Good Spices for Taco Meat: Chili Powder, Cumin, Oregano and How Much to Use

American-style taco meat is ground beef seasoned with chili powder, cumin, oregano, garlic, onion and salt, and chili powder alone already covers much of that list.¹ Cook’s Country’s homemade blend leans on it, then adds a little cornstarch so the pan juices turn saucy.² Why bother making your own? One McCormick packet carries about 2,280 mg of sodium, and with a homemade blend, you set the salt.

At a glance

The blend makes about 1/4 cup.² Cook’s Country’s page doesn’t say how much meat it seasons, but the 1-ounce store packets it resembles are meant for 1 pound.³⁴

Chili powder: the base

Cook’s Country found that making chili powder the main ingredient gave its blend a full, robust chile flavor.² The USDA’s purchasing specification lists ground chili pepper, cumin, oregano, salt and garlic powder as minimum ingredients for chili powder,¹ so one spoonful already covers much of the list. PepperScale’s take on taco seasoning has the same core: chili powder, cumin, paprika, garlic, oregano and onion.⁵ Saveur describes American chili powder as dried chiles, usually ancho, with oregano, cumin, garlic and sometimes salt.⁶ Brands differ, so taste yours before adding more salt or cumin. See chili powder substitutes and paprika vs. chili powder.

Cumin

Cook’s Country says cumin added its familiar earthiness. You’ll hear that taco meat doesn’t taste right without cumin. That’s a matter of taste, and the two best-known packets don’t even name cumin on their labels, listing only “spices” or “spice.”³⁴ Cook’s Country uses 2 teaspoons in its blend, and Bayless uses 1 teaspoon in a 1 1/2-pound batch of picadillo.²⁷ See cumin uses, cumin seeds vs. ground cumin and too much cumin.

Garlic and onion: fresh or powder

Both work. Cook’s Country uses granulated garlic and onion powder in its dry blend.² Bayless’s picadillo goes fresh: brown the beef, add a finely diced white onion, and stir in 4 chopped garlic cloves later with the potatoes.⁷ His recipe stresses that browning is the key to rich picadillo flavor.

Adding fresh garlic after the meat and onion lines up with America’s Test Kitchen’s warning that garlic added to a hot pan too early can quickly burn and turn acrid and bitter.⁸ You’ll also see advice to add white onion at the end of cooking and green onions at the start. No recipe we opened does that, and Bayless cooks white onion with the browned beef.⁷ See garlic powder vs. garlic and onion powder vs. onion.

Oregano: Mexican or Mediterranean

Mexican oregano comes from a different plant than Mediterranean oregano. America’s Test Kitchen found the Mexican type stronger, with a hint of menthol, but noticed minimal differences between the two in tomato sauce and mojo-marinated skirt steak.⁹ Bayless calls for 2 teaspoons of Mexican oregano in his picadillo,⁷ and Cook’s Country uses 1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano without saying which kind.² Use Mexican if you have it, and don’t worry if you don’t. See Mexican oregano, Mexican oregano vs. oregano and lemon verbena vs. lemongrass.

Heat: cayenne, jalapeño or a hotter chili powder

Neither Cook’s Country nor the McCormick label names cayenne; McCormick’s lists chili pepper among its spices.²³ Bayless gets his heat from 3 to 4 pickled jalapeños, chopped.⁷ If you add cayenne, go easy. Dave DeWitt’s heat scale and PepperScale’s pepper list both put cayenne at 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville heat units, a conventional range we couldn’t tie to any published measurement.¹⁰¹¹ No source gives an amount for taco meat, so start with 1/8 teaspoon per pound and taste. See paprika vs. cayenne.

Paprika and color

Not all paprika is mild. You’ll see it claimed that Spanish and Hungarian paprikas are high in capsaicin while “plain” paprika isn’t. In fact, Hungary’s food codex grades its paprika into heat classes from non-pungent to very hot,¹² so the label tells you the heat, not the country. See smoked paprika.

Tomato adds color and acidity too. Bayless uses a 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes, preferably fire-roasted, cooked until the liquid reduces.⁷ Tomato powder gives you tomato flavor without the liquid. We didn’t find a named taco recipe that uses it, so think of it as an option, not a standard.

Packets, water and salt

Both packet labels call for 1 pound of ground meat and 3/4 cup of water.³⁴ Cook’s Country adds cornstarch to its homemade version because it gives the pan juices a saucy body, so the meat isn’t too soupy or too dry.² Packet mixes have starch too: corn starch is on both labels, and first on Old El Paso’s.³⁴

Watch the salt. By the labels’ own figures, one McCormick packet carries about 2,280 mg of sodium (6 servings of 380 mg) and one Old El Paso packet about 1,400 mg (5 servings of 280 mg).³⁴ The FDA’s Daily Value for sodium is less than 2,300 mg a day.¹³ With a homemade blend, you set the salt. See taco seasoning and taco seasoning substitutes.

Doneness

Cook ground beef to 160°F; ground turkey or chicken needs 165°F.¹⁴ FSIS says color and texture aren’t reliable signs of doneness, so use a thermometer.¹⁵ With crumbled meat in a skillet, check a few of the thickest clumps.

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• Good Mexican spices for chicken
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