Hard-shell taco facts for kids
A hard-shell taco from a taqueria in Sacramento, CA
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| Alternative names | Crispy taco |
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| Type | Finger food |
| Main ingredients | Tortillas, meat, vegetables, cheese |
The hard-shell taco or crispy taco is a yummy Mexican dish. It became popular in the United States. People first talked about hard-shell tacos in the early 1890s. By the early 1900s, you could find these tacos in Mexican-American communities. Fast food places like Taco Bell helped make them super popular in the 1950s.
What's a Hard-Shell Taco?
There are many kinds of hard-shell tacos. The most common one has a crispy, fried corn tortilla. It is filled with seasoned ground beef, cheese, and lettuce. Sometimes, people add tomato, onion, salsa, sour cream, or guacamole. You can buy these tacos at restaurants and fast food places. You can also find kits in supermarkets to make them at home. In Spanish, hard-shell tacos are sometimes called tacos dorados. This means "golden tacos." It's also a name for taquitos, which are similar.
How Hard-Shell Tacos Started
No one person is fully credited with inventing the hard-shell taco. It probably existed in some form before anyone wrote it down. The first mentions of hard-shell tacos are from the early 1890s. A Mexican author named Manuel Payno wrote about them in his book Los bandidos de Río Frío.
In the early 1900s, different kinds of tacos became popular in the United States. This was especially true in Texas and California. The first English description of a taco was in a 1914 cookbook. It was called California Mexican-Spanish Cookbook by Bertha Haffner Ginger.
By the late 1930s, companies started selling tools and ingredients for making hard-shell tacos. The first patents for taco-making machines were filed in the 1940s. Juvencio Maldonado, a restaurant owner from Oaxaca, is sometimes said to have invented a machine for making hard-shell tacos. He got a patent for it in 1950.
The most common hard-shell taco in the US is U-shaped. It was first described in a 1949 cookbook. This book was called The Good Life: New Mexican food. It was written by Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert.
Taco Bell's Role
In the mid-1950s, a man named Glen Bell opened a restaurant called Taco Tia. He started selling a simpler version of tacos. These were like the tacos dorados sold by Lucia and Salvador Rodriguez at their Mitla Cafe. Bell noticed long lines at the Rodriguez's restaurant. He started eating there often. He wanted to learn how they made their popular hard-shelled tacos. Eventually, they let him see how they prepared their food.
Over the next few years, Bell owned several restaurants in southern California. Four of them were called El Taco. At that time, many white Americans had not tried Mexican food. Bell's restaurants were often their first experience with it.
In 1962, Bell sold his El Taco restaurants. He then built the first Taco Bell in Downey. In 1964, Kermit Becky bought the first Taco Bell franchise. He opened it in Torrance. The company grew very fast. By 1967, the 100th Taco Bell opened in Anaheim. In 1968, the first Taco Bell east of the Mississippi River opened in Springfield, Ohio.
