Your Tacos Need Structural Support
Getting tacos to stand has always been a challenge. If you don’t plan ahead , there’s an understanding that you’ll end up scooping random ingredients into your mouth with your fingers, but in the beginning, the intention is to start with a vertical serving of goodies. Instead of chasing toppings around your plate, use a cupcake liner to keep individual tacos upright.
There are a few taco hacks, such as using an egg carton or an inverted muffin pan . While they are great for filling or serving multiple at once, I find these options a bit unwieldy for practical use. Basically, you still have to transfer the tacos to a plate, and if you want to take a break between bites, your taco will fall and its innards will slosh on your plate. Not pretty.
You can buy taco coasters made specifically for this purpose, such as a dinosaur -shaped coaster or a melamine coaster, but if you need one for every taco lover in your home, you can end up with a closet full of six bulky dinosaurs, or as many. wavy melamine plates that take up precious space. According to Elton Brown, these items are single-purpose, and I have no place in my kitchen for such nonsense.
To keep your tacos upright and in the perfect folded position, use cupcake liners. These inserts’ unique accordion folds allow the edges to hold the taco’s crescent shape, while the round base keeps it stable. The weight of the filled taco secures it in the liner and creates enough tension to keep the walls of the liner from popping open. Plus, cupcake liners come in 24 to 150 sleeves, so you can make a taco dinner at a party and still have enough left over for dessert. You can even take a paper taco liner and use it to catch any falling ingredients and pour them back onto the leftover taco or straight into your mouth.
I found that paper cupcake liners are perfect for hard-shell tacos (crispy shells already hold their shape, they just need lateral support), but the paper lacks the structural integrity to keep soft corn or flour tortillas flexible. Don’t despair: for these, foil cupcake pans provide the best support and are a great choice. For very heavy tacos, you can always double them. Reynolds manufactures cupcake liners, which include both foil and paper liners. I guess the intention is to have one of each used when baking cupcakes, but for our taco purposes, this is the perfect 2-in-1 scenario for taco liners. Just get out the paper ones you need for your crispy tacos for now, and put the foil liners back in for next week’s soft tacos on Tuesday. Never again will a taco tip over on your watch.