Taco night at home usually means spiced mince, a packet of tortillas and a jar of something red. The mince gets all the attention, and the jar is doing the part that actually carries the plate.
Make the salsa yourself and even a plain filling tastes deliberate.
Three salsas, three techniques
Raw: pico de gallo
Tomato, white onion, coriander, green chilli, lime, salt. All chopped small, mixed, left ten minutes. The only rules are to seed the tomatoes if they are watery, and to salt it early so the onion softens and loses its harshness.
Serve with anything rich: pork, beef, cheese, fried fish.
Charred: salsa roja
Tomatoes, a couple of garlic cloves in their skins, half an onion and dried or fresh chillies, all blackened in a dry pan or under a hot grill until the skins blister. Blend with salt and a splash of water.
Charring is the whole point: it gives the smoky, slightly bitter backbone that raw salsa cannot. Blend it coarse, not smooth.
Green and sharp: salsa verde
Tomatillos if you can get them, otherwise green tomatoes with extra lime. Charred the same way, blended with coriander, green chilli, garlic and lime. It should taste bright enough to make you blink.
The pickled onion that goes on everything
Slice red onion thinly, cover with lime juice or vinegar, add a good pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar, leave twenty minutes. It turns pink, softens and stops being aggressive. It belongs on every taco you will ever make, and it keeps a week in the fridge.
Warm the tortillas properly
This is the step that separates a taco from a wrap. A dry pan over medium-high heat, twenty to thirty seconds a side, until the tortilla puffs slightly and smells toasted. Stack them in a clean tea towel as they come off; they steam each other and stay soft.
Corn tortillas taste more of something and are naturally gluten-free; flour ones are softer and more forgiving. Cold tortillas straight from the packet are neither.
Fillings that do not need a packet
Chicken thighs rubbed with smoked paprika, cumin, oregano and salt, roasted hard and shredded with the pan juices.
Mushrooms seared in a hot dry pan until they squeak, then browned in oil with garlic and chipotle.
Black beans fried with onion and cumin, half of them mashed into the pan so the mixture holds together.
White fish in cornflour with chilli powder, fried two minutes a side, with cabbage and lime.
Season the filling on its own terms and keep it drier than feels right. Wet fillings collapse tortillas.
Building the plate
Something warm, something crunchy, something sharp, something creamy. Filling, then cabbage or raw onion, then salsa, then the pickle, then a spoon of soured cream, mashed avocado or crumbled salty cheese. Coriander if your household is on the correct side of that argument.
Two small tacos beat one enormous one. Anything you cannot fold and lift is a bowl pretending to be a taco, which is also fine, but then serve it in a bowl with rice.
Make ahead, sensibly
Salsas keep three or four days in the fridge and improve overnight, except the raw one, which is best within a day. Pickled onion keeps a week. Fillings reheat well. Tortillas should be warmed at the last minute, always.
Which means taco night is mostly a Sunday job with a fifteen-minute Wednesday, and that is the entire argument for doing it this way round.