19 Taco Recipes to Put on Repeat

To round out the tang and heat from the tomatoes and chiles in the sauce for the short ribs, cookbook authors Matt and Ted Lee add a little semisweet chocolate. "It's mellow and sweet," says Ted. "The chocolate puts everything in balance."

A quick marinade of soy sauce, garlic and ginger flavors the skirt steak for these super-easy tacos.

While most meat is put on the grill raw, these intensely flavorful Mexican beef short ribs from chef Roberto Santibañez are first braised with chiles and spices until meltingly tender. The cooked meat is then crisped on the grill, shredded and served in corn tortillas with a sauce made from the braising liquid.

These tacos come together in just two steps, and are ready in 35 minutes.

These salmon tacos are served with an apple-cucumber salsa.

Pickled jalapeño adds heat and bite to these crunchy slaw-covered chicken tacos.

In just under an hour, this recipe yields you 12 tacos—serve them with a plummy, peppery Zinfandel.

You can replace the chicken strips with chorizo in these tacos; for a vegetarian taco, Justin Large recommends subbing in crumbled spiced tofu. 

We recommend pairing these tacos with a smoky bock beer.

For his take on breakfast tacos, F&W's Justin Chapple fills warm corn tortillas with scrambled eggs, crisp bacon and Monterey Jack cheese.

Here, small (not baby!) carrots are roasted with fragrant cumin seeds, then served in warm homemade tortillas with juicy, meaty skirt steak. For a vegetarian version, swap out the steak for roasted mixed mushrooms.

Chef Enrique Olvera stuffs tacos with crispy pork belly, confited in fat, and serves them with a tangy salsa spiked with Mexican beer. 

Coca-Cola is the secret to this super-simple braised pork recipe from chef and cookbook author Marcela Valladolid. "The cola both tenderizes the pork and gives it a dark, caramelized crust," says Valladolid. "I like to shred this pork and serve right in the casserole that it cooks in. I lay out bowls of toppings so everyone can build their own tacos."

These playful brat-and-pepper tacos from Food & Wine's Justin Chapple are inspired by classic Italian sausage-and-pepper subs. 

F&W's Justin Chapple stews dark meat chicken with onion, tomatoes and spices, then spoons it into crispy tortilla shells for the perfect taco.

"You'd think the adobo would totally consume the flavor of the fish, but it doesn't," Marcela Valladolid writes. "It's a lighter, beachier version of a Mexican classic—perfect with an ice-cold beer. Topped with the traditional raw white onions, cilantro, and avocado (or guacamole!), it's heaven."

These hearty tacos, piled high with braised pork and topped with a shower of thinly sliced cabbage and cilantro, are a love letter to the Mexican cooking traditions that shape California cuisine. Fried in pork fat after cooking low and slow, the pork gets extra crispy without being dry. Dried chiles bring a mild, sweet heat to the salsa; their slight bitterness cuts through rich, fatty pork.

These griddled tacos are filled with fideos secos, a Mexican dish of thin spaghetti cooked in a chile-based tomato sauce until the pasta has absorbed the flavor and rich red color of the sauce.