You Barely Need a Recipe for This Weeknight Dinner. That's What's Makes It Timeless.

Tacos dorados are prepared without exact measurements, relying on family-taught techniques and sensory judgment. Ground beef is seasoned, spread raw on corn tortillas, and fried in oil in a cast-iron esquile until golden and crisp. The tacos are served with salsa de molcajete, shredded cabbage, sliced tomatoes, optional ripe avocado, and crema. The style is associated with Ojinaga, Chihuahua, where families have made the tacos for generations. Portable, ready-made meals helped tacos spread through Spanish colonization, with tortillas, beef, and lard. The word taco may connect to mining culture or to a Nahuatl term meaning half.

"When Camelia Valdivia Carnero's son asked her for her tacos dorados recipe, he'd hoped for exact measurements. How much salt should he add to the ground beef? How much pepper? But that's not the spirit of the dish. Tanteale, she said, or feel it out. Tacos dorados are made by feel, with techniques passed down through relatives. Many have even learned how to prepare them by simply being in the kitchen when they're made."

"Ms. Valdivia Carnero, whose family has lived in Ojinaga in Chihuahua, Mexico, for six generations, still makes them as her mother and grandmother did, with seasoned ground beef, black pepper, garlic salt and her personal touch, chopped cilantro. The meat is spread raw on a corn tortilla, then fried in oil in an esquile, a cast-iron skillet, until golden and crisp. She serves them with a salsa de molcajete, shredded cabbage, sliced tomatoes, an avocado if one's ripe and crema."

"Spanish colonization brought waves of soldiers, miners and ranchers who sought out portable, ready-made meals, cooked with what was on hand: tortillas, beef, lard. (The word taco is even thought to come from mining culture what miners called the wrapped explosives they used to excavate ore according to Jeffrey M. Pilcher, the author of Planet Taco, though some historians also point to the Nahuatl word tlahco, which means half, as the etymological source.) With their ease and convenience, they eventually became a weeknight staple of the region."

Read at cooking.nytimes.com