The taco is a pillar of San Antonio cuisine, served for breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks, in variations that range from bacon and eggs to barbacoa and beyond. No worthwhile taqueria buys its tortillas. Wheat and corn dough are rolled out and cooked on the spot and generally used to wrap the filling of choice within moments of getting lifted off a hot griddle. The puffy taco is made by eliminating the griddle and briefly tossing the uncooked tortilla (usually corn masa, but wheat works, too) into a hot oil bath, causing it to puff up like a sopaipilla. A restaurant called Henry’s Puffy Tacos claims to have invented it in 1978, but it is likely that Henry’s only named a dish that in fact has been around since at least the 1950s. Deftly made, a puffy taco seems more like air than dough, its crispness evanescent, its flavor deliciously elusive. If the tortilla spends too much time in oil, it can emerge grease-sopped and leaden. Although a simple procedure, the making of tortillas for tacos— especially for puffy tacos—requires a seasoned hand.
Nearly every taqueria in San Antonio offers puffy tacos as an alternative to those made with griddle-cooked tortillas.