Walking taco
A walking taco is an American snack in which a single-serving bag of corn chips is split open and filled with taco-style toppings such as seasoned ground beef or chili, cheese, lettuce, onion and jalapeño, then eaten straight from the bag with a fork. A close cousin of Texas Frito pie, it is a staple of school sports concession stands, fundraisers and fairs.
Relationship to Frito pie
The walking taco grew out of Frito pie, the Texas and New Mexico dish of corn chips topped with chili, cheese and onions. Fritos corn chips were created in San Antonio, and the company soon moved its headquarters to Dallas. Texas Monthly has noted competing origin stories for Frito pie: Frito-Lay has credited Daisy Doolin, mother of founder C. E. Doolin, with pouring chili over the chips in the 1930s; others credit Doolin's secretary Mary Livingston; and a popular claim names Teresa Hernández, a lunch-counter worker at the Woolworth's in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the 1960s. Texas Monthly's Texanist calls the Santa Fe claim unsupportable, since a Fritos marketing campaign already included a Frito pie recipe in the 1950s.
The most familiar way to serve Frito pie, by slitting a bag of Fritos and ladling chili inside, is exactly the walking taco's format. Texas Monthly lists walking taco and taco in a bag among the many names for this bag-served dish, alongside Frito boat and Texas straw hat. The dish's popularity in Texas inspired stunts such as a 20-foot, 10,000-pound Frito pie made by the Odessa Chuck Wagon Gang at the Permian Basin Oil Show.
Description
Where classic Frito pie relies on chili, the walking taco leans toward taco flavors: ground beef cooked with taco seasoning, shredded cheese, lettuce, diced tomato, onion, jalapeños, salsa and sour cream. Vendors often use nacho cheese-flavored tortilla chips instead of Fritos. Because everything goes into the snack-size bag, there are no plates to wash, which makes the dish popular at high school football games, youth sports, church and school fundraisers and county fairs, especially in the Midwest. Texas Monthly has described Frito pie served this way at rural football games for about a dollar, eaten with a plastic spoon.
Recipe
Ingredients
- 8 single-serving bags of Fritos or nacho cheese tortilla chips (about 30 g each)
- 500 g ground beef
- 2 tsp chile powder, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp onion powder, salt
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 1/2 cups grated cheddar
- 2 cups shredded lettuce
- 1 tomato, diced, and 1/2 onion, chopped
- Pickled jalapeño slices, salsa and sour cream
Steps
- Brown the beef in a skillet and drain the fat.
- Add the spices and water and simmer until thick, about 5 minutes.
- Gently crush the chips inside each bag, then cut the bag open along one long side or across the top.
- Spoon in hot beef, then cheese so it melts, then lettuce, tomato, onion, jalapeños, salsa and sour cream.
- Hand out with a fork and eat from the bag.
For Frito pie, replace the taco meat with a ladle of beef chili and top with cheese and chopped onion.
Reviews
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See also
References
- "The Texanist: Can You Explain to My Frito Pie–Hating Husband Why He's So, So Wrong?". Texas Monthly. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
- "Texas Primer: Frito Pie". Texas Monthly. Retrieved 2026-10-10.