Maybe you know them better as lardons, but taquitos are those little cubes of smoked bacon or serrano ham that you see on the supermarket cold shelves alongside the processed meats. They usually come in 2 x 75g packets, and there's a perforation down the middle, so you can use one packet at a time if necessary.
They range in price from just over 1 Euro to just under 2 Euro, depending on the quality of ham that's used, and the great thing is that they have a long shelf life. I bought a packet last week, and the 'use by' date is the end of September! That means if it gets buried in the back of the fridge, I should find it before it goes out of date.
I use taquitos for all sorts of things. They're good to use in any situation where you need chopped bacon - such as in the ham croquette recipe I posted, or when making broad beans and ham tapas. Taquitos also make a great flavour addition to vegetable soups, and you can add them to tortillas de patatas if you like.
Taquitos can also help to stretch out other meats, such as in a bolognese sauce or chilli, and I've even used them to make a quick pasta sauce with mushrooms and peppers. They give an extra depth of flavour to chicken casseroles, or you can use them to make a flavourful chicken and ham pie or quiche.
Another way to use taquitos is as a pizza topping, and they make a lovely filling for a jacket potato as well. Scoop out the middle of the potato, and mix with lightly cooked taquitos and grated cheddar cheese, then pile back into the potato skins and brown under the grill.
If I'm using taquitos as the base to a soup or sauce, I'll add them to a little olive oil at the early preparation stage, when I'm sweating the onions. If I'm making croquettes or jacket potato filling, I just cook them for a couple of minutes in a little olive oil.
So, are you making the most of your taquitos? Maybe you use them in other ways - if so, please share them here.
