The Best Mexican Chicken Tacos You’ll Ever Make

Hi, I'm Saul Montiel.

I'm a professional chef,

and today, I'm gonna show you how to make the best tacos.

It's so simple, so good.

You can do this anytime of the day.

It's layers and layers of love.

This is tacos, uno and uno.

What I'm looking for in the best taco is three things,

the quality of the tortilla,

the marinade and the way you cook the meat,

and also the salsa.

No matter what taco you are making,

I'm gonna give you the best tips to make a really good taco.

I'm gonna be teaching you how to make chicken tacos.

I normally didn't grow up eating chicken tacos,

but this is a taco that grow on me because of my kids.

They love chicken tacos,

and also, our customers at Cantina Rooftop.

In front of me, I have chicken breasts.

I'm just gonna do a butterfly cut.

Basically, you split it in half,

and it has the shape of a butterfly.

So the chicken breast,

before it was thicker here and thinner here.

Now it's just evenly.

You're gonna have a nice consistency

through the entire breast.

I'm gonna put it here.

Now I'm gonna move into marinade.

I think it's really good to use dry ingredients,

'cause with marinating meats,

it kind of gets through the meat faster

and also the cravings are deeper, stronger.

I'm gonna add a little bit of lime,

a little bit of salt,

garlic powder, onion powder, pepper.

You gotta make sure you spread it all over the breast.

A little more lime, little bit of salt.

Use enough salt to cover the chicken,

onion powder.

Same thing with the pepper.

A little bit of oil.

Let it dance.

And we're gonna let this sit for like 10, 15 minutes,

no more than an hour.

While this is marinate, we're gonna go and make the salsa.

Today I'm makin' a creamy avocado salsa for my tacos.

You have two types of salsa, spicy one and the mild.

Today, I'm just gonna be making the mild one

because of the simplicity and how delicious it is.

So I'm gonna use quarter of an onion.

Now, what I love about this salsa

is you can make it in three minutes.

Now, the Serrano,

it doesn't smell like anything,

but if I do this,

the flavors and the spiciness are waking up.

Oh, so I'm just gonna do half.

I'm gonna do lime.

I always do this to my limes, it's a really good habit.

So one lime for two avocados.

If it needs more, I'll add more.

The best way to choose an avocado is by the color.

It needs to be dark brown with a little bit of greenish,

not too green, not too dark, something in between.

Now this here, the avocado stem, you remove it.

If it's nice and yellow greenish, that means it's on point.

If it's brown or too yellow, it's no good.

When cutting avocado, you need to be very gentle.

I can already tell it's beautiful

by the color and the moment of truth,

carumba bay, voila.

Oh, you see this right here?

This is somebody that was squeezing

my avocados with their fingers.

Stop doing that, you're doing this to my avocado.

It's no bueno, man.

Now, removing the seed, right.

Use my thumbnail, push it, that's it.

We're gonna scoop our avocado,

Whole avocado, uno.

I'm going to remove this dark bruised part

that somebody did to my avocado.

He's gonna see somebody in the market grabbing the avocado,

I'm gonna give a lecture.

For the cilantro, I'm using the entire stems and leaves,

'cause the stems have a lot of flavor.

I'm gonna do a little bit of water, add some salt,

and now I'm going to puree this until smooth.

I'm gonna start slow.

[food processor whirs]

But look at the texture, this is what you want in your taco,

a creamy, smooth sauce.

[spoon bangs on floor]

It's amazing.

My salsa is ready to go, let's start cookin'.

The reason why I'm using cast iron pan

because it holds the heat really nice.

Also, I'm gonna heat up the tortillas here,

so I kinda want a wider pan,

so I can cook the tortillas here

to get the flavor of the chicken into the tortillas.

Anytime we cookin' chicken, pork, or fish,

you're wanting to sear,

you wanna give color to whatever you're cooking.

So the level of heat right here needs to be really hot,

but without burning.

And I'm using canola

because canola can hold heat really high.

So how do you know your oil is ready?

You move it around,

and if it travels faster, that means it's really hot.

Very important.

You're dealing with fire and wet,

so shut it off and now add it.

So now, you turn it back on, let it sit there.

You're gonna put some pressure, so it cooks evenly.

Now, all these flavor that comes out of the chicken,

we're going to use it to heat up our tortillas.

When cooking chicken or any kind of meat,

if you wanna nice sear, you leave it alone.

You don't wanna nice sear, keep playing.

There's no playing in the kitchen,

not in my kitchen.

Well, it depends if my kids are around, we play,

'cause we have to make it fun.

I can see the edges getting nice and gold,

so now we're just gonna flip it

and look at that beauty, so simple.

I will say this will probably take eight to 10 minutes,

four to five minutes on each side,

but it all depends on how thick your chicken breast is.

The thinner, the faster, the thicker, the longer.

The reason why I'm removing the chicken from the heat is

because I want all the moist to stay in the chicken.

If I cut it right away,

all the juices are gonna come out.

So you're gonna let it rest this for like four minutes,

and then we'll cut it.

And all these oils, it's love.

We not going to throw 'em away,

that's what we're gonna heat up our tortillas.

I'm going to remove these burn bits,

just putting oil all over the cast iron pan.

You're gonna go low heat.

I'm gonna get some corn tortillas.

I like to stack them together,

so they're kind of oily and steamy at the same time.

Keep turning

and look how we're removing the fat out of this.

We have to make sure they're nice and greasy and steamy

without being too oily.

This is why I'm moving all these tortillas around.

So we're just gonna keep turning this until

they're all nice and wet.

Now we're gonna keep them all together,

like that, so they stay warm.

You're gonna put it on a towel, let it sit there.

Let's move into assembling the tacos.

We just let our chicken rest for the past five minutes,

and it's ready.

Now we're gonna do small dices.

We're gonna make sure we keep it at the same size,

so every bite of your taco is very important.

You have the same amount of chicken on every bite.

So have a nice sear, it looks moist.

Now, let's grab our tortillas

and load it with a little bit of chicken

and we're gonna do the sauce.

We have to make sure the sauce is all over the taco.

I'm gonna do a little bit of cheese.

So the reason why I'm using shredded lettuce

is because I want to add freshness to this dish.

Same thing with the tomatoes.

They're nice and small,

so every bite has the same amount of love.

Now, I'm gonna do the crema,

which is a Mexican sour cream.

I'm gonna go a little bit,

and this is how I cook for my kids.

There's nothing wrong with these tacos.

A lotta people mom, you wanna be like,

Oh, you're making American tacos.

This is not American taco,

this is a chicken taco, and everybody loves it.

And now I love it because my kids are crazy about this.

We're going to finish it with a little bit of queso fresco.

It's a cow's milk cheese and a salty dry crumbly cheese.

Why did I use two cheeses?

One is more for like flavor,

and the other one is kind of like a seasoning

and also garnish.

Whatever you put on top, it's all up to you.

And this is the best way to make tacos.

My tacos are getting cold, and they're ready to be tasted.

Every bite has the same amount of love.

The avocado sauce, the sour cream,

the chicken is still moist,

and everything is just perfect.

So this taco, it's very simple to do it.

Even though I make a chicken taco,

I want you to use the tips that I just give you

about the tortilla, about the protein, about the salsa,

to make any taco that you want.

Three things, tortilla, filling, and sauce.