Use A Warm Piece Of Naan For The Flakiest, Most Delicate Tacos

Fusion cuisine is an ever-expanding culinary fashion that's a creative avenue for the multicultural society we live in today. Tacos may be an iconic Mexican food, but chefs from other cultural backgrounds have found unique ways to incorporate foreign flavors and ingredients into the beloved hand-held format. Japanese maki tacos, for example, swap a corn tortilla for nori. If you're looking for the flakiest, most delicious tortilla swap for your tacos, you've got to try a warm piece of naan.

Encompassing a wide range of regional varieties, naan is a flatbread that shares various overlapping characteristics with a tortilla along with many flavor and texture upgrades of its own. Like a tortilla, naan is malleable and made from a simple masa that puffs up as it cooks over high heat. Also similar to a tortilla, naan is often used to soak up and sandwich stewed meats and vegetables.

However, naan's flaky, pillowy, and bubbly bread-like consistency is a major textural upgrade from a flat, thin flour tortilla or dense corn tortilla. Its texture will absorb any saucy fillings while also providing a stable foundation. Plus, naan imparts its own flavorful decadence with a buttery richness punctuated by flavorful bits of char. Naan also comes in numerous varieties, elaborated with additional aromatics, herbs, and even cheese to further complement the fillings, sauces, and garnishes you pile into your tacos.

As an Indian ingredient, naan opens the door to the fusion of Mexican and Indian flavors. Our recipe for Indian steak tacos offers a great example of the delicious marriage of Indian and Mexican cuisine, using Indian masala to season Mexican flank steak or carne asada, and swapping a typical corn tortilla for grilled naan. Goat and lamb are popular Indian ingredients as well as the protagonist in traditional barbacoa tacos. Therefore, you could apply the same seasoning swap idea suggested by our recipe, adding Indian spice mixtures and aromatics to a barbacoa marinade.

Indian food, like Mexican food, is full of spicy, zesty, and aromatic flavors and heavily seasoned spice rubs, marinades, and stewed meats. You can use overlapping key ingredients for an easier culinary transition. For example, you can use a cilantro garlic naan to enhance the typical Mexican taco garnish of cilantro and diced onions. You can adjust the marinade for tacos al pastor to include Tikka masala ingredients by adding yogurt, ginger, and garam masala to the chili and pineapple juice mixture. For a tasty Indian take on fish tacos, you can fill a garlic naan with saucy, spicy fish curry.

Curried cauliflower with grilled onions accompanied by a cilantro-tomatillo chutney or an avocado cream sauce would be a flavorful Indian-Mexican fusion taco for vegans and vegetarians.