The Kitchen Tool That Makes Tacos For Dinner Even Better

Tacos are one of the easier dinners to make. After a busy day, it's fairly painless to put out taco ingredients and feed a crowd. However, there are a few common frustrations with tacos, and one of the biggest of these is with tortillas — specifically, heating up the tortillas and keeping them warm enough to prevent them from breaking during assembly. No one wants a cold, crumbly tortilla that ends up dumping its contents all over their plate.

There are a number of ways to warm tortillas out there. However, there's an easy solution to not only warming them thoroughly but keeping them toasty until all the ingredients are gone: keep your tortillas hot and steamy in the slow cooker. This allows you to warm them effortlessly at the correct temperature, and keeping them in the pot prevents them from getting cold before people go for seconds. Using this tortilla tip can prevent a broken mess on your next taco night.

There are multiple different ways to use a slow cooker to warm tortillas. If the gadget is empty, wrap the tortillas in aluminum foil with a damp towel and insert them for a few minutes to heat them up. If you just cooked your taco filling in your slow cooker, there is no need to remove it. Place the tortillas on a glass pie plate and rest it gently on top of the filling. Then, put the lid on the pot and let the steam heat the tortillas. Even if you didn't make the filling in the pot, you could easily add both components this way if you'd like to keep everything warm, and you could also transport it this way to a potluck.

Why bother warming the tortillas? It turns out the answer is more than just to prevent the sensation of a cold, rubbery taco, though that in and of itself is a pretty good reason. Warming tortillas makes them more pliable, meaning they can fold more easily without breaking. 

Warming your tortillas this way has a number of benefits over other methods. One of the most common ways to heat tortillas is on a dry pan for several seconds each. However, this is the least efficient method, making it an impractical solution when serving a crowd. Another tactic involves using the oven. However, ovens can take quite a bit of time to pre-heat, requiring some forethought. In addition, it is too easy to dry the tortillas out or burn them. A microwave and a damp paper towel is the easiest way, but this usually results in soggy tortillas, particularly if they are not promptly removed and divided among plates.

The slow cooker method has one strength the others do not: it keeps the tortillas warm throughout dinner without the possibility of burning (assuming it's used on a low-heat setting). This allows for second and third helpings without the task of re-heating the tortillas in the middle of dinner. It also makes it perfect for a taco bar to serve a party or crowd, allowing guests to help themselves on their own schedule. A slow cooker is the next best thing to a fancy tortilla warmer, and since you likely have one in your kitchen, it means less money spent on an unnecessary product. Therefore, this hack can save you time, headaches, and money at your next taco dinner.