Category Archives for Mexican

Southwestern Burgers

Yesterday I shared with you a great Homemade Chipotle Ketchup, and while it is super good just with fries, I thought I would give you something else to put it on.  Southwestern Burgers.  This is a burger I created just to go with the ketchup! It’s a beef patty with corn and black beans, seasoned with cumin and chili powder and draped in pepper jack cheese.  Top it all of with the chipotle ketchup, and it’s one sassy burger!

Southwestern Burgers
Ingredients:
1 lb. ground beef
½ cup corn (fresh, frozen, or canned)
½ cup black beans, drained and rinsed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp cilantro, chopped
4 slices pepper jack cheese
4 hamburger buns
Homemade chipotle ketchup
Directions:
Combine ground beef, corn, beans, salt, cumin, chili powder, and cilantro in a large bowl.  Divide mixture and shape into 4 patties.
Grill burgers over high heat until cooked through.  Top each patty with a slice of pepper jack cheese.  Place on buns and top with chipotle ketchup.
Makes 4 servings.
I am not usually a fan of pepper jack cheese, but I really liked it on this burger.  The burger itself isn’t spicy, more of a smoky chili flavor.  The spiciness of the cheese and the ketchup was just perfect with it.  
This is a great way to perk up your burger night!

Mexican Brownies with Cinnamon Dulce de Leche

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!  I love Cinco de Mayo and consider it a food holiday!  We love Mexican food and margaritas and think it’s totally awesome that there’s a holiday for them!  I created a new “Mexican” dessert the other night and want to share it with you now.  The name sounds really fancy, but really, it’s just cinnamon and cayenne stirred into a brownie mix and topped with cinnamon-flavored sweetened condensed milk that’s been cooked.  Easy peasy, but so good!

Mexican Brownies with Cinnamon Dulce de Leche


Ingredients:
1 (19 oz.) box brownie mix
Egg, oil, and water called for on brownie mix box
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp chipotle or cayenne powder
1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
¾ tsp cinnamon


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350° (or whatever temperature the brownie mix box says to use).


Make brownie mix as directed on box.  Stir in 1 tsp cinnamon and chipotle or cayenne powder.  Bake according to box directions, in either an 8×8 or a 9×13 pan.  Remove from oven and let cool.


Meanwhile, remove the paper label from the can of sweetened condensed milk.  Place can in a large pot and completely cover with water.  Place on stove and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and let simmer for 2½ to 3 hours, making sure the can is covered with water at all times.  *IMPORTANT!* If the water level dips below the top of the can, add more water to the pot to cover it.  If the can isn’t covered by water, it will get too hot and explode all over your kitchen.  With tongs, remove can from hot water and allow to cool for several hours.


Open can and pour contents into a small bowl.  Add ¾ tsp cinnamon and stir to combine.  Pour dulce de leche over the brownies and smooth it out.  Cut brownies and serve.  Refrigerate leftovers.


Makes 9 thicker brownies (8×8 pan), or 15 thinner brownies (9×13 pan).

I made mine in an 8×8 pan and didn’t use all of the dulce de leche topping.  I’m not totally sure it would be enough for a 9×13 pan, though, so if you are doing a 9×13 pan, make two cans of the sweetened condensed milk.  You will probably have too much that way, but it’s better than not enough.  Also, the dulce de leche kind of soaks into the leftover brownies when you refrigerate them, so it’s nice to have a little extra to drizzle on those.

This is a decadent dessert that finishes off a yummy Mexican dinner perfectly.  The cinnamon and ground pepper add just the right amount of spice and heat.  And you can’t beat the convenience of a boxed mix!

I hope you are all able to celebrate Cinco de Mayo by enjoying some delicious food and don’t forget the margaritas!


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Cheesy Chipotle Beef and Noodle Bake

 This is a simple weeknight meal that is sure to please your family.  Think of it kind of as a beefy Mexican mac and cheese.  The inspiration for this dish came from Taste of Home, but I changed it quite a bit to better suit our tastes.

Cheesy Chipotle Beef and Noodle Bake

Ingredients:
3 cups uncooked egg noodles or other pasta
2 tsp olive oil
½ large onion, chopped
1 lb. ground beef
1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 (10¾ oz.) can condensed cheddar cheese soup
¼ tsp chipotle powder
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 cups crushed tortilla chips
Shredded lettuce, sour cream and/or salsa, optional

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°.

Cook noodles according to package directions; drain. 

Meanwhile, heat oil in a large saucepan.  Saute onions until beginning to get tender.  Add beef and cook over medium heat until no longer pink; drain off grease. Stir in the tomato sauce, soup, and chipotle powder. Stir in cooked noodles.

Transfer to a 2½ quart baking dish. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until heated through. Top with tortilla chips. Serve with lettuce, sour cream and/or salsa if desired.

Makes 4 servings.

The original recipe called for nacho cheese soup, green chiles, and olives.  We don’t like green chiles, so I changed the flavor profile to chipotle instead.  I also used tomato sauce instead of diced tomatoes because my husband is picky about chunks of tomato in casseroles.

I use chipotle powder in it because the first time I made it I didn’t have any canned chipotles on hand.  But you could use the canned version instead of the powder if you like.  One quarter of a teaspoon of chipotle powder might not sound like much for a whole dish, but that stuff is potent!  It really has a nice heat to it, but not so much that my 4-year-old won’t eat it.  If you like things hot, add a little more.

You can also use any kind of pasta you like in here, but the egg noodles are my favorite.

It’s really good with crushed tortilla chips on it, but I didn’t have any the night I took pics.  They add a nice crunchy texture to it.


Sweet Potato and Black Bean Enchilada Stack

It’s time to share with you another fabulous meatless main dish that my family loves.  It combines several ingredients that don’t seem to go together: sweet potatoes, salsa verde, cream cheese, and black beans, but actually they combine to form this wonderful enchilada casserole in stacked form.  It’s an adaptation of one I found at Greens and Chocolate.
Sweet Potato and Black Bean Enchilada Stack

Ingredients:
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 large clove garlic, grated
2 cups cooked sweet potatoes, mashed (2 medium)
½ tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
¾ tsp salt
1 cup salsa verde or tomatillo salsa
3 (9”) flour tortillas 
6 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. 

In large bowl, combine the beans, garlic, sweet potato, cumin, chili powder, and salt.  Set aside.

To assemble the casserole, coat the bottom of a 9″ round casserole dish or cake pan with ¼ cup of the salsa verde.  Spread ⅓ of cream cheese onto each tortilla.  Place one of the tortillas on top of the sauce.  Top with ⅓ of the sweet potato filling and top with another ¼ cup of the salsa verde.  Repeat to make three layers and top with cheese.  Bake for 30 minutes.  Cut into slices and enjoy!

Makes 4-6 servings.
Here are a few pics of the process.







Bottom: salsa verde, aka tomatillo salsa.  I use the Meijer Gold brand.

 Cream cheese.  This kind of holds everything together and brings a nice creaminess to the dish.
 Sweet potato and black bean mixture.
 Topped with cheese, of course!  My favorite is the Kraft Mexican blend.
 Isn’t it pretty?
This dish is a huge hit with my family.  I love it because it contains ingredients that I almost always have on hand at any given time.  It’s very filling and nobody misses the meat when I serve this.


 

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Mini Taco Bowls

As you may know, I like to plan out my meals, traditionally monthly, but lately I’ve been lazy and it’s been weekly.  I usually stick to my plan pretty well, but sometimes I’m just not in the mood for the dinner that is planned.  Yesterday I had a great slow cooker meal planned.  It’s one I’ve made several times and we always like it, but with the weather the way it is (80 degrees here in Michigan!), I just wasn’t in the mood for a warm comfort food-type meal.  So I completely switched gears and decided to have tacos instead.  While you can’t go wrong with just the usual fare at Taco Night, I remembered seeing these cute little taco bowls on Pinterest and wanted to try them.  This recipe comes from the blog Emily Bites.

Mini Taco Bowls


Ingredients:
6 (6”) tortillas 
Cooking Spray
Your favorite taco fillings


Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375°.


If the tortillas are not pliable, wrap them in a clean kitchen towel and microwave them for 30 seconds or so.


Turn two 12 cup muffin tins upside down. Mist each side of a tortilla lightly with cooking spray and center it in the space between 4 muffin cups, creating a bowl. Repeat with the 5 remaining tortillas, forming 3 bowls on each tin. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes, until lightly golden and crispy.


Let the tortilla bowls cool for a few minutes after removing them from the oven. Fill bowls with your favorite taco fillings.


Makes 3 servings.

Aren’t they just adorable!  This is the most genius idea I’ve seen for a while.  They are so cute, they taste great, and best of all, they require no more work than heating up hard shell tacos.  

Taco salad is one my favorite things, and these are like mini taco salads.  To be honest, we weren’t sure how to eat them.  My husband just picked his up and took a bit out of it, but that didn’t work very well!  I treated mine just like a taco salad.  I mixed up the filling a little bit, then broke apart the shell to eat with it.  So good!

I know these little cuties will be making frequent appearances on my table on taco nights from now on!


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Baked Chili Bean & Cheese Enchiladas

(Sorry about the quality of the pictures in this post. It was raining the evening I made this and there was not much light to work with!)
This is the newest addition to my meatless main dish rotation.  I’m tagging it as Mexican, though it’s more accurately Tex-Mex.  Chili beans (also called ranch beans) are combined with cheese and rolled into tortillas and baked.  It’s an adaptation of one I saw at Simple Daily Recipes.
Baked Chili Bean & Cheese Enchiladas

Ingredients:
4 (16 oz.) cans pinto beans in chili sauce
8 (10”) flour tortillas
2 cups cheddar cheese, shredded
Lettuce, for topping
Sour cream, for topping

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350º.

Pour the beans with their liquid into a large bowl.  Lightly mash, leaving about half of the beans whole.  Stir in 1½ cups cheese.  

Spread a little bit of the bean mixture evenly in the bottom of a 9×13” casserole dish.  Fill each tortilla with a generous amount of bean mixture.  Roll tortillas up and place seam side down in casserole dish.  Use remaining bean mixture to spread over the tops of the burritos.  Cover all the enchiladas with the remaining cheese.

Cover and bake 25 to 30 minutes . Allow to cool at least 5 minutes before serving.  Serve with lettuce and sour cream.

Makes 6-8 servings.
Mmm, this is good!  It’s a nice change from our usual Mexican dishes.  I got the medium beans, which was the perfect level of heat for us.  If you like things hot, get the hot beans.  How can you go wrong with beans and cheese?

 Just look at all that beany cheesy goodness!
I just barely fit 8 tortillas in my pan.  They were as snug as bugs in rugs!

I wasn’t sure what to put as far as how many servings this makes.  I could only eat one, but I could see how someone could maybe eat one and a half, so I left it at 6-8.  Beans are pretty filling.

They definitely require some toppings to offset the richness.  I chose lettuce and sour cream.  The lettuce provided a nice crunch to change up the texture, and the sour cream provided the coolness.  I ate some of the leftovers with tortilla chips; that was really good too.

Don’t forget to check out my giveaway for up to 4 chances to win a one-year subscription to Taste of Home magazine!  The contest ends Tuesday morning, so head over there now and make your entries!


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Spicy Black Bean Dip

This is a yummy black bean dip that I made to go with my Creamy Chicken Baked Flautas.  But it would be great with a variety of Mexican dishes or just as a dip for tortilla chips.
Spicy Black Bean Dip
Ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
¼ large onion, diced
1 clove garlic, grated
1 (15 oz.) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 chipotle in adobo, seeded and finely minced, plus 2 tbsp adobo sauce
½-1 cup vegetable broth
Salt to taste
Directions:
Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Add onion and garlic and sauté until onion begins to get soft.  Add black beans, minced chipotle, adobo sauce, and ½ cup vegetable broth.  Cook for about 5 minutes.
Puree bean mixture using a stick blender, regular blender, or food processor.  Add more broth if necessary to achieve desired consistency.  Add salt to taste.
Makes 4 servings.

I love chipotle and it pairs really well with black beans.  If you don’t have the canned chipotles in adobo on hand, you can use chipotle powder.  It really packs a punch, so use sparingly!
I know that 2 tbsp of oil seems like an awful lot for sauteing onions, but it gives the finished dip a nice shiny sheen.  Otherwise it dries out too quickly.
Spicy Black Bean Dip with Creamy Chicken Baked Flautas

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Creamy Chicken Baked Flautas

Mexican food is quite popular at our house.  We have something Mexican about once a week.  I saw these flautas on the blog For the Love of Cooking and had to try them.  I wasn’t sure exactly what a “flauta” was, but these reminded me of taquitos.  I have made taquitos before, and this seemed like the same method with a different filling.  I wikied “flauta” and found out that flautas and taquitos are different words for the same thing, a rolled tortilla with some kind of filling inside.  Flauta means “flute” and taquito means “little taco”.  Traditionally they are fried, but it’s super easy to make them healthier by baking them.  Here is the recipe for the ones I made last night.

Creamy Chicken Baked Flautas
Ingredients:
2 cups cooked chicken, chopped
3 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
¼ cup Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
½ tsp dried oregano
½ tsp garlic powder
Salt and pepper, to taste
12 small (6”) flour tortillas
Cooking spray
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375°. Line a baking sheet with foil and place a cooling rack on top if you have one.  Coat either the foil or the cooling rack with cooking spray.
In a medium bowl, combine the chicken, cilantro, cream cheese, Monterey Jack, oregano, salt, and pepper. Mix until well combined.
Wrap flour tortillas in wet paper towels and microwave them for 1 minute or until soft.  (Some brands are soft enough that they don’t require this step.  I use Mission and they don’t need it.)
Place a spoonful of chicken mixture down the center of the tortilla; roll up. Place, seam side down, on the prepared baking sheet. Finish rolling the rest of the flautas, then spray each of them with cooking spray.
Place into the oven and bake for about 15 minutes or until crispy and golden brown.
Makes 4 servings, 3 flautas each.
The original recipe didn’t say what size or how many tortillas to use, so the first time I made these I used what I had, medium tortillas.  I only got 5 flautas out of it and they didn’t brown up very well because there was too much tortilla rolled up.  I got some small tortillas and tried it again and was much happier with the results.
When I made the taquitos last year, I created a refried bean dip to go with them.  The filling in these flautas is so creamy and cheesy that I decided to make a Spicy Black Bean Dip to go with them.  It was the perfect complement to the flautas.

 The yummy chicken filling.  If you don’t like cilantro, you can just leave it out, but I think it really makes the flavors pop.
Flautas served with Spicy Black Bean Dip.

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Lentil Tacos

This is a new meatless main dish I tried last night.  My friend Barbara knew that I do meatless meals one night a week, and she had tried these and loved them so she passed the recipe on to me.  It came from the website Eat at Home.  Here’s my amended version.
Lentil Tacos

Ingredients:
1 cup lentils
1 tbsp olive oil
½ onion, diced
2 tbsp taco seasoning
2¼ cups chicken broth
6 taco shells
Lettuce
Salsa or taco sauce
Cheese
Sour cream

Directions:
Rinse and drain the lentils and drain.  Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Sauté the onion until slightly tender.  Add the lentils and taco seasoning; cook for a minute.  Add the broth and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for about 30 minutes.  Uncover and cook a few more minutes to thicken.  

Use this just like you would taco meat.  Place a spoonful of the lentils in taco shells and top with lettuce, salsa, cheese, sour cream, or whatever else you like on your tacos.

Makes 6 servings.
This was really good!  I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it tastes just like the beef; it doesn’t.  But it’s really good in its own right.  My meat-loving husband actually said that he likes these just as much, if not more, than any taco he’s ever had.  That’s pretty good!
The lentils are really easy to make, but best of all, they are super cheap.  This amount of lentils cost me less than 36 cents.  Wow!  I love cheap food!  Some people do the Meatless Monday thing to be healthier, or to be more environmentally friendly, but my main reason is to save some money (although the healthier aspect runs a very close second).  So these definitely fit the bill!
I did change the recipe slightly from the original.  I used my own taco seasoning instead of the seasonings listed in the recipe.  It also called for adding salsa to the lentils right at the end of cooking.  I left that out and just put salsa on my tacos separately.  I also reduced the amount of chicken stock slightly because I really had to cook it a long time with the lid off to get the liquid to reduce.

 Not a great picture, but here are the cooked lentils all ready to go into tacos.
This is good on either soft or crunchy shells, but crunchy is my favorite.

Thanks so much for the recipe, Barbara!  If anyone else has any good meatless main dishes, please share them with me.  You can comment here, or on my Facebook page.

Slow Cooker Garlic Lime Chicken for Tacos

This is a recipe I just completely made up.  I’m all about marrying different flavors together in somewhat unexpected ways, and something made me think that garlic and lime would be good together on a taco.  Here’s what I came up with.
Slow Cooker Garlic Lime Chicken for Tacos

Ingredients:
3½-4cups reduced-sodium chicken stock
6 cloves garlic, sliced
3 chicken breast halves (not cutlets)
1 lime
1 tsp olive oil

Directions:
Pour about half of the chicken stock in the bottom of the slow cooker.  Add about half of the sliced garlic.  Place chicken breasts on top, doing your best to make sure they don’t overlap.  Pour remaining chicken stock on top, making sure chicken is covered with liquid.  Throw in the remaining garlic.

Cover and cook on low for 6 hours.

Remove chicken from slow cooker and shred with two forks.  Place in a large bowl.  Zest the lime and put in a small bowl.  Juice the lime and add that and the oil to the bowl and stir until combined.  Pour lime juice mixture over the chicken and toss to coat.

Put chicken inside flour tortillas and add your favorite taco toppings.  

Makes about 8 servings (enough for about 16 tacos).
These are not your usual heavy, greasy, and rich tacos.  I love those (don’t get me wrong!), but I was in the mood for something fresh and light.  This is definitely it!  The chicken is slow cooked all day, infusing with wonderful garlic flavor, then brightened up with lime juice and lime zest.  It was so good that I couldn’t stop sneaking bites as I was preparing it.  
You can build your tacos any way you like, of course.  Here’s how I layered mine: flour tortilla, black beans, chicken, fresh avocado, fresh cilantro leaves, sliced onion, and then I squirted some chipotle sauce on each side.  Since the chicken has no spice, you need some kind of spicy element in there, in my opinion.  While I thought the chipotle sauce was perfect, my husband chose taco sauce.  You could also use salsa.
These are the perfect summertime tacos.  And since they are made in the slow cooker, there is no oven or stovetop to heat up your kitchen.  And it makes your house smell awesome!
I am just guessing on the serving size.  It makes a lot!  It may be more than that.

 Chicken nestled into the slow cooker.  I turned them over a couple of hours into cooking to make sure they cooked evenly.

The finished chicken.  It’s so pretty with the flecks of green!  Jim said it should be called “fiesta chicken”.