Country 9: Tostadas from Mexico

Tostadas are one of my favourite street foods and are a go to whenever I see a Mexican food truck. I have made them before but this time I tried to go more over the top and make as much as I can from scratch.

Traditionally tostadas are made by frying a corn tortilla and topping with refried beans, meat and other fixings, like the open face version of a taco. It was often made when the tortillas were going stale as a way to salvage them (kind of similar to toasting stale bread).

Tostadas are often served as a make-your-own kind of way, lots of different toppings with the fried tortillas and beans. As you can see from the photos, I made 3 different tostadas that included all the different toppings that I had prepared: refried beans, barbacoa beef, quick-pickled onions, pico de gallo, shredded lettuce, fresh jalapeños, avocado, cotija cheese and Valentina sauce. I think this is probably the most homemade of all the meals I've made so far. The only things not made from scratch were the Valentina sauce and the tortillas (I did shallow fry them though). I even made the refried beans from scratch, cooking them for 2.5 hours and then smashing them in a skillet (it was so worth it though, they were awesome!).

To accompany this I had to make a from scratch margarita, the legit kind, no slush to water it down! For the simple syrup in the margarita I used some of this pineapple vanilla preserve that I have in the fridge to change up the flavour a bit and then rimmed the glass with smoked salt to match the smokier tequila that I have. The perfect drink to go along tostadas!

I love how well the photos turned out for this one and enjoyed making these again.

You can see more photos and the updated map below.

Thanks for reading and hope to see you again for the next meal!

Brandon