The Mexican Taquiza

Host your own mexican Taquiza party!

If you are like me, on a quest to understand and to cook the best possible mexican food, hosting a Taquiza party is an important step in your development... The term taquiza derives from Tacos naturally, and this makes sense because you will be allowing your guests to make quite a few of them! What is a Taquiza you might ask... Basically a Taquiza is a mexican style buffet where your guests are presented with many authentic mexican guisos (mexican stews), toppings and also salsas and appetizers, so they can make their own tacos with fresh corn tortillas exactly the way they like them, with the meat and toppings of their choice.

In Mexico, there are many caterers who offer their services to help you host a Taquiza for your special event; which of course will allow you, the host, to focus more on the actual event itself, now that the food is taken care of. But let's get back to my own experience with this special mexican buffet... yes, with a bit of planning it is quite possible and enjoyable to prepare a perfect Taquiza outside Mexico. The important thing I think is that you must have successfully made the dishes you are planning to serve at least once before, because now you will have to make these dishes in an organized mass-production style workflow.

This taquiza was for 19 guests... a small number compared to a real mexican fiesta, but quite enough to be a challenge for me to try this concept again, with my minimal staff (me, my wife and my daughters)! Here are the dishes I prepared for the event, which I could make the day before (it had taken me two days to gather the ingredients):

As the appetizer to get things started, I served Albondigas en Salsa Verde, on decorated toothpicks; but this is not a traditional part of a taquiza.

Then the Taquiza table itself, which had: A Beef Birria,
some Tinga de Pollo, (about triple the recipe presented here)
then Chicharron en Salsa Roja,
some Rajas con Crema, a must in every Taquiza.

Speaking of Salsas, we had homemade Guacamole, of course, then
some store-bought mexican Salsa Verde and Salsa Roja;
I also made a salsa with red onions, cilantro and chiles in vinegar, which was meant to be "picante", but turned out otherwise...
finally I served plenty of the mandatory refried beans, but I used black beans instead of the traditional pinto beans.

As extra toppings for the tacos, we had: chopped white onions (previously soaked in water), finely chopped cilantro, some nopales, sour cream, quartered limes, and finally shredded lettuce.

For dessert, we had a choice of two dishes: a chocoflan and a Pastel de tres leches.