If you prepare taco salad often enough to merit wanting to serve it restaurant-style, in the traditional deep-fried, flour tortilla bowl, I highly suggest making a small investment, $15.00-ish, in a metal, one- or two-piece fryer-basket that will not only make this task easy-as-pie, it will keep you or yours from getting burned by jury-rigged crack-pot methods -- puns intended. All kidding aside, regulating the heat on an open pot of hot oil on the stovetop, while maneuvering a tin can placed inside a larger can to form the taco bowl, is an accident waiting to happen.
Serving taco salad in edible, fried or baked bowls is mealtime fun. While they lend a festive, impressive "you cared enough to make the bowls" touch to the meal, they allow family and friends to add crunch to their salad as they work their way down, through and around all the goodies in the bowl. By choosing and using the tool best suited to you, the bowls deep-fry, one-at-a-time, in a very short time (2 1/2 minutes) and emerge uniform in color, even-sized and similar in shape.
Three similarly-priced taco-bowl fryer-basket gadgets...
... three similarly-sized, great-to-eat taco bowls:
One, two, three (in order of my favorite gadgets):
~ Step 1. Remove fryer-basket from deep fryer. Preheat corn or peanut oil in deep-fryer, according to manufacturer's instructions, to 375º. Place two-three layers of paper towels in bottom of a large pan or baking pan. Ready a 3-minute "egg" timer, and, depending on the gadget you're using, a metal spoon and a pair of tongs too.
~ Step 2. In gadget of choice (#1, #2, or #3), position 1, 8"-round flour tortilla in the bottom to form a bowl. In the case of gadget #1, a two-piece fryer basket (and my favorite), this means placing the flour tortilla in between the two pieces, which will hold the tortilla securely in place during the frying process.
~ Step 3A. To deep fry in gadget #1, lower the fryer-basket into the preheated deep-fryer. With fryer-lid open, fry the taco bowl until lightly-browned and firm, about 2 1/2 minutes. Lift basket from hot oil. Remove the top from the fryer-basket and the invert taco bowl onto paper-towels to drain and cool. Sprinkle inside of bowl with salt or sea salt the moment it comes out of the fryer basket. Easy peasy perfection.
~Step 3B. To deep fry in gadget #2, lower the fryer-basket into the preheated deep-fryer. Place the back side of a large metal spoon into the bottom of the tortilla, to keep the bowl from prematurely floating to the top. With fryer-lid open, fry the taco bowl, with spoon in place, until lightly-browned and firm, about 2 1/2 minutes. Lift basket from hot oil. Invert the taco bowl onto paper-towels to drain and cool. Sprinkle inside of bowl with salt or sea salt the moment it comes out of the fryer basket. This basket works fine, but, it requires being hands-on the entire time.
~ Step 3C. To deep fry in gadget #3, with a spoon placed in the bottom of the fryer-basket, lower the fryer-basket into the preheated deep-fryer. With the spoon in the bottom of the tortilla, to keep the bowl from prematurely floating to the top, with fryer-lid open, fry the taco bowl, repositioning the spoon as necessary (several times) in the the bottom of the taco bowl, until lightly-browned and firm, about 2 1/2 minutes. Lift basket from hot oil. Invert the taco bowl onto paper-towels to drain and cool. Sprinkle inside of bowl with salt or sea salt the moment it comes out of the fryer basket. This fryer basket works just fine too, but it requires being hands-on and "on your game" the entire time.
Be smart. Be safe. Use a fryer-basket to fry taco bowls:
Have some mealtime fun. Serve fully-loaded taco salads:
How to Deep-Fry Restaurant-style Taco Salad Bowls: Recipe yields instructions for deep-frying as many taco salad bowls as you want to, plus recommendations for purchasing fryer-baskets.
Special Equipment List: deep-fryer; taco-bowl-shaped fryer-basket insert to use in a pot or a deep-fryer; 3-minute "egg" timer; large disposable pan or baking sheet; paper towels; large spoon (optional); tongs (optional)
Cook's Note: For those of you who love to eat and cook your own Tex-Mex food, I'm going to suggest this: next time you make your favorite chili, bean dip or a bowl of chile con queso, take 20 extra minutes and deep-fry some tortilla chips (in corn oil). Tortilla chips deep-fried at home are head-over-heels better than any that come out of any $4-$6 bag of any generic-to-gourmet brand. Take 3 minutes for ~ Deep-Fried & Crispy Corn Tortilla Chips (Totopos) ~.
"We are all in this food world together." ~ Melanie Preschutti
(Recipe, Commentary and Photos courtesy of Melanie's Kitchen/Copyright/2019)
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