Avocado Tacos Recipe (2024)

Dried, Suz. Pasillas are dried by definition Fresh, they're called chilaca, though I don't see them often. Also, any time you're talking about grinding chiles into a powder, you know that you're dealing with whole dried chiles to start.

Easy, tasty, cheap. What's not to like? My local store was out of pasillas, so I subbed in guajillos. After toasting them, instead of pulverizing, I then softened them in hot water before adding them to the processor with the tomatillos, which added a little body to the sauce. I had some queso fresco, so I laid slices of that down underneath the avocado, onions and cilantro. Fresh lime juice pulled everything together. Sabroso!

-Be careful not to open the top of the blender or food processor when grinding dried chiles. If you don't give the dust time to settle, you'll be treated to your own home-made pepper spray. I made that mistake once but never again.

Quick, delicious meal- add black beans for protein if needed.

Charring dried chilis over flame or pan toasting them in a dry skillet both enhances the texture and flavor. When you pan toast them it causes them to 'puff up' for example. In my experience of doing this for other recipes, as in moles, it adds a depth of flavor when the chilis are ground. Think of it as what happens to dry spices when you bloom them first...va voom. :-) For your second question, in my experience dried pasillas are called poblanos when sold as fresh chili peppers.

I love these tacos for a quick lunch or snack. One thing I do to make them even more delicious is to smear each tortilla with a little bit of olive oil and heat in the microwave for 15 seconds. Add a sprinkle of coarse salt to the tortilla, and then assemble as usual. Eat and repeat!

Rinse corn tortilla (water will keep tortilla moist), place on plate ad mozzarella cheese, microwave, ad the avocado, onions and cilantro, salt or grated parmesan cheese and a bite of a serrano chile... voila, paladar heaven.

Made per recipe except I toasted pasillas in dry skillet over medium flame rather than charring them using tongs over open flame. Simple reason is I'm a klutz with the tong technique. Starting with pan toasted instead of flame charred chiles, remainder per recipe. Fantabulous flavor in chili salsa with the avocado tacos. I can think of all kinds of things to use with remaining salsa. Note: Tomatillos only took 7 min to cook, not 15 of recipe, for me.

I don't think you should speak on behalf of all Mexicans. I love garlic

Where's the beef?!
Actually, these tacos were a very good nosh that hit the lunch spot. Love the salsa. Will be using it for many of my south of the border dishes.

Delicious. My chile didn’t get quite to powder so my sauce was chunkier than the picture but still really good. I used canned tomatillos. I used negro chiles, which Google told me was the same as pasillas (I couldn’t find anything by that name at my grocery store). The sauce is amazing and I’ve been using it on everything.

This recipe is superior. Cannot get enough of them. The salsa is incredible. The difference between bought in the store and this fresh salsa is not even comparable.

Cooking tomatillos makes them mushy and watery. I just halve or quarter them raw and with other ingredients -food process. Pourque non?

Made exactly as written, added scrambled eggs for protein and eat them for breakfast. Family loves them.

Didn’t have salsa ingredients so made instead with dried 4 Hatch chilies and green Sungold tomatoes with lime. Was smokily excellent even without charring but very spicy even after removing seeds. Fresh white onion is important, mine were a bit old and sulphuric so consider soaking first in cold water if so. Don’t skimp on the avocado. It’s the star of the show!

To continue-- does this mean the pasilla chilies are supposed to be dried? If so, why do they need be charred? Please clarify! And I too felt the tomatillos were way overcooked. Will try suggestion below and roast them next time.

Wish I had read Analisa's comment before I made this! Recipe should be altered to clarify dried pasillas. Question still is would you need to char them?

I had trouble with the salsa. I did char the whole pasilla chilies over an open gas flame. But a lot of the crevices did not char, but most of the surface skin was completely black. The directions say "process into a powder." Not sure how it's possible to get a powder from fresh peppers. It was more of a sauce, definitely not a powder. When I added the tomatillos & garlic and processed it was a chunky sort of salsa consistency which seemed right but it had very little taste.

Where can I get a food processor that will grind as few as 4 chilies??

So I had the avocado and the tortillas but not all the other ingredients. I improvised by frying some bacon in a cast iron skillet for crunchy texture and a bit of savory flavor and adding the chopped onion and bacon to it just to soften them. I removed them from the pan and put in a tortilla piled with cubed avocado and tomato, the bacon mixture, and the cilantro, and the combination was fresh and delicious. No chiles but next time I might drizzle hot pepper sauce on it.

It's a great idea, but the salsa isn't my favorite. Next time I'll concoct my own version with a different salsa.

The tomatillos were way too mushy for me. Ended up purring them with some roasted onions and made a salsa instead. Great base here for any additional things you have around to add. We added some vegetarian refried beans on the bottom. Will try again on the tomatillos!

The tacos were delish. The tomatillos? So overcooked. I need to definitely reduce the cooking time on the next batch. I ended up making salsa instead from them.

I doubled the salt and added 2 T. Sugar and juice of a whole lime. Balanced the flavors nicely. Delicious!

I lived in Austin in the mid 2000s and there was Mexican restaurant on Manor Road that served a grilled fish taco with a salsa like this one. I've spent the last decade and a half looking for a recipe that rings this bell. Today I found it!

This was crazy good. I used 3 tablespoons of Pasilla powder (couldn't find whole dried chiles but was able to get the powder) and about 6 or 7 tomatillos. Added the juice from half a lime as well. Such a great salsa!

Easy, affordable and craving-worthy. I could eat 150 of these. Keep the leftover salsa in the fridge and serve with chips the next day.

Please provide presentation instructions with the recipe. I keep throwing ingredients at the plate but can't wow my guests with the same is-this-part-of-a-crime-scene-? styling that the NYT achieves.