Taco Bell spicy potato soft taco is a vegetarian taco of crispy seasoned potatoes, chipotle sauce, lettuce and cheddar in a flour tortilla. The potatoes get tossed in seasoned flour before they fry, which is what builds the crust. Twenty-five minutes makes eight tacos.
Salt the seasoned flour, because the recipe as written leaves it out entirely. Fried potato with no salt in the coating tastes flat no matter how good the sauce is, and you cannot fix it afterward. Half a teaspoon of kosher salt in the flour sorts it.
Rinse the cut potatoes and dry them properly before they meet the flour. Surface starch turns to glue in hot oil and welds the cubes together, while any water left on them makes the coating slide off. A few minutes on a towel decides whether they fry separate or fuse.
Taco Bell Spicy Potato Soft Taco
Course: Main CourseCuisine: American, MexicanDifficulty: Easy4
servings30
minutes40
minutes300
kcalThe air fryer works if you keep the floured coating and drizzle a little oil over it first. Store the potatoes and sauce separately for two days, then reheat the potatoes in the oven, never the microwave.
Ingredients
- For the potatoes:
2 lb Russet potatoes
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon kosher salt (see notes)
Vegetable oil, for frying
- For the chipotle sauce:
½ cup sour cream
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 to 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon onion powder
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
- To assemble:
8 flour tortillas
½ cup finely shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup shredded lettuce
Directions
- Potatoes: Wash and peel the potatoes, cut them into ½ to ¾ inch cubes, then rinse and pat completely dry.
- Coat: Combine the flour, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne and salt, toss the potatoes through it and shake off the excess.
- Fry: Heat oil to 350F and fry for 10 to 12 minutes until golden brown, then drain on a wire rack.
- Sauce: Blend all the sauce ingredients for about 30 seconds until smooth.
- Assemble: Warm the tortillas for 30 seconds, add two to three tablespoons of potatoes, then drizzle with sauce and top with lettuce and cheddar.
Most of what goes wrong here happens before the potatoes ever reach the oil.
FAQs
Why does the recipe leave salt out of the coating?
It looks like an oversight, since the ingredient notes on the same page do list kosher salt for the potatoes. The recipe card then skips it, so anyone cooking from the card alone ends up with bland potatoes. Add half a teaspoon to the seasoned flour and the problem disappears.
How big should the potato cubes be?
Half to three-quarters of an inch, which is what the frying time assumes. The written steps elsewhere on the page suggest much smaller pieces, but those would scorch well before twelve minutes. Keep them uniform more than anything, since mixed sizes cook at different rates.
Can I air fry them instead of deep frying?
Yes, and it is the change most people make. Keep the seasoned flour coating, drizzle a little oil over the coated cubes, then cook at 350F until they brown. Without that drizzle the flour stays powdery and pale, which is the usual air fryer complaint.
Do tater tots or hash browns actually work?
Several cooks report good results with both, which saves the cutting and the frying. You lose the seasoned flour crust, so the spice has to come from the sauce instead. Treat it as a weeknight shortcut rather than a close copy.
What else can I do with the spiced potatoes?
They work anywhere home fries would, especially under eggs. If you want them cheesy instead, their cheesy fiesta potatoes take the same idea and bury it under nacho cheese and sour cream. Mashed slightly with black beans, they also bind into a decent veggie patty.
What if I don’t like chipotle?
Skip it, because the taco survives a sauce swap better than you would think. A cool option like a creamy baja sauce keeps the moisture without the smoke, and plain taco sauce works too. The potatoes are carrying the spice already, so the sauce has room to be mild.
The source page lists kosher salt among the potato coating ingredients but omits it from its recipe card, so it has been restored here. Its written steps and its card also disagree on the potato size, and its introduction says 30 minutes while the card totals 25. Nutrition is the source plugin’s automatic calculation and should be treated as an approximation, particularly for deep-fried food.
