M: The 12-pack of tacos at Taco Bell right now, around where I am, is about $25. Making stuff at home usually is cheaper, and it's usually a balance between wasted ingredients due to making a smaller batch that makes it worthwhile. But if we're talking about making 12 tacos, it seems as though the quantity balance might be worth the extra effort of just frying up some ground beef. I've got a recipe that gets pretty close to their flavorings and consistency because I think there's some ground oat flour or something in there. What I need from you is to give me for 12 equivalents of Taco Bell regular tacos what the ingredient numbers would be, like how much ground beef, tomato, lettuce, and cheese would be called for, and approximate the prices in the Goochland area code of Virginia. Don't need exact numbers. Just go online and figure out best guesses, because, like, for 12 tacos, probably one or two tomatoes would be necessary, but it's really one of those weird situations where estimating the shredded or chopped versions, it's not within my practice levels. So I need you to help me out and figure out if I wanted to do 12 tacos next time, how many, like tomatoes and what size block of cheese, etc. I would need in order to get about the right amounts. Use whatever context you get when you look things up to figure out whether we're talking about, like, plum tomatoes or vine tomatoes or what. Same thing with the cheese and the type of lettuce. I'm largely looking just for a way to pin down quantities. Thank you.
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G: Yes — at a dozen tacos, you've crossed into a quantity where the home version makes considerably more economic sense. The annoying "I bought an entire head of lettuce to make three tacos" problem becomes much less important.
One correction that actually helps pin down the quantities: Taco Bell's regular Crunchy Taco doesn't contain tomato. It's seasoned beef, iceberg lettuce and shredded cheddar. Tomato comes with the Supreme, along with sour cream. citeturn0search0turn0search1 Since you specifically mentioned tomato, I've included enough for 12 tacos with Taco-Bell-ish tomato portions, but you can simply omit it.
| Ingredient | Amount actually needed | What I'd buy | Rough local cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground beef, 80/20 | ~18–20 oz raw beef | 1¼ lb; realistically a 1.5-lb package if available | $6–9 |
| Crunchy taco shells | 12 | one 12-count box | $2–3 |
| Iceberg lettuce | ~5–6 oz finely shredded | 1 small head | $1.75–2.50 |
| Cheddar cheese | ~3–4 oz shredded | one 8-oz block | $1.90–3 |
| Roma tomatoes (optional) | ~5–6 oz diced | 2 medium Romas | $0.50–1 |
| Your beef seasoning/oat/etc. | enough for 1¼ lb beef | pantry ingredients | ~$0.50–1.50 |
So you're looking at roughly $13–19 purchased from scratch, but that's misleadingly high as a "cost of 12 tacos," because you'll have about half the cheese and a fair bit of lettuce left over. The ingredients actually consumed by the 12 tacos are probably more like $10–14.
Current prices support that ballpark: a 12-pack of Taco Bell-branded crunchy shells is about $2.68, while a generic 12-pack is around $2.00. entity["turn0product6","Taco Bell Crunchy Taco Shells, 12 ct, 4.5 oz Box"] entity["turn0product2","Old El Paso Crunchy Taco Shells, Gluten Free, Meal Prep, 12"] An 8-ounce store-brand cheddar block is currently about $1.87. entity["turn0product30","Great Value Medium Cheddar Block Cheese, 8 oz Chunk"] Roma tomatoes are particularly cheap at the moment in nearby Richmond-area Walmart listings — around $0.22 each in the results I found. citeturn0search12turn0search13
For 12 tacos, I'd put these amounts on the counter:
1¼ lb ground beef + ½ head iceberg + ½ of an 8-oz cheddar block + 2 Roma tomatoes + 12 shells.
That's the shopping/cooking rule I'd save. You probably won't quite use the half-head of lettuce, but shredding half is vastly easier than trying to calculate "5.3 ounces of intact lettuce."
The beef is the one place I'd rather err slightly high. Taco Bell's filling is wetter and bulkier than plain browned ground beef because of its seasoning mixture, water and thickeners. Since you've already got a copycat recipe designed to reproduce that consistency, 1¼ lb raw beef should put you very comfortably in Taco Bell's rather modest meat-per-taco territory without making them skimpy. If your beef normally comes only in one-pound increments, though, I'd buy 1½ lb and cook all of it rather than trying to stretch one pound across 12. That gives you permission to be a little less ruthlessly Taco-Bell-accurate with the portions.
And for the produce choices specifically: iceberg, not romaine; Roma/plum tomatoes, diced fairly small; and medium or mild orange cheddar, finely shredded. Those will get you much closer to the fast-food texture than leafier lettuce, juicy slicing tomatoes, or a really sharp cheddar.
At your ~$25 Taco Bell price, I'd call this one pretty decisively in favor of making them at home — particularly because 12 tacos happen to line up almost perfectly with the retail package size of the shells, which eliminates one of the major sources of waste.
M: All right, redo the math, please. We're trying to do some kind of common denominator thing where assume that we're able to get— We're trying to get whole numbers for everything. So, like the smallest cheese block that you can find, or whatever, so that the entirety of the ingredients are used, or near enough. Does that make sense? It seems like 24 tacos is about right, but I'm not sure. It's been a long day and I'm kind of doing this on the fly while trying to ignore the fact that I've got the tacos in the car and their smell is kind of distracting considering that I'm pretty damn hungry. And you can assume that when I'm talking about making tacos, they don't all have to be official tacos. So El Paso or whatever else I find on sale is what I would be using. So yeah, the important thing is using as much of, like, the head of lettuce or the tomatoes or cheese that I buy. And yeah, incorporate the tomatoes. Thank you for the heads up that those aren't on regular Taco Bell's tacos. You can assume that I'm going to include them like the Supreme, but I'm not worried about sour cream as being part of it as well.
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G: Yes. This version of the question makes more sense than my first calculation: don't ask what 12 tacos consume; ask, "What batch size causes ordinary grocery-store package sizes to run out at approximately the same time?"
I checked current grocery listings again, including Food Lion and Richmond-area Walmart. 24 tacos is remarkably close, but I think the real sweet spot is about 24–28 tacos. Here's why.
Food Lion's own taco-seasoning directions are a useful independent sanity check: they call for 1 lb beef + 12 shells + 4 cups shredded lettuce + 2 cups chopped tomato, although that's considerably more vegetable-heavy than Taco Bell. citeturn0search9 So I've pulled the vegetable quantities downward toward the Taco Bell-style taco you're actually trying to reproduce.
| Buy this | Put it into 24 tacos | Left afterward |
|---|---|---|
| 2 lb 80/20 ground beef | essentially all | none |
| 2 × 12-count regular taco shells | all 24 | none |
| 1 × 8-oz cheddar block/bag | all or nearly all | ~0–1 oz |
| 1 average head iceberg lettuce | most/all usable leaves | little |
| 4 medium Roma tomatoes | all | none |
| Your Taco-Bell-style seasoning/thickener | scaled for 2 lb beef | — |
That gives each taco approximately 1⅓ oz raw beef, ⅓ oz cheese, a small handful of finely shredded lettuce and about 1/6 Roma tomato. Once your beef mixture has water/seasonings/thickener added, that should land in the neighborhood of the rather modest Taco Bell filling rather than becoming a giant homemade taco.
And the package sizes line up beautifully. Food Lion sells 80/20 beef in approximately 1.1-lb regular packages and ~2.5-lb family packages, an 8-oz cheddar block, and iceberg by the head. citeturn0search4turn0search11 Walmart's ordinary store-brand shells are exactly 12 per box, so two boxes = 24 with zero shell leftovers. entity["turn0product7","Great Value Taco Shells, 4.6 oz, 12 Count"]
The cheese is actually the thing that convinces me 24 is about right. An ordinary inexpensive package is 8 ounces, and Walmart currently has 8-oz finely shredded taco cheese for $1.97. entity["turn0product21","Great Value Taco Blend Finely Shredded Cheese, 8 oz Bag"] Eight ounces divided among 24 tacos is 0.333 oz each. That's almost exactly the restrained little Taco-Bell-style sprinkle we're after.
A head of iceberg isn't standardized enough for there to be a magical taco count. Once you remove the core and crappy outer leaves, an ordinary head might leave something on the order of 12–18 usable ounces. If you're putting Taco-Bell quantities on each taco, 24 probably won't quite consume a particularly large head.
Interestingly, if minimizing waste matters more than insisting on a whole head, there's an even cleaner solution: buy an 8-oz bag of shredded iceberg. Walmart currently lists one for $2.32. citeturn0search5 That's exactly ⅓ oz lettuce per taco at 24 tacos, which is an extremely reasonable fast-food-taco portion. So:
24 tacos + one 8-oz bag shredded iceberg = zero lettuce arithmetic and essentially zero lettuce waste.
Normally I'd say shredding a head yourself is cheaper, but we're talking about a difference of perhaps a dollar and you're explicitly optimizing around not having half-used ingredients. In this particular exercise, the bag wins.
I'd use 4 Roma tomatoes for 24, perhaps 5 if they're small.
Current nearby Walmart listings have Roma tomatoes around $0.22 apiece right now, so this is practically irrelevant to the economics anyway. citeturn0search0 Four Romas diced finely gives you enough to scatter tomato over every taco without turning it into a tomato taco.
So I would not inflate the entire recipe to 36 tacos just to find some theoretical tomato/lettuce common denominator. Produce varies too much in size for that ever to become exact.
24 Taco-Bell-ish crunchy tacos:
2 lb ground beef
24 crunchy shells
8 oz finely shredded cheddar
8 oz shredded iceberg lettuce OR roughly one small head
4 medium Roma tomatoes
your existing Taco-Bell-style beef recipe, doubled/scaled to 2
lb
That's unusually tidy. 2 pounds / 2 boxes / 1 cheese package / 1 lettuce package / 4 whole tomatoes. There isn't really an ingredient hanging around afterward saying, "Congratulations, now find something to do with me."
And if you prefer buying the actual head because it's cheaper, I'd still make 24, shred the entire usable head, and just allow the tacos to be more lettuce-heavy if necessary. That's a much better solution than making six additional tacos merely to satisfy the lettuce.
Price-wise, I'd expect that 24-taco batch to land somewhere around $20-ish, give or take several dollars depending overwhelmingly on the beef price and sales. The shells themselves can be dirt cheap: Walmart currently shows the store-brand 12-count at $1.50, versus $2.68 for the Taco Bell-branded version. entity["turn0product29","Taco Bell Crunchy Taco Shells, 12 ct, 4.5 oz Box"] So you're potentially making roughly twice the tacos for less than the ~$25 you're paying for 12, while also making the ingredient-waste problem almost disappear.
So your tired-and-hungry back-of-the-envelope guess was basically right: I'd make 24 the standard batch.