Taco Seasoning

Homemade Taco Seasoning is made with just a few simple ingredients that you probably already have in your spice cabinet. Once you make it, you will never want to buy it from the store again!

My family had the awesome experience of being a host family to several foreign exchange students when I was in high school. The first of them was Bob Smith who was from Europe.

Except his name wasn't really Bob Smith.

After trying fruitlessly to teach my family to pronounce his very French-sounding name correctly, he decided it would be easier for us to refer to him as Bob Smith.  So, for the duration of his time in the Wade household, he was Bob.

While he stayed with us, Bob got a glimpse of American culture through dining out, outings with the family (Sea World!), and simple day to day life, which I'm sure was quite an experience seeing as it's me and my three sisters he was dealing with.

We tried to show Bob what our American way of living was like, which naturally included my parents preparing some of our favorite meals.  We were big on taco night at our house!  Although, more often than not, taco night was taco salad night.

I remember Bob watching us build our taco salads, some of us crushing our tortilla chips into tiny little pieces and others leaving them whole.  We piled on the seasoned ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cheddar cheese and sour cream, and showed Bob how each one of us customized our taco salad to our personal tastes.  It was so fun and such a great memory!

It wasn't until years later that I got this taco seasoning recipe from my older sister.  When I use it to make taco salads, I fondly look back on Bob's time with us.  The original recipe for this seasoning called for way more salt, which I thought was really unnecessary. so I scaled it back.  It also called for dehydrated garlic, which I don't usually stock in my pantry.  I've adapted the recipe to suit my family's taste and I swear I'll never go back to the packaged stuff again!

Interested in checking out more homemade goodies? Here are a few more of my homemade pantry staples from the archives that I simply can't live without:

Pictured:
Homemade Chocolate Sauce
Homemade Creamy Caesar Dressing
Homemade Enchilada Sauce

If you try this homemade taco seasoning on your next taco night, I'd love to know what you think in the comments below. I hope you love it as much as we do!

Yield: servings

Homemade Taco Seasoning

Homemade Taco Seasoning is made with just a few simple ingredients that you probably already have in your spice cabinet.

  prep time: 5 MINcook time: 0 MINtotal time: 5 MIN 

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons onion powder or 1/4 cup dried minced onion
1/4 cup chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon kosher salt
4 teaspoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine all ingredients in a small bowl.

2. When ready to use, brown one pound of ground beef in a large frying pan. Drain grease.

3. Add 1/2 cup water and 2 tablespoons of the seasoning to the ground beef and stir to combine.

4. Simmer for approximately 5 minutes. The water and seasoning mixture will slightly thicken and you will be left with perfectly seasoned taco meat!

NOTES

The picture shows the spices layered, but you will mix it up completely before using.

Store in an airtight container until you've used it all up!

Author: Becky

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