Frito Pie-Inspired Popcorn Recipe

A.J. Forget/Mashed

The Frito pie may be a perfect street food. A bag of salty corn chips popped open and smothered with all of your favorite taco fillings and toppings. Pop a fork in it and you have a tasty meal that's ready to be eaten on the go. But making Frito pie at home is not quite so easy — making it yourself involves chopping onions and tomatoes, cooking beef, grating cheese, and washing lots of dishes, which can feel like a lot of work.. With this recipe from developer A.J. Forget, however, you can satisfy that Frito pie itch with less than 10 minutes of work.

With this recipe we have brought the flavors of a classic Frito pie to a bowl of popcorn perfect for sharing with a crowd. The corn chip base is here replaced with popcorn (and maybe some Fritos chips as well, if you want to double down); in place of the seasoned beef you have tallow, chile, and cumin; and for toppings you have cheddar cheese seasoning, dried chives, and buttermilk powder to mimic sour cream. All together, it makes a delicious bowl of popcorn that will scratch that street food itch without requiring hardly any time in the kitchen or leaving a lot of dirty dishes to do afterward.

Gather the Frito pie-inspired popcorn ingredients

A.J. Forget/Mashed

For this recipe you will need salt, chili powder, cumin, cheddar cheese popcorn seasoning, buttermilk powder, dried chives, beef tallow, and popcorn. You may wish to mix some Fritos chips into the finished popcorn, but they are optional. Once you have gathered these ingredients together, you are only a few minutes away from a delicious bowl of Frito pie popcorn.

Step 1: Mix the seasoning

A.J. Forget/Mashed

Make the seasoning mix by combining all ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.

Step 2: Heat the oil

A.J. Forget/Mashed

Bring a large pot to medium-high heat and add the beef tallow.

Step 3: Add the popcorn

A.J. Forget/Mashed

Once the tallow is melted, pour in the popcorn kernels and give it a quick shake to spread them out evenly. Cover the pot.

Step 4: Pop the corn

A.J. Forget/Mashed

The popcorn should begin to pop shortly. Cook for around 4 minutes, shaking occasionally, until you begin to hear 3-second breaks between pops. Remove from heat.

Step 5: Season and serve

A.J. Forget/Mashed

Mix the seasoning into the hot popcorn, add the Frito chips (if using), and serve immediately.

How can I customize this Frito pie popcorn recipe?

A.J. Forget/Mashed

Frito pies are a wonderful food, but have you ever heard of a walking taco? The walking taco is the freewheeling cousin of the Frito pie. While Frito pies obviously need to be made on a base of Fritos corn chips, walking tacos bear no such restriction. As a result, walking tacos are often made with flavor-packed chips like Doritos. If you want to add another layer to this popcorn, consider making a bowl of walking taco-inspired popcorn instead, and replace the Fritos chips with your favorite Doritos flavor.

Or, if you don't want to add additional chips to your popcorn, you can just mimic those flavors by incorporating some additional seasonings. A sprinkle of ranch seasoning or a bit of jalapeño cheddar seasoning provide a pretty good alternative. 

This recipe can be easily adjusted to meet a wide variety of personal preferences and dietary restrictions. For example, it only takes a few adjustments to make this beefy, Frito pie-inspired popcorn totally plant-based. If you swap out the tallow for vegetable oil and skip the buttermilk powder, there's only one more change you need to make: subbing out the cheddar cheese seasoning for popcorn's cheesy, vegan best friend, nutritional yeast.

What is the purpose of beef tallow in this recipe?

A.J. Forget/Mashed

To bring this popcorn flavor as close as possible to the dish it is based on, the Frito pie, we felt that it was important to incorporate a little bit of beef flavor. The simplest way to add a little bit of that savory richness to the dish was to include one of those fats that folks don't cook with as often as they used to, beef tallow.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with tallow, it is just rendered beef fat, ready for cooking. Tallow is to beef as lard is to pork. Tallow is something of an old-fashioned ingredient, but it has made a resurgence in recent years, and is now available at many grocery stores.

If you don't wish to buy a jar of tallow for this recipe (it can be a bit pricey) you can easily substitute beef fat rendered from ground beef. Next time you're cooking up burgers or taco meat, just drain off the unseasoned fat from the skillet and save it to cook with. Just like storing leftover bacon grease, beef fat can be saved and used for future recipes.

While the tallow in this recipe does lend the popcorn a layer of beefy flavor, it is not entirely necessary. Any relatively high-heat oil will do to pop the popcorn, so this recipe can easily be made vegetarian by replacing the tallow with, say, vegetable oil.