The Best Taco Fillings

Tacos. Tacos. Tacos. There’s so much goodness wrapped up in a taco.

Tacos are filling, fun, and full of great flavors. Plus, it’s not too expensive to rustle up some tortillas and easy taco fillings, making them a good cheap eat, for sure. 

For our part, my family could eat tacos several times a week without complaint! As I tell my husband on date night, “Tacos are always a good idea.”

Serving a taco bar is great for party food or any weeknight dinner!

How to Make Great Tacos & Taco Fillings

Let’s consider how to build a better taco. You’re going to have three basic components:

1. taco shells/wrappers 
2. taco fillings
3. taco toppings

Let’s take a look at the different options:

Taco Shells

Taco shells can range from crunchy fried shells, soft tortillas (flour, corn, whole wheat), and even lettuce wraps. There are small and large tortillas.

You can buy tortillas at the store or make your own corn tortillas or your own flour tortillas. If you buy store tortillas, be sure to warm the tortillas properly so they don’t fall apart once filled.

You can even fry your own taco shells – which I might add, are amazing and addicting and probably the best thing to happen to taco night EVER. But I digress…. 

Certain tools come in handy when making homemade tacos, like a tortilla press for making homemade corn tortillas and taco holders or taco baskets for serving tacos, but you don’t absolutely have to have them.

Once you’ve got your shell, you’ll add a small amount of filling and then various taco toppings.

Choose a few recipes from each of these categories to make a most epic taco bar for your next game day or dinner party.

Taco Fillings 

There are so many great meats, beans, and veggie combinations that you can use for filling the taco. Some quick non-recipe ideas include:

Stir up a batch of homemade taco seasoning and use it to season ground beef, ground turkey, pulled pork, shredded beef, shredded chicken, or fish for a homemade taco meat.

Cook up black beans or pintos and mash to the texture you like. Season with salt and pepper and chile powder for an easy bean taco filling.

Sauté sliced mushrooms, onions, and poblano chiles for a fun veggie taco filling. You can also whip up some fajita veggies of peppers and onions.

Taco Toppings

Taco toppings can be pretty simple or fairly elaborate depending on your filling and how deluxe you want to get. Any combination of these taco toppings is delicious:

• shredded lettuce, shredded cabbage, baby spinach, or coleslaw
• shredded cheese, such as Jack, cheddar, or a mix
• chopped tomatoes
• chopped onions or scallions
• sliced pickled onions
• chopped cilantro
• salsa – there are so many great homemade salsa recipes out there, such as pineapple salsa, fresh salsa verde, pico de gallo, peach mango salsa, and strawberry salsa
• hot sauce 
• sour cream or crema
• guacamole or diced avocado
• sliced olives
• lime wedges

Once you vary the wrapper (crunchy, soft, flour, corn, whole wheat, lettuce leaf), the filling, and the toppings, there’s really no end to the taco combinations you can create.