Fabiola made this on a Saturday that had already gone sideways. We had spent the afternoon on a macerator pump that would not run, the second tote load was still draining, and she lit the Blackstone with a match while the mosquitoes in the Upper Peninsula did what mosquitoes in the Upper Peninsula do in August.
Her description on camera was "kind of like a tortilla thing with ground beef," which undersells it. It is a smash taco, and it is the single easiest thing we cook outside.
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The trick is that the beef goes on raw
This is the whole recipe. You do not brown ground beef and then spoon it into a tortilla. You take raw ground beef, spread it across a cold tortilla with the back of a spoon until it is a thin even layer edge to edge, and then lay the tortilla beef-side down on the hot griddle.
The beef cooks in direct contact with the steel, so it browns the way a smash burger browns. The fat renders down into the tortilla instead of running off. By the time the beef has a crust, the tortilla underneath has fried in that fat and gone crisp. Then you flip it once and you are done.
Two tortillas took about four minutes total.
Ingredients
Feeds two, with peppers left over.
- About 1 lb ground beef, raw
- 4 flour tortillas, the soft taco size
- McCormick Grill Mates Montreal Steak Seasoning. Fabiola sprinkles it over the raw beef once it is spread on the tortilla, and does not measure. She buys it in the warehouse-size bottle and uses it on most things
- 2 to 3 bell peppers, sliced into strips. She used red, yellow and orange
- Cooking oil in a squeeze bottle
- Shredded iceberg lettuce
- Shredded mozzarella
- Mayo and ketchup, on the table
- The heel ends of a loaf of bread, for croutons
- Sea salt, for the croutons
Where these numbers come from
The honest part: no quantity in that list came out of Fabiola's mouth. She names the ingredients, she never measures one. What is solid from the footage is the ratio and the technique. The beef layer is thin, roughly the thickness of the tortilla itself, spread corner to corner with a spoon. She cooked four tortillas and one tray of beef, and the peppers filled two corners of a 17 inch griddle with enough left to plate on the side.
Season, taste the first one, adjust the second.
The order matters more than the timing
Everything goes on one griddle in sequence, and the sequence is what keeps it from turning into a scramble.
1. Oil the surface. Fabiola sprays it rather than pouring it, which she describes as "almost like I am doing seasoning, but not quite. Just so the whole thing is kind of greasy." Spraying gets an even film with no puddles, and puddles are what make the tortilla greasy instead of crisp.
2. Croutons first, because they take the longest. Cube the bread ends, spread them across the surface, salt them, and turn them until they are crisp on all sides. Hers took most of the cook. This is the bit that makes the recipe worth writing down: we do not eat the heel of the loaf, so it used to get thrown out. Now it gets toasted in beef fat and eaten first.
3. Peppers in the cool corner. The Blackstone runs hotter in the middle than at the edges. Fabiola pushes the pepper strips into the corner "so they can have enough time to cook down," and leaves them there while everything else happens. They want to go soft and a little charred, not fast.
4. Spread the beef while the griddle works. Lay the tortillas out, spoon on the raw beef, smash it flat and thin, then hit it with steak seasoning.
5. Beef-side down. Lay each one onto the clear middle of the griddle, beef down. Leave it alone until the beef has browned and released, then flip. The tortilla only needs a minute on the second side.
6. Build it. Beef tortilla on the plate, peppers piled on, lettuce, cheese on top so the heat off the beef softens it.
What we put on ours
We do not build these the same way, and that is fine. The version on camera got griddled peppers, shredded lettuce and shredded mozzarella, with mayo and ketchup on the table.
There are two bags of shredded mozzarella out in that shot, a regular one and a dairy-free one. Nathan is lactose intolerant, so a dairy-free cheese goes on the table next to the real one at basically every meal here. If that is you too, this is an easy recipe to swap, because the cheese is the only dairy in it.
The peppers also work as a side on their own, which is what we did with the leftovers.
Gear
You can make this on any flat top. Ours is the Blackstone 17 inch tabletop griddle, which is the size that makes sense for two people living in a fifth wheel, and it is on Amazon if you are shopping.
Two tools do the actual work here. A wide stiff spatula, because a floppy one will fold a beef-covered tortilla in half on the flip, and a squeeze bottle for the oil so you can spray instead of pour. Both come in the Blackstone Pro tool kit we bought with the griddle. The griddle rides in the truck bed between stops in this carry bag, and it sits on a folding aluminum table at camp.
The rest of the outdoor kitchen, including how we store it all, is on our camp kitchen page. If your griddle is new, season it before you cook on it.
Why this one gets made so often
It needs no pot, no colander and no strainer, which means no dishes beyond a spatula and the plates. Nothing has to be cooked and then transferred somewhere else. And the entire thing happens outside, so the rig does not end up smelling like fried beef for two days, which in a space this size is not a small consideration.
The night we filmed it, dinner was on the table before Nathan was out of the shower.
Watch the cook in the macerator video, starting around 13 minutes.