My family is famously snacky, but nothing gets us snackier than a holiday celebration. Our holiday gatherings were a feast of appetizers served in a seemingly endless round, and always contained a mix of homemade and store-bought treats. My mom would always make a massive batch of pico de gallo to have with tortilla chips, and I would make some kind of puff pastry pinwheel with an ever-rotating selection of fillings.
We were a Mexican/Italian household, so you could expect to find meatballs (sometimes homemade, sometimes store-bought and doctored up — it really depended on how taxed mom was feeling that year) and a variety of Mexican (and Tex-Mex) dishes, like queso fundido and the aforementioned pico, but something that, in retrospect, stands out is our love of El Monterey Taquitos. We specifically got the beef variety (though the chicken-filled taquitos often made an appearance), and in capital-A Abundance.
Related: Breakfast Potatoes
Funnily enough, that was really the only time we ever bought them. The whole rest of the year was for homemade tacos with all sorts of fillings: chile verde, carnitas, roasted chicken, carne asada, and on and on. But the holidays were for frozen taquitos, and so the association lives on in my brain forevermore.
Credit: Jarrett Melendez
What’s So Great About El Monterey Extra Crunchy Beef & Cheese Taquitos?
It’s been quite a few years since I’ve celebrated the holidays with my family, so it’s also been quite a few years since I’ve eaten these crispy, crunchy delights. I got a box out of nostalgia recently, and you know what? They still hit … in a huge way, especially since the advent of air-fryers!
It’s the crunch for me. That satisfying crunch as you chomp into one, the crispy wisps of beef sticking out of the ends, the soft beef filling throughout the center. They’re a surprisingly pleasing blend of textures and spiced beef flavors. The beef filling has just a little bit of heat to it, which is really nice, and the Extra Crunchy variety comes battered with a spicy corn and wheat coating that adds extra layers of crunch, heat, and flavor.
What’s the Best Way to Enjoy El Monterey Extra Crunchy Beef & Cheese Taquitos?
If this were the late ’90s or early 2000s, when my family was buying boxes of these every year, I’d have said to just bake them a little longer (like 3 to 5 minutes longer) than the box tells you to, which is also what I do with hard taco shells when I’m in the mood for “White People Tacos” — getting that tortilla a little extra toasty makes everything so much better.
Now that air-fryers are a thing, I recommend using the air fryer instructions on the box, and yes, still going for a minute or two longer to get the tortillas extra toasted and crunchy, but that’s just me.
I also highly recommend serving with a tiny bowl of sour cream for dipping. If you’re feeling just barely ambitious enough to doctor it up, a squeeze of lime juice and a few dashes of Cholula hot sauce stirred into that sour cream really plays nicely with those taquitos.
Buy: El Monterey Extra Crunchy Taco Seasoned Beef & Cheese Taquitos, $7.98 for 18 taquitos at Walmart
What’s your family’s favorite frozen holiday appetizer? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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