My kids decided it was time for a taco night. This usually involves a buying a sleeve of shells and a package of spice mix. Budget wise I am trying to avoid prepackaged anything. This also allows us to avoid all the other stuff that gets put into those packages. The sleeve of shells actually had a good list consisting of corn, oil, water and calcium hydroxide. The spice mix at $2 had all sorts of stuff in it:
- Dehydrated Vegetables (Onion, garlic, Celery, Bell Peppers)
- Salt
- Dextrose
- Cornstarch
- Spice
- MSG
- Flavor
- Artificial Flavor
- Citric Acid
- Hydrogenated Soy and Cottonseed oil
- Silicon Dioxide
- Disodium Inosinate
- Guanylate
So what do I actually need: Veggies, Spice, Cornstarch, and much less salt.
I decided to fry the onion with the meat and I didn’t have peppers or celery so I left them out. Searching online I found a number of different recipes and ended up picking the ideas out to make my own based on what I had and how hot I wanted it to be. I ended up with:
- 1 TBSP Chili Powder
- 1 TSP Cornstarch
- 1 TSP Salt
- 1 TSP Garlic
- 1 TSP Cumin
This made enough for 1lb of ground beef.
Brown up 1lb of ground beef with 1 small onion diced small. Drain the fat. Add the spice mix and 1/2 cup of water. Turn down and simmer until most of the water is gone. It will have a nice spicy gravy coating the meat.
Serve with you usual extras.
My Daughter: meat on the side, a shell that she eats like a chip, and carrot sticks.
The rest of us: Sour cream, meat, tomato, cheddar cheese and I can’t forget to buy my wife some lettuce for hers.
End Results. Nobody but me knew that I had made the switch. So it passed the taste test. Price wise it was cheaper but everything was already in the house so I couldn’t do a true comparison. Most importantly I know every ingredient I put in.