Here at LIY HQ, we’ve become quite addicted to the whole food board concept — from french fries to the classic charcuterie goodness, there is nothing that gets our drool dripping quicker than a giant tray with piles of deliciousness sitting on top. To celebrate one of our LIY ladies birthday recently, we took her favorite food group [tacos, duh] and made it into a food board feast! In case you haven’t met Claire, our taco loving lady, you can do so here!

Now, let’s make your own taco board shall we? First things first, we’d advise when you’re looking to build your own food board to have a tray with sides and handles! You can find a large selection of them here! This will allow all of your items to sit securely and you won’t be chasing after loose tomatoes, limes or beans all over the floor during your party. Nobody likes to have to chase after loose limes while trying to entertain 😉 Additionally, we love having these mini 8 oz jars on hand to fill with dipping sauces or other toppings!

Now that we’ve got the tray essentials covered, let’s talk food [the best part, right?] To build your own taco board, you can approach it a couple of ways. 1) You can make all of the toppings yourself – from chicken [this recipe is so easy & delicious] to steak, rice & beans and the list goes on or 2) You can simply order all of the individual toppings from your favorite local Mexican restaurant! We opted for option 2 because sometimes friends, the less work you personally have to do the better. Here is what we had on our taco board:

• Steak
• Chicken
• Ground Beef
• Pinto Beans
• Black Beans
• Mexican Rice
• Shredded Lettuce
• Shredded Cheese
• Chopped Tomatoes
• Chopped Onions
• Chopped Cilantro
• Quartered Limes
• Guacamole
• Salsa
• Queso
• Corn Tortillas
• Flour Tortillas

To build the taco board, here are a few helpful tips and tricks to get you started:

1. Start from the middle and work your way outward! We first placed our main ingredients – meat, rice and beans in the center of the board and then continued out from there.
2. Once you have your meat placed, find spots to place your mini jars! Once you have those in place it will be easy to build around them!
3. When you are adding your piles of toppings, start small. Once you have your piles for each topping placed, you can then build from there to make each topping section larger. You just don’t want to start too big from the get-go and run out of room three ingredients in!
4. Simply roll your tortillas as you see pictured above and place leaning against the sides of the board!
5. Serve and watch your guests flock to the tac[o]!

Who’s ready to go build their own taco board?! What other food boards would you love to see from us? Coming soon: build your own ice cream sandwiches. Oh yes, we went there.