Walking Tacos

For years my family served Walking Tacos at parties. Whether it was a birthday bash during the grammar school years, a Halloween party during middle school, or a band get-together in high school, Walking Tacos have been among the most-requested foods at our house.

Portable, easy, delicious, and perfect for big crowds, this delightful treat has been a go-to recipe for me since I first learned about them from my sister-in-law years ago. They're called "Walking Tacos" because you walk around while you eat them.

I used to make these with ground beef but now that my youngest has adopted a vegetarian lifestyle, we've been Walking-Taco-less for a couple of years. Lately we've defaulted to serving our teenage guests cheese pizza, but that can get boring pretty quickly.


But wait! Hope is on the horizon! Morningstar Farms makes "Meal Starters" which are soy-based meat crumbles that act and taste a lot like ground beef. My daughter and I decided to see if this veggie-friendly item would work to bring back the Walking Tacos she used to love so much.

And guess what? It did. The taste was spot-on!

Now, before I provide the recipe, let me share a few tips with you. You can make this, exactly as described below, with either the veggie option, or with real ground beef. If you're making this for a crowd, you'll want to brown your ground beef on your stovetop, but then once it's seasoned, place it in a crockpot to keep nice and hot.

Also, if you're feeding a crowd (as we often do) you may want to buy the mini-chip bags in bulk. We get ours at Sam's Club -- usually 50 small bags at a time. (See, I really did mean a crowd!). Most kids eat two bags, but this makes great leftovers, so we always prepare extra and it never goes to waste.

Ready? Here goes:

Walking Tacos
(multiply as needed)

1 lb ground beef or veggie substitute
1 pkg taco seasoning (I use McCormick original)
+/- 6 small bags of chips (We like Cool Ranch Doritos, but this works well with regular Doritos and Fritos)
Chopped onion
Chopped tomatoes
Chopped lettuce
Shredded cheddar
Sour cream

Brown ground beef/heat beef substitute. Add Taco Seasoning and water as directed on package. Heat until beef/substitute is cooked through.

To Assemble:



Choose a bag of chips. Crush them (you may want to allow a little air to escape before you start sqeezing the bag. We've had a few bags explode with first-timers!)




Add a heaping spoonful of cooked and seasoned ground beef/substitute









Add shredded cheddar, and (as desired) chopped onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream.

Grab a fork and you're good to go! You eat right out of the bag as you mingle and chitchat.



One small word of warning. If you add a lot of ground beef to your bag, the bottom gets pretty hot. Just hold a napkin there (convenient for when you need to wipe your mouth!) and you're all set.

We're thrilled to know we can start serving these again here at the Hyzy house. My older two daughters won't have a problem with the meat version, but since they're not home that much these days, it looks like it's Morningstar Farms for us.

I hope you enjoy this. It's super easy and everyone who's ever tried it here, has gone on to serve it at their parties. It's genius!

On a personal note, although I'm super swamped with my current manuscript, I'm very much looking forward to Bouchercon. Just over a week from now--I can't believe it. I hope to see some of you there!

Best,
Julie
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Julie Hyzy’s White House Chef Mystery series features State of the Onion, Hail to the Chef, and Eggsecutive Orders (coming in January). All from Berkley Prime Crime.

Julie’s *next* newsletter is coming out very soon. Sign up to subscribe at http://www.juliehyzy.com/

Build a Better Veggie Burger and the World Will Beat a Path to Your Door

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Today: VEGGIE BURGERS

One of my daughters has gone vegetarian, and in fact, has been meatless for over two years now. Her level of vegetarianism allows for dairy products, and she enjoys cheese, eggs, and an assortment of veggies, so I don’t worry overmuch about her protein intake. There’s a White House Chef mystery recipe for Brussels Sprouts that she absolutely loves. I’ll share that one here another week. But today, let’s talk about Veggie Burgers.

You’ve seen them in the store: Frozen, boxed, and fairly expensive. We’ve tried several brands and lots of varieties. My daughter’s favorite, thus far, is Morningstar Farms, and we often pick up a box of “mushroom,” or “Grillers” for her. But a couple of weeks ago, when the Sunday Chicago Tribune offered a recipe for homemade veggie burgers and promised they would not only be less expensive, but tastier, I knew we had to try it.

The Tribune recipe called for a few ingredients my daughter doesn’t care for: mustard, ketchup, chili powder, and (optional) sautéed sweet potatoes. We decided to improvise. The Trib recipe suggested a base of any of the following: kidney, pinto or black beans. Having never attempted this before, we decided to make a batch of each and do a taste test. So, a shout-out to Zak Stambor of the Trib for inspiring us. Here’s our version of the homemade veggie burger and a step-by-step account of our failures and successes:

1/3 stick butter

1 T chopped onion
1 t minced garlic (someone in the family had bagged my fresh garlic and stuck it in the fridge. It was nasty when I pulled it out. Fortunately, I keep a jar of minced garlic around all the time.)
Salt and pepper to taste
One can “bean of choice”
2 T (give or take) shredded carrots
½ t salt
¼ t pepper
¼ cup Oatmeal
1 t Worcestershire sauce (Some are vegetarian, some are not. Read your ingredients.)

Optional: cooked brown rice as additional filler (see below for our attempts with this)

Melt the butter in a small frying pan, and add the onion. Cook until the onions are soft and translucent, then add garlic and little salt and pepper to taste. When this is cool, you will add it in, but do not wash the pan. You’ll need it again shortly.

We tried mashing beans in a bowl as directed, but that didn’t work at all. Improvising (which I love to do), we transferred the beans into three separate zip-top plastic bags. Using the flat side of a meat tenderizer and our fists, we smashed the beans until they turned into a nice smoosh. At that point we added the carrots, salt, pepper, oatmeal, Worcestershire sauce, and cooled onion/garlic mixture and smashed it around a bit more until well combined. It was at this point my daughter asked how we were going to get the mixtures out of the bag and into patties. Hmm… good point. This stuff is pretty sticky.


Squeezing the zip-tops, as one might a pastry bag, we placed a mound of each on clear plastic wrap, then folded up the edges and roughly formed a patty. Now… time to fry these up as originally directed in the frying pan with the remaining butter/onion/garlic.

Uh…were these supposed to be burgers? Or Sloppy Joes? The kidney beans held the patty shape—sort of. The other two bean varieties did not. Fortunately, we only made one of each. That left lots of mixture remaining for experimentation. We then added cooked brown rice (about a ½ cup) to each of the remaining mixtures and tried again. The patties held up a little better this time, again with kidney beans being our front-runner in keeping its shape.

But how did they taste?

Surprisingly, very good.

My daughter preferred the kidney and pinto bean varieties, and she liked them slightly better with the addition of rice. She said that the black bean version was not her favorite, but still good. I tasted all three, and agree. Were we to do it again, I’d stick with kidney. Easiest to work with, and excellent flavor. The best part? My daughter thinks this experiment was fun, which is high praise from a seventeen-year-old.

***Reminder: Don't forget to enter to win our weekly Mystery Lovers' Kitchen contest. The prize is a $25 gift certificate to the Williams-Sonoma kitchenware and gourmet food store. Just sign in to this blog and leave a comment or send an "Enter me!" e-mail with your first name and state to MysteryLoversKitchen@gmail.com We announce the winners right here every week.

Best of luck to all, and congrats to this week's winner Carol Noreen!

Julie

Julie Hyzy’s White House Chef Mystery series features State of the Onion, Hail to the Chef, and Eggsecutive Orders (coming in January). All from Berkley Prime Crime. Sign up for Julie’s newsletter on her website at http://www.juliehyzy.com/