Skip The Tortillas And Make Taco Shells With This Beloved Breakfast Food

If you really think about it, tacos are a perfect breakfast item. They're bite-sized and handheld, so it's easy to eat them when you're too sleepy for forks and knives. Their flavor profile goes great with coffee, especially if they're filled with carnitas. Each one has a good balance of all the major food groups — you've got carbs, protein, fat, veggies, and even some dairy in the queso. The only real nitpick with having a taco for breakfast is that a lot of us are used to having something sweeter to start the day with. Switching out the tortilla for a pancake not only solves that problem, but it opens up a whole world of tasty breakfast options, too.

Hear us out: Pancakes aren't as absurd a taco tortilla swap as you might assume. If the McGriddle can swap out the buns of a Sausage McMuffin with maple-flavored griddle cakes, you can definitely use pancakes instead of tortillas for a breakfast taco. The sweet-salty contrast between a pancake and bacon, made richer with a sprinkling of cheese and brightened up by just-spicy-enough salsa, is a combination of flavors worth waking up for. A fluffy, syrup-glazed pancake would take chorizo breakfast tacos to the next level, with the sweetness of your makeshift tortillas complementing the protein's smokier notes.

There's genuinely so many ways you could be rewarded for playing around with pancakes and breakfast tacos; there's inspiration to be found in every Mexican taco style, to start. And that's just on the savory end of things — the sweet side of the spectrum has a lot of potential, too.

If you enjoy having fruit for breakfast, stuffing it into a pancake-turned-tortilla works great for mornings where you need the extra fuel. Berries are a traditional combo with pancakes, but you should be able to get good results with other fruits that are good for baking, like plums and apricots. A pancake is still technically a cake, after all, so whatever pairs well with cakes should work for a sweet breakfast taco.

To zhuzh the taco up even more, add creams and cheeses you might find in dessert pancakes. For instance, you can make pancakes more luxurious with ricotta cheese, so it'll also do well as a filling for your breakfast taco. Greek yogurt is another great option for adding flavor and texture to the dish. If you go this route, you can turn them into yogurt parfait tacos, finishing with granola and honey.

You can even play with the pancake itself; if you add pancake mix-ins the right way, you'll be able to pack your "tortillas" even more flavor without any risk of tearing them up. You can even mash up some banana for some vitamin-rich breakfast tacos as long as your bananas are the proper ripeness for pancakes. However you end up making your tacos — whether sweet or savory — always remember to have fun with it. The best way to start your day is by making yourself smile.