Sometimes you just want a good ole chicken taco – and sometimes you want to make take taco night on an adventure and combine it with some bacon and elote style corn. And that is how these Elote Crispy Chicken Tacos came to be. With super simple ingredients and a little bit of time, you can make these flavor packed soft tacos any day of the week.
If you aren’t familiar with Elote – it is a Mexican street food that typically is a grilled ear of corn on the cob that is lathered with a cream (mayo, sour cream) sauce and then topped with cojita or queso fresco, lime juice, chili powder, tajin, cilantro, jalapenos, bacon, and more. This elote “salsa” brings most of these flavors together to make a simple topping for the crispy chicken. The sour cream sauce covers the rest of the elote experience.
The recipe includes making your own buttermilk chicken tenders – which does add that homemade component to the dish. That said, if you want to get some premade frozen chicken tenders and just bake them up for these tacos – go for it! It will still be good, promise!
These tacos have a bit of a heft to them, but you will likely want to have a side dish with them. I would suggest some cilantro lime rice – which is super easy to make. Make your white rice as you normally would. Once the final steam is done, mix in 1 tsp of lime juice and 1 tbsp of chopping cilantro per one cup of rice, while you fluff the rice with a fork. You could also go for some smashed black beans – one tbsp taco seasoning added to each can of black beans (drained) along with half cup of milk in a small saucepan. Over medium heat, stir and slightly smash as they heat through.
Now Let’s Get Cookin’!
Elote Crispy Chicken Tacos
Ingredients
- 15 Flour Tortillas fajita sized
- 1 cups Cojita Cheese crumbled
- 2 15oz can Sweet Corn drained
- 1 bunch Cilantro chopped
- 1 tbsp Lime Juice
- 1 tsp Salt
- 2 tbsp Tajin divided
- 1 cup Sour Cream
- 1 tsp Cumin
- ½ lb Bacon cut into ½-inch pieces
For the Chicken
- 2 lbs Chicken Tenderloins
- 2 cups Buttermilk
- 4 cups Flour
- 2 tbsp Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Pepper
- 1 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 tsp Smoked Paprika
- Cooking Oil to make 1 inch deep in pan
Instructions
- Add chicken tenders and buttermilk in a bowl and let rest (at least 30 minutes, up to 8 hours) in refrigerator.
- In a large saute pan over medium high heat, add bacon and cook until crispy. Remove to paper towel covered plate. Reserve all grease in the pan.
- In a bowl, combine corn, cilantro, one tablespoon of tajin, lime juice, salt and half of cojita cheese.
- In a separate small bowl, combine sour cream, remaining tajin and cumin.
- Add flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, garlic and paprika to a bowl and stir to combine.
- Add enough oil to the bacon grease to be one inch deep. Once hot (around 350degF), begin frying chicken. Remove each piece of chicken from buttermilk and put right into flour mixture. Fully coat with flour and place right into hot oil. Cook for 4 minutes on each side and remove to a baking rack over a paper towel covered baking sheet. Repeat with remaining chicken tenderloins.
- Once all chicken is cooked and slightly cooled, cut each tenderloin into 3-4 pieces (about 1-inch chunks).
- Smear tortilla with sour cream mixture. Add 3-4 chunks of chicken to a tortilla. Spoon corn over top then add bacon and sprinkle with remaining cojita cheese.
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