How To Reheat Tacos (The Two Best Ways)

It is never a good idea to throw cold tacos from your last night’s meal away outright. It is possible that reheating tacos will not be able to keep the original deliciousness of the food.

But both taco shell and filling can still be tasty enough to enjoy after you reheat them properly. How to reheat tacos so that your attempt with those “Mexican traditional dish” remnants will not become pointless?

About Tacos

Traditional Mexican tacos consists of a small, hand-sized corn or flour-based tortilla filled with fillings like cheese, meat, etc. and then folded in half to eat.

How To Reheat Tacos

To put it simply, we divide the instructions of the best way to reheat tacos into two parts. One is about reheating the whole tacos. And the other guides you the way of reheating the tacos and filling separately.

Reheating The Whole Tacos

Of two methods, here is the better option of how to reheat soft tacos. Despite the time-saving advantage, it can amaze you with differences between before and after tacos.

Preparation

• Aluminum foil
• An oven

Instruction

Firstly, you need to wrap the entire taco with aluminum foil and preheat the oven to a high temperature of about 400 °F. The hotter the inside of the oven gets, the more effectively it can heat the tacos without steaming.

Next on to how to reheat tacos. This step ensures the evenly spaced space among tacos always holds a key for the proper airflow. This process of reheating Taco Bell tacos for example should take 10 minutes. In case of too long baking time, you probably get unhealthy burn pieces of food, which are not good for your health.

Thirdly, you remove the tacos from the oven and open the pouches of aluminum foil. Next, you bake the tacos for an additional 5 minutes to completely dry out the taco shell. And then, everything gets done.

Reheating The Tacos That Separate Components

Another best way to reheat Taco Bell is to reheat it one by one of its components.

Preparation

• Aluminum foil
• An oven/microwave/skillet

Instruction

There are four steps in total. They include separating the tacos, reheating the taco shell, reheating the taco fillings, and resembling all components.

Separating Tacos

Before reheating Mexican food – tacos, the first step is to separate the taco into parts (the shell, the cold ingredients, and the meat stuffing).

The cold ingredients are vegetables, cheese, and sour cream that you do not need to reheat.

As for the shell and the meat, you should reheat them separately. In other words, the meat needs to get well heated while the taco shell should come back with perfect crispiness.

Reheating Hard Taco Shell

One of the important notes in the instructions on how to reheat hard shell tacos is to keep the shell open with a nice width. As a solution, we suggest using a stainless-steel taco rack. Alternatively, you can lay down these taco covers and put a little aluminum foil ball inside each of them.

The taco shells tend to absorb moisture from the taco fillings overnight. Hence, you need to dry them out again but still restore both its texture and crunchiness. And we bring here three different ways of how to reheat taco shells.

• With an oven: After preheating the oven at the temperature up to 375°F, you place the taco shell with the rack or aluminum foil balls inside on the baking tray. The process should last about 10 minutes for the fully-heated taco shells. 
• With a microwave: You place the taco shells on a plate. Then, it is time to set up the device for 30 seconds and start it to warm up the shells.
• With a skillet: It is like a frying pan. You should set the stove on medium heat to not burn the taco shells with this option. Plus, the shells probably stick to the skillet if you forget to sprinkle some cooking oil. After heating the skillet, you heat each side of the taco shell for 2 minutes.

Reheating Soft Taco Shell

Next, how to reheat taco bell tacos with the soft shell?

Sometimes, you need to reheat the tacos, consisting of flour shells or tortillas (reheat Taco Bell burrito or reheat Taco Bell quesadilla, for example). In this case, the process will be better with a bit of steam. Therefore, using microwave, undoubtedly, becomes the best choice.

And here is a step-by-step guide.

• Wrapping each taco shell with a paper towel to retain the moisture.
• Placing the wrapped taco shells in the microwave.
• Heating up all of them for 16 – 20 seconds.

Our suggestion of how to reheat Taco Bell bean burrito or something like that with a huge pile of shells is to set up a longer microwave time.

Reheating Taco Filling

The next step in our instruction of how to reheat a taco is reheating taco meat and many other types of taco fillings. It would help if you remembered that you are about to heat the stuffing instead of cooking it from scratch. Also, do not overdo the taco filling so that it will not dry out, then.

There are two common ways of how to reheat taco meat. 

• With a stove: It often takes only 3 – 4 minutes for the meat to get entirely warm. Firstly, you add some cooking oil into a non-stick pan and set the stove on medium heat. The next step is to put the stuffing in the pan and stir evenly.  
• With a microwave: This one is slightly more time-saving. You put the meat in a bowl, and you only need to place it in the microwave. After 20 seconds of warming up in the microwave, you remove the bowl outside, stir the stuffing, and heat it for another 15 seconds in the device.

So, how to reheat steak for tacos? 

Heating steak at a low temperature over a longer time will prevent it from drying out. After preheating the oven at 250°F, you put the steak on a wire rack placed on the baking tray. Then, the oven cooks the steak on both sides of the steak without the need for flipping. The process can take up to 30 minutes.

Or, in case that you love to enjoy a freshly-cooked steak for the leftover tacos, let’s do it right away.

Resembling All Components

You may ask, “What to do when my tacos are ready after reheating?” Well, it is time to resemble all reheated components. A crispy taco shell wraps some warm meat stuffing along with vegetables and sour cream. Wow, how delicious it is!

How To Store Leftover Tacos

Learning about how to reheat Taco Bell is not enough. Knowing how to keep taco shells fresh and store leftover tacos properly is also a key. Generally, it is always the best storage when you can keep the taco components in separate parts. Then, the taco shell will not absorb too much moisture from the filling.

For the taco shells, we suggest storing them in Ziploc bags. Plus, you should layer them inside each other to keep the form in case of hard taco shells. For the taco fillings, placing each type of feeling separately in high-quality containers will help to keep freshness and taste.

Conclusion

So now, can you reheat Taco Bell? The answer is definitely YES. Each type of taco shell and filling leftovers needs different ways of reheating, but it is possible.

Hopefully, our instruction on how to reheat tacos above can help you with amazingly delicious Mexican sandwich-like dishes in the future.