide your feedback.
Bill's Thoughts on Wine, Travel, and Food 