A few weeks back Julie asked a few of us if we wanted to take part in a special group blogging of The Pioneer Woman’s new cookbook, Food From My Frontier. We’ll be doing bi-weekly posts featuring some of our favorites. This week Julie chose fried tacos for us to make. I’m eager to see and hear what everyone thought of them.

I’m a fan of tacos. I may keep mine pretty basic, but I still love them. In fact, we have tacos pretty regularly here… at least every other week, sometimes every week if I’m not feeling very creative in the kitchen. They’re simple to whip up and really require no thought. I’m not sure why I’d never thought to fry tacos before. I love fried food and then there’s my love for tacos.

I know a lot of people shy away from making fried food because they’re greasy. These really aren’t greasy and they’re pretty simple to make. A bit more work than the average taco but totally worth it. Imagine: seasoned chicken in a flaky fried tortilla, then topped off with cheese, shredded lettuce and your other favorite additions. The cheese becomes hot and melty, it’ll want to ooze out with every bite. Aaah-mazing!

I made reduced quantities from what is shown in Ree’s recipe, since the original states it should feed 8 or make 16 tacos. We didn’t need anywhere near that much.

My notes:
-Don’t overfill your tortilla’s with chicken. Leave a bit of space on the edge because some will want to spill out while frying. If you can, push the chicken back in or just toss it. Whatever floats your boat.

-Do hold onto the top edges of the tortilla while frying. I let go ever so slightly and POOF it bubbled up like crazy. Completely comical but it’s hard to bounce back after that. Thankfully that was my first so I considered it a practice round.

-Use your favorite fillings. If Roma tomatoes don’t suit you, use another variety. I’ve used Roma for tacos in the past when our store was out of every other variety… how on earth does that even happen? The Mr wasn’t crazy about that so I stuck to Hot House. I opted to not use hot sauce at all. I also chose to add chopped pickled jalapeños as a topping instead of mixing in with the chicken.

-Wrap that sucker up good after frying and shake away. It’ll help remove the excess oil so the taco isn’t too greasy. If you want a little bit, don’t shake quite as much. I enjoyed having a slight bit amount of oil in mine. It was beyond perfect.

-After adding your cheese, wrap the taco back up. This will hold in the heat and help melt that cheese so it’s super gooey and awesome. You want that, trust me.

-Do eat these hot.

-Most of all… DO make these! I promise you, they’re incredibly delicious. And maybe even serve them with your favorite lemonade or margarita.

Be sure to check out the other Pioneer Woman Wednesday posts:
My Life as a Mrs
Running to the Kitchen
Wanna be a Country Cleaver

And hop on over to Julie’s for the complete recipe:
Table For Two Blog

If you try these, be sure to let me know! :)