Description
Crispy, golden Potato Taquitos recipe. Perfect appetizer with seasoned potato filling wrapped in corn tortillas and fried to perfection!
Ingredients
For the Potato Filling:
- 1 pound red potatoes
- ½ cup cooked bacon bits OR corn kernels
- ¼ cup small-diced onion
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
For Assembly & Cooking:
- 8 corn tortillas
- Oil for frying (about 1 cup)
- Toothpicks
- Green salsa for serving
Instructions
Cut your potatoes in half so they cook faster. Throw them in a pot with enough water to cover them plus a little extra. My mom taught me this – if you don’t use enough water they cook weird.
Boil them hard for about 10 minutes until you can stick a fork through them easy. Mine always take closer to 12 minutes because I cut them bigger. Drain all the water out.
Mash the potatoes right in the hot pot with the skins on. Don’t get all fancy with a mixer – just use a regular masher and leave some chunks. Smooth mashed potatoes are actually worse for this because you want texture.
Mix in the onion, bacon or corn, butter, salt, pepper, and oregano. Taste it now – if it’s bland add more salt. If you can’t taste the oregano add more. It needs to taste really good by itself.
This is where people mess up. Stack your tortillas and wrap them in a wet paper towel. Cover every edge or they’ll dry out and crack on you.
Microwave 1 minute, flip the stack, microwave 30 more seconds. They should feel warm and bendy. If they’re still stiff give them another 15 seconds. Skip this and you’ll be cleaning tortilla pieces out of your filling.
Work fast while they’re warm. Take about half a cup of filling and put it along one edge of the tortilla. Not in the middle – along the edge so you can roll it tight.
Roll them like burritos but tighter. Don’t squeeze so hard you rip them but make them snug. Stick a toothpick through each one and put them seam-down on a plate. Cover with a damp towel.
Heat about half an inch of oil in your biggest pan over medium-high. When you stick a wooden spoon in it and bubbles form around the handle, it’s ready.
Put them in seam-side first so they seal shut. Don’t crowd them – I do 3 or 4 at a time. Fry about a minute per side until they’re golden brown. They should be sizzling loud the whole time.
Pull them out with tongs and put them on paper towels. Let them sit for maybe 30 seconds to drain, then eat them while they’re hot. Cold taquitos are sad taquitos.
Notes
Test one first before you fry the whole batch. Too hot oil burns the outside before the inside heats up. Too cold oil makes them greasy. You want them sizzling good but not screaming.
Don’t put too many in at once. They need room to get crispy. My grandma always said food needs space to breathe and she was right about most things.
Keep the rolled ones covered with a damp towel while you work or they’ll dry out and split open in the oil.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Category: Appetizer, Snack
- Method: Pan-Frying
- Cuisine: Mexican