How To Reheat Tacos (The Two Best Ways)

Looking for the best way to reheat tacos? You’ve come to the right place! Discover below the two top methods for reheating tacos, ensuring a delicious meal every time.

What Are Tacos?

Tacos are a traditional Mexican dish that consists of a tortilla made from corn or wheat, which is folded or rolled and filled with various ingredients.

The filling can be made of meat (such as beef, pork, chicken, or fish), beans, cheese, vegetables, and other toppings like lettuce, tomato, salsa, avocado, and sour cream.

Tacos are often served as street food and can be found in many Mexican restaurants worldwide. They are typically accompanied by sides such as beans and rice and are a popular choice for a quick and delicious meal.

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 by the way of reheating the tacos and filling separately.

Reheating The Whole Tacos

Of the two methods, here is the better option of how to reheat soft tacos. Despite the time-saving advantage, it can amaze you with the 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 about 10 minutes.

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 Tacos is piece by piece.

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 reheating taco shells.

• With an oven: After preheating the oven to 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?

Occasionally, 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 improve 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 all of them for 15 to 20 seconds.

Our suggestion of how to reheat Taco Bell bean burrito or something like that with a giant 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. Furthermore, 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 to 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.