The Best Type Of Tortilla To Hold Up Hearty Breakfast Tacos

Tacos, like sandwiches, are handheld meals that you can eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. While al pastor, carnitas, and fish tacos may be classic lunch and dinner offerings from your local street food cart or taqueria, breakfast tacos are in a class all their own. As opposed to a single guisado or stewed meat, breakfast tacos pack a tortilla with multiple hearty ingredients like eggs, cheese, potatoes, bacon, chorizo, and beans. Plus, you'll probably end up tacking on a drizzle of your favorite salsa and maybe the classic onion and cilantro garnish.

The best type of tortilla to hold up hearty breakfast tacos is the corn tortilla. They tend to be smaller than your average flour tortilla, but corn tortillas have the thickness, sturdiness, and flavor you need for the perfect breakfast taco. Furthermore, corn tortillas are the most authentic option as they are the base of most Mexican street tacos. Flour tortillas are a northern Mexican staple used to make quesadillas, burritos, fajitas, and, in some cases, tacos. While they crisp up nicely to contrast gooey cheese in a quesadilla, they're more likely to buckle under the weight of a multi–ingredient breakfast taco.

Corn tortillas have a much sturdier texture and come in various sizes and thicknesses. You'll find extra-thin, smaller, thicker "street taco," and super-soft corn tortilla varieties alongside their packaged flour tortilla counterparts. The savory earthiness of corn will also enhance and complement the spicy, zesty, and umami-rich Mexican flavors inherent in breakfast taco fillings.

Corn tortillas come in white, yellow, and blue corn varieties. Yellow corn tortillas have a richer corn flavor than white and blue, which both have a mellow nuttiness and earthiness. Local grocery stores in neighborhoods with large Mexican populations along with Mexican markets and bakeries will even offer housemade, fresh corn tortillas. Unless you eat corn tortillas fresh out of the press, they will harden and dry out quickly. It's easy enough to bring them back to their malleable, soft, yet sturdy state by simply heating them over a skillet, flat top, or comal. Most Mexican taco carts will fry up meat, potatoes, or eggs on one end of the flat top while simultaneously heating corn tortillas on the other end. Once you get your skillet nice and hot, corn tortillas need a quick 30 seconds to 1 minute on each side.

Since corn tortillas are generally smaller than flour tortillas, you can use two corn tortillas for your breakfast tacos. You can stack them on top of each other or leave some overlap on either side to extend the length of your taco. Stacking corn tortillas offers extra protection against breakage, but it'll also provide a delicious textural contrast. In the case of a chorizo breakfast taco, the first corn tortilla will absorb all of the flavorful chorizo oil, which will soften and saturate it with flavor, while the extra corn tortilla will maintain its delightfully gritty chew.