Just like Hollywood producers looking to parlay box office success into a profitable sequel, the Taco Bell team knows how to build upon a tried-and-true formula. This past July—already riding high from the response to their Dorito-dusted tacos—the Tex-Mex titan unveiled the Triple Double Crunchwrap Supreme, doubling down on the idea that additional beef and tostada layers would be a smash hit.
The immediate fanfare surrounding the release of version 2.0 is a friendly reminder: Taco Bell is not only leading the fast-food pack in innovation by a long shot, but also their O.G. blueprint for the iconic hand-held wrap taps into something deeply satisfying. “That delicious soupy beef, the unnatural neon nacho cheese, the crunch, the sour cream, and how they used geometry to figure out how to get this in maximum surface area...It's the first truly original thing Taco Bell did,” says Los Angeles Magazine senior food writer and Taco Bell fanboy, Josh Scherer.
That fundamental appeal works on multiple levels for both consumers and kitchen pros alike. The textural composition and architectural genius has inspired great minds like David Chang and Danny Bowien to riff on the Crunchwrap, replacing mushy beef with fried-chicken fingers. Isn't it time, then, that we bring the Crunchwrap Supreme into our own home kitchens? Scherer, an ultimate tinkerer in his own right, thinks so. The author of the future Culinary Brodown Cookbook says that the real shock is how intuitive and simple it is to make your own rendition of the beloved “hexagonal tortilla product.”
Though you’ll have to follow a few crucial steps—making beef that's just as mushy, perfecting your folding technique—the end result is worth it: for the taste, the texture, and the pride of paying homage to what Scherer sums up as “the single greatest fast food item ever created.”
Here’s how to copy the original in all its crunchy, meaty, cheesy glory.