14 Of The Best Ways To Upgrade Homemade Tacos

It's taco night! Man, don't you just love hearing those words? It's always a treat when tacos are on the menu, but it's also definitely true that even this timeless meal can get a bit repetitive after a while. If you're making your tacos with the same old seasoning packs and store-bought tortillas, or resorting to topping them with salsa and guacamole yet again, we wouldn't blame you if you're getting bored. What you need is an upgrade to your homemade tacos — and folks, we're here to show you how to do it.

The joy of tacos is that they're a meal made from many different component parts, and every single one of those parts can be improved. You can revamp your tortillas and give them a brand new lease of life by making them from scratch or using unexpected ingredients to take them to the next level (or, if you're really adventurous, creating them from cheese or eggs — yep, it can be done!). Your meat is also infinitely upgradeable, with extra additions, alternative cuts, and time-saving hacks that can give you huge flavor in no time. Plus, your toppings, veggies, condiments, and cheese can all be upgraded quickly and easily. Ready to make your Taco Tuesday recipes the best they've ever been? We sure are.

We all know the drill: We pile our meat into our tortillas, crown it with cheese, and then ... It's topping time. However, if you're only reaching for salsa, guacamole, and sour cream, you're only getting half of your potential. Tacos thrive on contrast, and these toppings give you nothing but softness and moisture — which is definitely welcome (and they sure taste good), but it's a little boring.

Instead, think outside the box. "Salsa and guacamole are great, but look to mix it up with fresh radish, chicharrones, or pickled onion," says Lauro Romero, King Tide Fish and Shell's executive chef (via Outside). "A fresh, warm tortilla is made better by a crunchy counterpart." A freshly made slaw can also be a good option, as it provides both crispiness and acidity, as well as a lightness that can balance out the intensity of your meat. If you don't have chicharrones on hand, you can create crunch out of some store cupboard staples. Try crushing up some potato chips or croutons and sprinkling them onto your taco, or scattering on some crispy fried onions. The latter will also add an intense, bassy fragrance and pop of umami that's very welcome.

You know the trouble with chicken tacos? Sometimes, they just don't have a lot of depth. Chicken meat doesn't quite have the same richness that beef or lamb does, even when you're using dark cuts like the thigh. This can often leave you wanting a bit more intensity. Well, in those moments, reach for a spice you already have lying around: cinnamon. Cinnamon gives chicken tacos a warmth and a roundness of flavor that contrasts with the other ingredients and gives the meat additional complexity. There's a reason it's used so commonly in barbacoa and mole poblano, and that's because it works excellently with the other spices that normally go into tacos, complementing them without overpowering them.

When adding cinnamon to chicken, though, you need to be cautious. It works best when mixed in sparingly. Adding too much will make your tacos taste and smell overly fragrant and give them an intense, perfumed quality that gets in the way of your other flavors. You should also remember that cinnamon's flavor tends to get more powerful and noticeable over time, so make sure you cook it thoroughly before adding more.

The Cheesy Gordita Crunch is a thing of beauty — a taco wrapped in a soft tortilla with a thick layer of cheese between the two. When chomped into, you get crispiness, softness, and gooeyness in one fell swoop, as well as a serious punch of flavor. However, real taco aficionados know that if you're smart enough, you only need one of those things to make a premium shell: the cheese. With a genius cheese hack, you can make a taco shell out of melted cheddar, giving your tacos a serious pop of umami while still maintaining their crunch.

To do this, simply make some discs out of grated cheddar, heat them in your oven for a few minutes until melted, firm, and still slightly pliable, and then shape them over the back of a spoon to give them that taco shape. As they cool, they'll continue to firm up; it's best to use them fairly quickly because they'll lose a bit of crunch as time goes on. If you don't have the energy to make taco shells out of just cheese, you can also make an imitation Cheesy Gordita Crunch by melting cheese onto your flour tortilla and wrapping it around a hard taco shell.

If you're making beef tacos, it's highly likely you're using the ground version. Look, there's nothing wrong with that: Ground beef is affordable, reliably tasty, and it's available pretty much everywhere. However, it's also a totally obvious choice, and it leaves you with tacos that taste the same every single time.

That's why we're strong advocates of using unusual cuts of meat, which will give your tacos a whole new lease of life. If you're feeling brave, how does beef tongue sound? It might sound a little intense, but once you get past the initial image, you're left with a buttery, beefy flavor that has way more complexity than ground chuck. When cooked low and slow, the tongue becomes meltingly tender — and the seasonings you add to your tacos will round out its flavor, giving it even more depth. Don't forget that heavily spiced meals like tacos are also a good opportunity to use some of those more rogue cuts of meat that you have sitting in your freezer. Kidney and liver meat can be a good option in this dish, although their slightly gamier flavor may be an acquired taste for some.

We love Tabasco — but it ends up in everything, folks. Its punchy, spicy, vinegary flavor brings dishes to life, but it can also push them in directions you might not have intended. When it comes to tacos, that's quite a big issue. "Tabasco is a vinegar-based sauce, so it really changes the flavors" of tacos, says "Tacolicious" author and chef Joe Hargrave over at Outside. You may find that your tacos end up tasting too acidic and tart, especially if you're finishing them with a hit of lemon juice and some sprightly salsa.

Instead, Hargrave recommends you amp up your tacos with a different hot sauce. "Using a Mexican hot sauce like Tapatío is a better choice," he says. While there's a slight tang to Tapatío, it's far heavier on red pepper, which gives it a gently building heat and an overall warmth that works well with tacos. Its garlic and spice notes also contribute well to your seasoning mix, building more flavor and a way more insistent fragrance than Tabasco will. Cholula is slightly more vinegary, but it's also got a good amount of spice to back things up and won't overwhelm your tacos.

After you've tried birria tacos, it can be hard to go back to the ground beef version. Stewed meat that's been simmering for hours can give tacos a wild amount of richness and depth and turn what can be a pretty sloppily made meal into a labor of love. Unfortunately, though, most of us don't have the time to make birria from scratch on Taco Tuesday: When you're tumbling through the door in the early evening and desperate for a meal, the last thing you want to do is flick on the slow cooker.

Well, guys, we've got some news for you: You don't have to. By purchasing premade birria from a grocery store, you can get those deep, luscious flavors in mere minutes. Trader Joe's birria is a great way to upgrade your tacos, as all you need to do is reheat it and then fork it into your tortillas or shells. You can also get options like Del Real Foods Barbacoa Beef on Amazon. Just bear in mind that you may need to drain these products slightly, to ensure that the birria juice doesn't soak through your tacos. Don't tip it down your sink, though: Use it as a dip instead.

Breakfast tacos always need eggs — but they usually go inside, right? Well, yes, but they don't have to. If you're bored of housing your eggs in a flour tortilla for your morning taco, take a leap of faith and give them the ultimate upgrade with an egg hack. Beat your eggs, pour them into a pan, and cook them into a thin, small omelet, flipping halfway through to ensure that it's fully solid on both sides. Then, use this omelet as a taco shell, loading your bacon, sausage, and hash browns into it. You get all of the flavor, none of the flour, and you keep your breakfast keto-friendly and high-protein. How good is that?

Naturally, this can be a slightly messier version of a breakfast taco, and it can err on the greasy side — so make sure you keep some napkins handy. If you prefer, you can also make mini tacos out of fried eggs by just folding them around your fillings. Just be warned that you might want to cook them over easy so that the yolk doesn't leak everywhere when you bite into it.

Making bread at home always seems like it's not worth the trouble — until you try it and realize how much better it tastes. That's as true for tortillas as it is for any other bread style, with making them from scratch being perhaps the best way to make tacos taste more traditional. "[M]ost people think the filling [of a taco] is the most important part, and while it is crucial, the authenticity of a taco comes from the tortilla," says ChaCha's Latin Kitchen's Chef Joe Martinez to Business Insider. Both homemade corn and flour tortillas have a fuller flavor than their store-bought counterparts. Homemade corn tortillas also have a more toothsome texture.

Because tortillas are cooked in a pan or on a griddle at home, you don't even need to wait around for them to bake — they can be made in a jiffy. For flour tortillas, you simply let the dough rest for a while then roll them flat and cook them in a pan for a minute or two on each side. Corn tortillas are just as simple, and while they might be slightly more prone to cracking, with enough water and a finely ground masa harina, they'll be as pliable as the flour version.

When we think of spice in tacos, we tend to think that it comes from a few different places: our seasoning mix, our salsa, and our sliced jalapeños. However, there's another source of spice that you probably haven't considered. Adding chorizo to tacos can make for the best meal ever, thanks to its ability to give them not just deep, rich, spicy flavors but a fantastic boost to the texture of your ground beef.

Chorizo is heavy on paprika, which gives your tacos a punchy smokiness, and its robust garlic flavor adds a lot of intensity to your dish. The pork fat in chorizo adds a serious smoothness and stops the spices from suffocating the rest of the dish, instead leveling them out and adding a rich mouthfeel in the process. The sausage also has an addictive chewiness that improves texture, but you can also cook it until it's crispy, which will also improve its taste. Just be aware that if you're adding chorizo, you may want to pull back on the other spices.

Fruit and tacos don't usually go together — but you know what, guys? They really should. When cooked properly, fruit can give your tacos way more depth and add layers you didn't know they needed. Pineapple works especially well in tacos, says HelloFresh's Chef Claudia Sidoti to Business Insider. "You haven't truly experienced pineapple until it's been warmed through and caramelized to bring out all of its juicy sweetness," she says. "And when you toss it into a taco with some gently spiced pieces of tilapia and a crispy slaw, everything you think is true about the fruit is suddenly flipped on its head as you venture into savory dinnertime territory." Excuse us, we're just salivating over here, no biggie.

Plus, you don't even have to cook your fruit for it to improve your taco. Next time you make a pico de gallo, add some small cubes of mango into the mix. The tart sweetness that they give it will round out its flavor considerably and act as a counterpoint to the spicy meat.

Cheese is often a bit of an afterthought when it comes to tacos — a delicious afterthought, but an afterthought nonetheless. Most people just reach for the cheddar or Colby Jack they already have in their fridge, which adds creaminess and a savory tang but won't revolutionize your evening meal. Well, we say it's time to think more carefully about your cheese. There are some amazing cheeses out there that can be the star of your tacos, and which will add more subtlety and richness to your meal, as well as give it more of a traditional feel.

Cotija cheese is one of the most common choices for tacos in Mexico, and we can see why. Its salty, sharp, crumbly nature means that it doesn't blend into the tacos in an insipid fashion but instead holds its own and stands out, adding punch where the taco needs it. If you want something a bit milder, you can opt for Oaxaca cheese, which has a buttery, slightly earthy flavor and which melts well. Chihuahua cheese also has a nice smoothness to it, with a touch of sharpness that's similar to mild cheddar but with its own flavor profile.

How many of you aren't heating your tortillas before you make your tacos? Don't be shy, we know you're out there. We do it too: When making soft-shell tacos, it's all too easy just to pull them out of the pack and fold them around your toppings without a second thought. The problem is that when you do this, you not only run the risk of tearing them, but you lose that uniformity of warmth that makes tacos feel so comforting.

So before you use your tortillas, warm them first. We promise it'll make your tacos way better. You don't have to do this one at a time, of course: You can just stack your tortillas to quickly warm them together by wrapping them up as one and then heating them in the oven. You can also just give them a quick blast in the microwave, although you may find that they cool off more quickly. Just make sure that you're never throwing your tortillas on the grill, which can dry them out.

Tacos are almost relentlessly savory, which is part of their appeal. However, if you're only looking to balance out this savoriness by adding spices or dairy products, you're kind of getting things wrong. You need acidity to contrast with savoriness, and you need it to be both intense and fragrant — and that's where lemon or lime zest comes in. A quick scrape of zest into your tacos can give them an immediate lift and stop them from tasting so heavy. It can also add a nice balance to their fragrance (and don't forget that we eat with our noses first, folks).

To ensure that your zest is evenly distributed, we prefer to put it directly in the meat itself. Add it when your meat is almost finished cooking so that you don't kill off its aroma and intensity. You can also zest it into your pico de gallo or just add it as a topping. Keep in mind that if you do this, though, things can get a little bitter.

We'll never stop marveling at the things that condensed milk can do in the kitchen, and improving your tacos is just one of them. Condensed milk can take carnitas up a notch by helping your pork caramelize, which gives it a serious intensity and deep flavor that you wouldn't get otherwise. It also adds a hint of creaminess that boosts pork surprisingly well. You just add your condensed milk with your other liquids before leaving it all to simmer together.

If you don't have any condensed milk on hand, you can use evaporated milk with a little sugar mixed in. Alternatively, just add some sugar to your pork mixture, which can achieve the same effect without the creaminess. Make sure you balance any sweetness you add with some acidity. If you're not contrasting it properly, you'll just end up with an overly sweet batch of meat. Trust us, it'll ruin your tacos.