Beef Tacos – the old school way!!! With juicy seasoned beef taco meat and crispy shells, this taco recipe is made with a simple yet flavour packed homemade taco seasoning that truly tastes like store bought.
I like to BAKE my tacos to crisp the shells and melt the cheese before piling on the fresh toppings. Because melted cheese wins over unmelted cheese every day!
Totally un-authentic Beef Taco Recipe!
You will never find ground beef / mince tacos in Mexico. Authentic beef tacos are either sliced seared steaks (like Carne Asada), or marinated beef chopped into thin strips that are pan fried to get golden crispy edges (taqueria style), or slow-cooked and shredded into sauce like this Shredded Beef Mexican Beef and Beef Barbacoa.
So beef mince tacos, the single most popular type of taco meat made in million and millions of households the world over, is totally un-authentic.
And that’s absolutely ok. We love them anyway – and we will always love them!
Bake them!
This is how I make my old school beef tacos – BAKING them to melt the cheese and crisp the tacos shells. I don’t know if that’s “normal”, but I’ll take any opportunity to melt cheese when appropriate.
Let me put it this way – if I had a choice of a cold slice of cheese slapped on bread, or a grilled cheese sandwich with gooey cheese oozing out the sides, I know which one I’d choose.
And you?? 😇
Homemade taco seasoning
Skip the packet seasoning! It truly is quite incredible how simple it is to make homemade taco seasoning. Garlic, onion, cumin, paprika, oregano plus optional cayenne pepper for a touch of heat.
Just pure, normal spices and herbs – no scary sounding ingredients you can’t pronounce like maltodextrin, silicon dioxide and ethoxyquin that you’ll find in packets of store bought!! (Yes really, just Google “Old El Paso taco seasoning ingredients”)
This taco seasoning mix is a terrific staple to add to your arsenal for all things Tex Mex, from Quesadillas to Burritos, Enchiladas to Taco Soup (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, it’s amazing!). While stores sell different seasonings for each of these, essentially they have the same flavour base which is the Taco Seasoning mix used in this recipe.
The taco meat
The taco meat recipe as written is my base recipe made with just beef and onion, and it will stuff 10 tacos generously or 12 normal size tacos.
Add vegetables
Add vegetables for extra nutrition and make one batch go further. Capsicum/bell peppers, corn, black beans, zucchini, to name a few. If you add vegetables, scale up the homemade taco seasoning using the recipe scaler (click on servings and slide up).
Old school taco toppings
There’s a plethora of taco topping options, but today I’m sticking with the old school way: shredded cheese, taco sauce (optional), iceberg lettuce, tomato, onion and even sour cream.
That’s right folks. We’re going Tex-Mex all the way. No fancy salsas, no authentic chilli sauces, no Mexican pickles.
Pile on that shredded cheese and sour cream! 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
Just to be clear – baking the tacos with the filling and cheese is totally optional.
If you’re not a Melted-Cheese-Monster, by all means feel free to serve it the normal way – bake the empty taco shells then lay it all out for people to stuff themselves. – Nagi x
More taco topping options
-
Guacamole, Avocado Sauce or avocado slices/diced
-
Pico de Gallo (chunky tomato salsa) or a smooth Salsa Sauce
-
Taco Sauce or hot sauce / chilli sauce of choice
And more tacos
-
Quick Chicken Tacos – 2 in 1 recipe, shredded taco seasoned chicken AND taco sauce
-
Beef Tacos – the old school way
-
Fish Tacos – marinated and grilled, healthy and delicious!
-
Pork Carnitas Tacos – the iconic Mexican pulled pork tacos
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Shredded Beef Tacos – tender slow cooked shredded beef in a deep flavoured Mexican sauce
-
Beef Barbacoa – another braised, shredded beef, but tangier and punching through with chipotle chill flavours
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
Sometimes it helps to have a visual, so watch me make this Beef Taco recipe – the old school way!
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Old School Beef Taco recipe
Ingredients
- 10 to 12 crispy taco shells ("stand and stuff) OR soft tortillas of choice (Note 1)
Beef Tacos:
- 1 tbsp oil
- 2 garlic cloves , minced
- 1 onion , finely chopped
- 500 g / 1 lb beef , ground / mince (Note 2)
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1/4 cup / 65ml water
Homemade Taco Seasoning:
- 1 tsp EACH garlic powder, onion powder, dried oregano
- 2 tsp EACH cumin powder, paprika
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (adjust spiciness to taste, can skip)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
Toppings:
- Shredded cheese (Note 3)
- Shredded iceberg lettuce
- 2 tomatoes , chopped
- 1/2 red or white onion , chopped
- Sour cream
- Taco sauce (optional)
- Other: coriander/cilantro , jalapeño, hot sauce / chilli sauce, pickled chillies, salsa sauce, pico de gallo
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180C/350F.
Beef Filling:
- Heat oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add garlic and onion - cook 2 minutes until golden.
- Add beef and cook for 2 minutes, breaking it up as you go, until it changes from red to light brown.
- Add Taco Seasonings and cook for 2 minutes until beef is cooked through.
- Add tomato paste and water. Cook for 1 minute or until water is evaporated and you're left with a juicy not not watery beef filling.
Bake (optional):
- Place taco shells in a baking pan (I can fit 10 in). Fill with taco meat, top with cheese.
- Bake 5 to 7 minutes until cheese is melted by which time the shells with be crispy.
Serve:
- Serve tacos hot, straight out of the oven. Lay out toppings and sauces of choice on the table and let everyone assemble their own!
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
LIFE OF DOZER
SO overdue for lawn mowing……
Another winner. Turned out exactly as promised. Thanks Nagi!
Made these tonight with your taco sauce. They were awesome, restaurant quality.
The beef filling here was terrific and baking with the cheese worked nicely. We make our own salsa and guacamole as toppings, plus black beans and substitute the sour cream with plain yogurt. Now a favourite!
I’m a working wife who’s never cooked anything before I was married. Your recipes were always my go-to whenever I need to make new dinners. Thanks for saving me.
This was GREAT! We love tacos , the flavor for us is spot on. Thank you so much for sharing!
Everyone loved this recipe and genius idea for baking – no more cracked tacos where all the ingredients then fall back onto the plate!! I am buying your book for my birthday (from all of my family that get to enjoy your recipes!!)
Oops! Forgot the stars!
I did not realise my entire life I had been doing tacos wrong! This is brilliant, the shells are lovey and crunchy and warm the cheese seals the meat in place so no more loose escaping bits and lovely contrast with fresh toppings! Even easier with the stand and stuff shells!!
THIS is the caliber of taco I’ve been wanting to make from home. Hubs said “don’t lose that recipe.” Will look for the flat bottom taco shells next time.
Nagi, I didn’t feel like cooking tonight. Leftover ground beef in the fridge so I thought … tacos. No taco seasoning … thought… @recipetineats will have a seasoning recipe and came across this recipe. It was like comfort food and hubby’s first words were, “oh my word”. Thanks!
I’m so glad I could help out with a last minute dinner!! N x
Finally – a hit with my picky 5-year-old twins and with us! Thanks for the inspiration. I cut the spices to 1tsp each as we like a milder flavour and baked the tacos without the filling so we could all add what we liked- cucumber cubes, lettuce strips, mince, cherry tomatoes and cheese. Thanks so much!
OMG Nagi. Hubby made this recipe. Two thumbs up from us.
We added guacamole and cheese, and used flatbread instead of taco shell as we did not have any in the house! We might even fancy it up next time and add kidney beans.
I have been wanting to make tacos from scratch for a while now but usually just get the box stuff, after finally making these I will no longer go back to the store bought! It’s amazing, can adjust the flavour as you please, taste so much fresher and goes a long way. Love it, thank you Nagi 🥰
Hi Nagi,
Do you have a homemade sour cream recipe that has the consistency, (or almost) of store bought?
I don’t sorry Sharon, I always buy it! N x
I just made taco’s and winged it on the seasoning as i didn’t realise we’d run out. As I sit here eating way over spiced taco’s I think surely Nagi has a home made seasoning. Wish I’d thought of it a half hour ago. Will put yours to the test next week.
Another winner Nagi! Never using El Paso again!!
I was craving for tacos and decided to make this for dinner tonight. They were sooo good! The homemade taco seasoning was a lot better than store-bought ones, and the Pico de Gallo was a great compliment to the tacos. Thank you, Nagi, for the recipe!
I said the exact same thing after making these. The El Paso stuff gives me stomach aches something fierce, but this one doesn’t, and tastes loads better. Plus far more satisfying making it yourself!
I made this tonight after browsing your recipes for a way to use up 500g beef mince I had on hand. It was super quick, simple and delicious. Instead of the taco shells we made then into nachos with tortilla chips. My 3 and 4 year old gobbled it down. My 4 year old even asked for more (he is the fussier of the two). Next time I am going to add kidney beans, carrot and boiled cubed potato to the mince to bulk it out more. Thanks for a wonderful family recipe.
Just made these tonight and loved doing them this way. Baking them makes it taste so much more put together. It really makes a difference. The only thing I changed was that I added a tiny bit of brown sugar to the spice mix which was nice
We do NOT like tacos! However, my daughter does, so I made these last night. The only thing I changed was to decrease the cumin to 1T to make it milder. The rest of the family almost decided they’d rather go hungry, but relented and took one taco each. Within minutes there wasn’t one single crumb left! Nagi, you’ve converted our family to taco lovers. Thank you!
Do you have cookbooks?
Only e-books available at the moment sorry Hoppy! N x