Tacos Migas Estilo Austin
Tacos Migas Estilo Austin
Chapter 3 — Tacos: The Architecture of Assembly
If you want to know what a Sunday morning in Austin smells like, it’s this: hot manteca, blistering corn tortillas, and roasted jalapeños wafting out of a food truck window on East Cesar Chavez. Most generic home recipes will tell you to crush a handful of stale, bagged tortilla chips into a pan of eggs—do not do this. Bagged chips disintegrate into a depressing, salty mush. To think like a taquero, you must build the architecture properly: tear real corn tortillas by hand, fry them fresh in pork lard until shatteringly crisp, and scramble them gently so the eggs remain soft and velvety, providing the ultimate textural contrast against the crunch.
Before you start
Prepare the refried beans.
Make a batch of Frijoles Refritos con Manteca from Chapter 2 (p. X).
Make the emulsified salsa.
Prepare the creamy, dairy-free Salsa Doña from Chapter 2 (p. X).
Make the molcajete-crushed salsa.
Prepare the rustic Salsa Roja de Chile de Árbol from Chapter 2 (p. X).
Ingredients
- corn tortillas4 med
- pork lard2 tbsp
- eggs6 large
- white onion1/4 cup
- Roma tomato1/2 cup
- jalapeño1/4 cup
- fresh tortillas4 med
- Monterey Jack cheese1 cup
- avocado1 med
- fresh cilantro1/4 cup
- lime1 med
Method
- 01
Set up your assembly line.
Have your grated cheese, diced onions, tomatoes, avocado slices, and chopped cilantro in small containers next to the stove, and put a heavy carbon-steel skillet or cast-iron comal over medium-high heat on an adjacent burner.
- 02
Fry the hand-torn tortillas in hot manteca until shatteringly crisp.
Tear the stale corn tortillas into rough, 1-inch strips, melt the pork lard in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, and fry the strips for 4 to 6 minutes until deeply golden brown and blistered, then transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate and salt immediately.
- 03
Blister the aromatics in the residual lard.
Drain all but 1 tablespoon of the rendered manteca from the skillet, return it to medium heat, and sauté the diced white onion, Roma tomato, and jalapeño aggressively until the onions are translucent and the tomatoes have cooked off their excess water.
- 04
Soft scramble the eggs with the fried totopos.
Reduce the heat under the skillet to medium-low so you don't end up with rubbery eggs, pour the whisked eggs into the pan over the aromatics, and let them sit undisturbed for 15 seconds before gently folding in the crispy tortilla strips with long, sweeping motions.
- 05
Remove from the heat and fold in the cheese.
When the eggs are 90 percent cooked but still slightly wet and glossy, remove the pan from the heat entirely, fold in the Monterey Jack cheese, and let the residual heat melt it.
- 06
Double-warm the tortillas on the hot comal.
While the cheese melts, flick a few drops of water onto your fresh tortillas and drop them onto the dry, hot comal to steam the interior while the aggressive heat blisters the exterior with dark recado spotting, flipping after 15 seconds and keeping them wrapped in a clean kitchen towel.
- 07
Assemble the feast.
Smear a hot spoonful of the refried beans across the base of each charred tortilla, pile on a massive scoop of the cheesy migas scramble, top with avocado slices and cilantro, and douse in the creamy Salsa Doña or the rustic Salsa de Chile de Árbol.
Notes
Do not substitute the lard for vegetable oil.
Manteca de cerdo is highly stable at frying temperatures and promotes maximum crispness while providing an umami backbone that makes this taste like a real taqueria.