The main attraction for tacos is the filling.
And when it comes to fillings, it pays to be equal opportunity. Who doesn’t love a good carnitas taco with a little onion, cilantro and green salsa? Grilled chicken with a little pico or al pastor with grilled pineapple and green onion. I’m good with all of it. Gringo tacos with ground beef and Alton Brown’s Taco Potion #19? It’s in regular rotation. Even a vegetarian version with lentils and whizzed up cauliflower, yeah, why not? Where I draw the line, and this might surprise you, is at tofu.
Tofu is otherwise a mainstay in our refrigerator. In the summer months, it’s a life saver when it’s too damn hot to do much more than blanch some noodles, put together a sauce and throw on some cubed tofu. But for tacos? No.
Bittman’s Tofu Chorizo recipe in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago crystallized it — tofu and tacos shouldn’t mix. No-no-no-no-no, no one gets to say, “It’s tofu, what did you expect?” We’re past the time, well, in some parts of the country, we’re past the time of dismissing tofu as a weird ethnic food or as hippie, vegetarian food. This isn’t about having a mental block on tofu because of early incarnations of Tofurky or Tofutti in the 80s. It’s just a straight up evaluation. In tacos, tofu just doesn’t work for me.
You can press it to get rid of some of the water. You can use extra firm. You can crumble it enough to resemble picadillo, but the texture is just off. Tofu is just too soft to convincingly play the lead. And the Times recipe? It’s more picadillo than chorizo in its flavor, even with the vinegar. As written, it was pretty flat. It needed paprika and a good dose of cayenne and salt. I would have rather just had a couple of slices of avocado wrapped in a corn tortilla with a little salsa.
It’s tough not to feel a little cheated.
So now, what? Now I’m supposed to suggest some other vegetarian filling option. But, no. The pursuit of a delicious taco whether at home or at a taqueria is to just eat what’s good. And what’s good is Lisa Fain’s Red Chorizo from the Homesick Texan cookbook. Pork. Chiles. Onion. Garlic. Vinegar. Spices. Could you simply meet in the middle and use the chiles and spice mixture with tofu. Probably. I haven’t done it, but probably.
If you’ve been put off of commercial chorizo because of its ingredient list, with this chorizo, you know where the pork is from. Make sure it’s fatty enough. You don’t want the red grease running down the back of your hand (or maybe you do) but the 70/30 blend at our local market is fine and brings plenty of flavor. Not only is it good on its own as taco filling, it teams up nicely with a little scrambled egg for breakfast.