Tex-Mex tacos
Tex-Mex tacos are the tacos of Texas Mexican cooking, a regional American cuisine rooted in Tejano home kitchens. The family includes the crispy taco of seasoned ground beef, lettuce, tomato and yellow cheese, San Antonio's puffy taco, tacos al carbón and fajitas, and the flour-tortilla breakfast taco.
Background
Tex-Mex grew out of the cooking of Tejanos, Texans of Mexican descent, whose foodways took shape when Texas was part of New Spain and then Mexico. The name began as a shorthand for the Texas Mexican Railway, chartered in 1875, and by the 1920s the hyphenated term was being applied to Texas-born Mexican Americans before it was attached to their food. From the 1880s onward, the chili queens who sold chili con carne, tamales and enchiladas in San Antonio's plazas introduced visitors to the food, and in 1900 Otis Farnsworth's Original Mexican Restaurant in San Antonio began serving a plate with rice and beans that became the model for the combination plate. Dallas chains such as El Fenix, founded in 1918, spread the style.
In 1972 Diana Kennedy's The Cuisines of Mexico drew a sharp line between Mexican regional cooking and the food served in Texas, a distinction that wounded Tex-Mex cooks but also helped define Tex-Mex as a cuisine of its own. Texas Monthly writer Patricia Sharpe places the golden age of classic Tex-Mex roughly between the Second World War and the Vietnam War, built on yellow American cheese, chile con carne and the corn tortilla.
Taco styles
Crispy tacos. The classic Tex-Mex taco is a corn tortilla fried and folded into a hard shell, filled with seasoned hamburger meat, lettuce and tomato and often topped with grated yellow cheese. Sharpe recalls eating them in that form at Austin's El Toro in the 1950s.
Puffy tacos. In San Antonio, raw masa is fried until it balloons into a light, crackly shell. The style is associated with the Lopez family of Ray's Drive Inn and Henry's Puffy Tacos.
Tacos al carbón and fajitas. Grilled skirt steak wrapped in flour tortillas comes from the ranch country of South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. Ninfa's in Houston sold tacos al carbón from its opening in 1973 and helped turn fajitas into a statewide restaurant craze.
Breakfast tacos. Flour tortillas wrapped around eggs, potatoes, chorizo, bacon, beans or barbacoa are a morning ritual in San Antonio, the Valley and Austin, though Sharpe argues they belong to Mexican American home cooking more than to classic restaurant Tex-Mex.
Ingredients
Flour tortillas are more common in Texas than in most of Mexico; the Handbook of Texas notes that they began replacing corn tortillas in many Tejano homes once wheat flour became readily available in the 1930s. Beef, a product of the Texas ranching economy, dominates fillings. Cumin, chile powder blends such as the one sold by San Antonio's Willie Gebhardt, and processed yellow cheese give Tex-Mex its familiar flavor, and many tacos arrive alongside rice, refried beans and chile con queso.
Recipe
Ingredients
- 10 corn tortillas
- Vegetable oil for frying
- 500 g ground beef
- 1/2 onion, finely chopped, and 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tbsp chile powder and 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1/3 cup water or beef broth
- 2 cups shredded iceberg lettuce
- 1 large tomato, diced
- 1 cup grated mild cheddar or longhorn cheese
- Picante sauce or salsa
Steps
- Brown the beef with onion and garlic in a skillet, breaking it into small pieces. Drain excess fat.
- Add chile powder, cumin, salt, pepper and water and simmer until the liquid is absorbed, about 8 minutes.
- Heat 1 cm of oil in a skillet. Fry each tortilla briefly until pliable, then fold it with tongs into a U and fry both sides until crisp.
- Drain on paper towels.
- Fill with the beef, then lettuce, tomato and cheese, and serve with picante sauce alongside rice and beans.
Where to try it
- El Fenix, Dallas, Texas: Founded in 1918; one of the earliest Tex-Mex restaurant chains.
- Ninfa's, Houston, Texas: Opened in 1973 and sold tacos al carbón, helping launch the fajita craze.
- Ray's Drive Inn, San Antonio, Texas: Lopez family drive-in associated with the origin of the puffy taco.
Reviews
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See also
References
- "Tracing the History of Tex-Mex". History.com. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
- "Tex-Mex 101". Texas Monthly. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
- "Tex-Mex Foods". Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
- "An Illustrated History of Tex-Mex". First We Feast. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
- "The Delicate History of the Puffy Taco". Texas Monthly. Retrieved 2026-10-10.