Meals · Tacos, burritos & enchiladas

Ground beef tacos

Name: Ground beef tacos
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 500 g 90% lean ground beef; 1 onion yellow onions, finely chopped; 3 cloves garlic, minced; 2 tsp ground cumin; 1 tbsp chili powder; 1 tsp dried oregano; 3/4 tsp salt; 12 small corn tortilla; 1/4 head green cabbage, shredded; 2 tomatoes tomato, diced; 1/2 cup cotija cheese, crumbled; a handful fresh cilantro, chopped; 1 lime lime

Spiced beef in corn tortillas with a mound of cabbage and a squeeze of lime — the version people actually make on a Tuesday. Mexican is the most-searched cuisine in more US states than any other, and this is its most cooked dish.

Time: 30 min (15 prep + 15 cook)
Servings: 4
Per serving: 466 kcal
Protein: 34 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

500 g 90% lean ground beef500 g
1 onion yellow onions, finely chopped120 g
3 cloves garlic, minced9 g
2 tsp ground cumin5 g
1 tbsp chili powder6 g
1 tsp dried oregano2 g
3/4 tsp salt4 g

To build

12 small corn tortilla240 g
1/4 head green cabbage, shredded300 g
2 tomatoes tomato, diced250 g
1/2 cup cotija cheese, crumbled60 g
a handful fresh cilantro, chopped12 g
1 lime lime25 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Brown the beef in a dry pan over medium-high heat, breaking it up, 6–8 minutes. Add the onion and cook until soft, then the garlic, cumin, chilli powder, oregano and salt for a minute more.
Splash in a few tablespoons of water and let it bubble down — that's what turns loose crumbles into something that stays in a tortilla.
Warm the tortillas directly over a flame or in a dry pan, 20 seconds a side, and stack them under a towel.
Build with beef, a big handful of cabbage, tomato, cotija and cilantro, and squeeze the lime over at the table.

Why cabbage rather than lettuce?

It holds up. Shredded cabbage stays crisp against hot beef where lettuce wilts, and there's twice as much of it by the time you've filled the tortilla — which is most of why this version scores where it does.

Alternative

Cottage cheese taco shellscottage cheese shells instead of tortillas75

Why this score

solidly filling

No single route carries this one — a moderate amount of protein, volume and fiber.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

29% of kcal

73% water

18 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 1863 kcal goes into the pot, 1533 g of ingredients comes out as ~1420 g of food → 131 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 131
Protein: (29%); 10 g
Fat: (37%); 5 g
Carbohydrates: (34%); 11 g
of which sugar: 2 g
Fiber: 2 g
Sodium: 226 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More meals

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.