Potato tacos

Do you ever get fixated on a food that is so perfectly satisfying, yet easy to make that as long as you have the right rough mix of ingredients on hand, it becomes your default meal for a bit? For me, right now, this is that recipe.

I’ve made them the past two days running and honestly I’ll probably eat them tomorrow, too. I have other things I could be cooking – but these are better.

Every ingredient here is flexible, except the potatoes, so that’s the technique I’ll focus on writing up here. Basically you want to slice your taters, like so:

I used red potatoes because they were the cheapest this grocery trip, washing them well and then slicing them into discs of about 1/3″ or 1/2″ thickness. While slicing I heat some water in a frying pan to parboil the discs.

As with every time I boil potatoes, once it starts bubbling I salt the water. For this application I let them boil… a few minutes… maybe 5?

Then, somehow, drain out the water. I’ve gotten good at using a lid for this, then popping this same pan back on a medium-high burner asap so I don’t loose heat. The problem with that “method” is 1) hot water hot pan hot potato, and 2) if your kitchen is small enough to manage this without burning yourself you need to get cooking fat in that pan asap lest your papas stick (making for a suboptimal final texture, and, more pan scrubbing). What I’m saying here is that if you have a dishwasher, maybe just use a strainer?

Fry the potatoes in your preferred fat: either a high-smoke point oil to make them vegan, or, butter if like me you’re already martyring yourself enough by eating potato as your main rather than asada or lengua or chorizo or pastor or… (I’ve made my point). These will never replace those, but they are satisfying in their own right, and for veggie tacos? That’s huge.

So. After a few minutes on medium-high heat your potatoes should be looking golden on one side. After you’ve flipped them so side 2 is toasting up, season side 1. For these I went with a mix of paprika, cayenne, garlic powder, and a dash of cumin. And a pinch more sea salt. But whatever you have that sounds good to you in the moment should be equally good. When side 2 is golden, slide them onto a towel to catch the extra oil and keep them crisp.

Last step, toast up some tortillas… if you don’t have a gas stove, a tortilla warmer in the microwave would be second best. If you don’t have that… heat your tortilla whichever way, because everything will taste better if the wrap is warm.

Layer to assemble: potatoes on half the tortilla, followed by a green, followed by a generous portion of healthy fat. Pictured here: potatoes, miso-lemon kale salad, and avocado, with some crumbled cashew-milk cheese and some pinenuts I found squirreled away in my pantry when I stress-organized last week, wrapped up in a sprouted blue corn tortilla. These ingredients sound bougie, and they are definitely bougie af because I have food allergies and hafta roll this way, but you do you and we won’t judge each other’s grocery choices only the major stuff like hot sauce preference, okay?