Tacos de Jamaica (Hibiscus Tacos)

Yes, you are reading right! Tacos de Jamaica. When I first heard of them, I thought, errr!! Not for me! The whole idea of eating hibiscus flowers that had been soaked in water, didn’t make me excited, but I kept looking in the internet people cooking them and saying wonderful things about it and because I am a very inquisitive person and also I like to try new things I decided to give them a try.

Jamaica or hibiscus sabdariffa known by its binomial name, is a plant originally from west Africa, but very popular in many countries for its medicinal properties. It has one of the highest levels of antioxidants of any widely available food. In Mexico is very popular for many uses, but mainly people use it to make “Agua fresca”, fresh water, it can also be drunk as tea, make into jam or be eaten, like in this recipe, in tacos.
Well, after that little gap of very interesting information about hibiscus flowers let’s continue with my experience with the tacos. So there I was about to eat my first taco de jamaica and to be honest with you although it smell very good I was still not convinced, but I gave it the first bite and start chewing it and I was instantly converted. It tasted very good, it is like eating meat, but without all the bad things that the meat has and the flavour the garnish give to the cooked hibiscus makes the taco a marvellous dish. And the other brilliant thing is that when you are making hibiscus tacos, you get to have hibiscus fresh water because you have to boil the flowers first, so here you’ll learn two recipes in one! How cool is that!

So come on! Give them a try and tell me what you think!

Serves 4

Prep 15 min

Cook 20 min approx

Ingredients 

• 2 cups dry hibiscus flowers
• Water
• 1 tomatoe chopped
• 1/2 onion chopped
• 1/2 green pepper julienned
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 2 tbsp Rapeseed oil
• Salt

To serve

• Corn tortillas
• Chopped avocado
• feta cheese crumbled
• Spicy salsa (there are 2 recipes of spicy salsa in my blog)

Method

Put the hibiscus flowers to boil in water, for 2 cups I used 1 L water, after the water has been boiling for around 10 min, turn the heat off, drain the water, keeping it in a jar to make a drink with it and rinse the hibiscus flowers again to get rid off any sour taste.

 Heat a frying pan and add the oil and low the heat to medium, add the tomato, onion and green pepper and cook for 5 min then add the garlic cook for 2 more min and add the hibiscus flowers and cook for 5 to 7 min, add salt to taste and when everything is hot. Turn the heating off.

Heat the corn tortillas and make the tacos garnish them with cheese and salsa. Enjoy

Listo!

Provecho!