Air Fried Avocado Taco with New Orleans Flavors

by Chef Cynthia owner of Soulgood Restaurant

Eating vegan to make your diet more eco-friendly doesn’t have to come at the cost of flavor. Instead, it can actually enhance it. This recipe is a great example of one that shows you precisely how important your spice blend is when cooking. Traditionally, tacos would make use of some form of a Mexican spice blend. I've found a great Creole spice blend that gives you some of the seasonings used in New Orleans cuisine to make a truly delicious meal.

Simple can be tasty

There are many things that I love about this recipe. The most important one is that there are so few ingredients. If you follow me, you know I love simple ingredients with big returns.

Of course, the spice blend has a lot of ingredients, but the main star of the meal is made with only four. Cooking simple and easy doesn’t have to be bland, and this nutritious meal shows that. I really love that this recipe makes a straightforward American classic without overdoing the ‘veganizing’ by adding a whole host of ingredients you’d have trouble tracking down.

We also really like that this recipe doesn’t use alternative meat products. While a vegan chicken substitute would likely work really well here, using avocado is simply a great way to introduce a new fruit to the meal. Yes, avocado is a fruit and it’s also really fresh and full of flavor.

A quick history of creole cuisine

I wanted to quickly mention the history of creole cuisine relevant to this dish, as it’s an interesting slice of history that cooks will likely appreciate.

Creole cuisine is a really interesting blend of African cooking and French cooking. The reason for this is that African slaves, when freed into historically French-controlled regions of America, saw a great opportunity to combine those two flavor palettes. This has resulted in French-style cooking techniques, such as the thickening of sauces with a roux, being used in the Southern US states.

This can be seen in the spice blend, here, with spices like oregano and basil being traditionally French, while Creole cuisine was traditionally created outside of France by people who, typically, weren’t French. [1]

Ingredients:

• 4 avocados

• 1 ½ cups panko breadcrumbs

• Corn tortillas

• 2 tsp homemade creole seasoning [2]

For the Creole seasoning:

• 1 tbsp onion powder

• 1 tbsp garlic powder

• 1 tbsp dried oregano

• 1 tbsp dried basil

• ½ tbsp dried thyme

• ½ tbsp black pepper

• 3 tbsp sweet paprika

• ¼ - ½ tsp cayenne pepper

• 1 tsp celery salt

• 1 tbsp salt

Mix those seasoning ingredients together in an airtight jar, being sure that everything is well distributed. This flavoring is like New Orleans on your tongue - I adore it, and it gives these tacos a beautiful hit of flavor. [3] If you want a hack seasoning mix Old Bay with chili powder, white pepper and sea salt.

Method:

1. Firstly, we need to prepare the avocado. Do this by removing the outer skin and the inner seed and then discarding them. Then, slice each avocado half, lengthwise, into three pieces. This will give you six strips of avocado per avocado that you started out with.

2. Next, season the avocado with the wonderful creole seasoning above - sprinkle the blend over the top of them, and then flip the strips and sprinkle once more.

3. Press the avocado slices, ever so gently, into the panko breadcrumbs. Do this for all sides of the avocado, so that the strips are completely coated in breadcrumbs.

4. Place the slices of avocado into your air fryer, but make sure not to overlap or stack the slices at all - that will result in uneven cooking.

5. Cook the avocado at 375˚F for four minutes. Remove those cooked slices from your air fryer, and then do the next batch of slices. Continue this until you’ve cooked all of the slices.

6. While the avocado slices are cooking, it's a good idea to warm up the tortillas. You can do this in a low oven, with a stack of tortillas wrapped in a damp tea towel. Alternatively, you could microwave a stack of tortillas wrapped in a damp paper towel - the choice is yours.

Finally, assemble the vegan tacos. Take one of your warm tortillas, and add two or three of the air fried avocado slices to it. Add Happy Tomato salsa and cilantro or any toppings that you might enjoy, and then serve. [2]

Want more recipes watch Chef Cynthia on Amazon Echo Show, YouTube, visit her Soulgood restaurant in Denton, Texas or award-winning vegan food truck in Dallas, Texas.