Category Archives: Tips and Tutorials

October 23, 2013 · 11:03 am

Homemade Taco Seasoning Mix

Making your own taco seasoning mix is an easy way to cut chemicals and preservatives out of your food and save money at the same time. And it tastes so much better than any packaged mix. Make a large batch and then store in an airtight container. Use about 2 Tbs of the mix for a pound of ground beef to make regular tacos. You can adjust the amounts of spicier chilies to your family’s taste. Penzey’s (online or in person) is a great source for quality bulk spices.

Use this for more than just ground beef tacos. Try replacing spices in the following recipes with this taco seasoning mix:

Layered Chicken Taco Salad Bowls
Taco Cornbread Pie
Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas
Creamy Chicken Enchiladas Verdes
Baked Chicken Taquitos
Chicken and Black Bean Chili
Hearty Beef Chili
Fajitas
Marinades for grilled steak or chicken

RECIPE:

Homemade Taco Seasoning Mix

Servings: Makes about 2 ½ cups
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1 ½ cups chili powder
4 Tbs paprika (Spanish smoked or regular)
2 Tbs kosher salt (coarse grain; use less for regular table salt)
2 Tbs black pepper
2 Tbs garlic powder
2 Tbs onion powder (not onion salt)
2 Tbs ground cumin
2 Tbs dried oregano
1 Tbs Ancho chili pepper
1 Tbs crushed red pepper flakes
1 Tbs ground cayenne pepper

Mix all ingredients and store at room temperature in an airtight container. Use about 2 Tbs of seasoning per pound of meat. Makes about 2 ½ cups.

Note: Adjust amount of crushed red pepper flakes and cayenne pepper to make milder or spicier

NoEmptyChairs.me

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Filed under Condiments/Sauces, Main Dishes, Tips and Tutorials

Tagged as food, homemade, recipe, seasonings, spices, taco seasoning mix

April 23, 2013 · 11:30 am

Layered Chicken Taco Salad in Baked Tortilla Bowls

Sure, you can eat taco salad on a regular plate, but it is much more fun to eat it out of an edible tortilla bowl. Tortilla bowls are also a great enforcer of portion control. Have you ever noticed that when you layer taco salad on a plate it seems to grow well beyond your original intentions by the time you add all of the toppings you want? Tortilla bowls are the perfect solution, especially for the kids in my family who usually end up with a plateful of food they can never finish.

Intimidated by the thought of shaping and deep-frying tortillas? Me too. Good thing these are simple to make, and baked instead of fried. All you need is a super-old-scratched-and-rusty muffin pan.

To make your baked tortilla bowls, warm tortillas slightly in the microwave (just enough to soften). Spray both sides of tortillas lightly with olive oil cooking spray (or brush very lightly with oil). Turn a muffin tin upside down. Press tortillas into the spaces between muffin cups. Make sure the bottoms of the tortilla bowls are flat so that they will not wobble when served on a plate. Bake at 400F for 8-10 minutes, or until crunchy and just beginning to brown.

You can layer your regular taco salad fillings in the bowl (seasoned ground beef, cheese, lettuce, etc) or try this layered shredded chicken salad. It is similar to some of the semi-fast food Mexican restaurants where you build your own burrito/salad. There are layers of seasoned chili-cilantro rice, black beans, crock-pot cooked shredded chicken, and a cilantro ranch dressing.

This Green Chili Cilantro Rice is also great served alongside other Mexican dishes or grilled meats.

RECIPES:

Layered Chicken Taco Salad in Baked Tortilla Bowls

Servings: About 8
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Crock-Pot Shredded Chicken
Green Chili Cilantro Rice
Tortilla Bowls
Cilantro Ranch Dressing
Black Beans – mix with 1 Tbs lime juice
Shredded Cheese
Corn
Lettuce
Chopped jalapenos or banana peppers
Salsa
Sour Cream

Place baked tortilla bowls on a plate. Layer with rice, black beans (these are really good mixed with 1 Tbs lime juice!), shredded chicken and other desired toppings. Top with cilantro ranch dressing and serve.

Crock-Pot Shredded Chicken
2 lb boneless chicken breasts or tenderloins
1 cup prepared Italian salad dressing
½ cup salsa
1 Tbs taco seasoning
2 cloves garlic, minced

Stir together all ingredients in a crock pot. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or until chicken can easily be shredded. Shred chicken, stir in sauce from pot and serve. If the sauce is too thin (this will especially happen if you use chicken that is injected with broth), shred chicken and return to crock pot, then cook on high with the lid OFF until sauce thickens.

Green Chili Cilantro Rice
1 ¾ cup chicken broth (or water+2tsp chicken bouillon)
1 can (4 oz) diced mild green chilies, undrained
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs olive oil
½ tsp salt (omit salt if using bouillon)
1 cup Basmati rice (or other long grain variety rice)
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro

Combine broth, green chilies, garlic, olive oil and salt in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Stir in rice, cover, and simmer over low heat for 20-25 minutes, or until rice is cooked. Stir in chopped cilantro. This can also be cooked in a rice cooker: combine all ingredients except cilantro in rice cooker and cook according to directions; stir in cilantro.

Tortilla Bowls
Flour tortillas
Olive oil (or olive oil cooking spray)
Muffin tin

Warm tortillas slightly in the microwave (10-15 seconds; just enough to soften). Spray both sides of tortillas lightly with olive oil cooking spray (or brush very lightly with oil). Turn a muffin tin upside down. Press tortillas into the spaces between muffin cups. Make sure the bottoms of the tortilla bowls are flat so that they will not wobble when served on a plate. Bake at 400°F for 8-10 minutes, or until crunchy and just beginning to brown.

Cilantro Ranch Dressing
1 package ranch dressing mix
1 cup mayonnaise
½ cup buttermilk or regular milk
2 tomatillos** or 4 Tbs green salsa
½ bunch of cilantro (about 1 cup chopped)
2 cloves garlic
1 lime, juiced
1-2 jalapenos (with or without the seeds; with seeds=spicier)

Combine all of the ingredients in a blender or food processor. Blend until well mixed. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours before serving for optimal flavor.

**Optional: Roast tomatillos for 20 mins at 400°F before adding them to the blender. If you are using a spicy green salsa instead of the tomatillos, go easy on the jalapenos.

NoEmptyChairs.me

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Filed under Main Dishes, Salads, Tips and Tutorials

Tagged as baked tortilla bowls, cafe rio, chipotle, cilantro ranch dressing, crock pot, entree, main dish, moes, recipe, shredded chicken, taco salad

April 18, 2012 · 11:14 am

Beachcomber Rainbow Cupcakes

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It’s Great to be Eight!

Especially when turning “8” comes with edible flip-flop adorned rainbow cupcakes.

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Earlier this month was my baby girl’s eighth birthday. Unfortunately, due to a bout of the flu on birthday party day, we had to postpone celebrating until last weekend. With these cute cupcakes, our Hawaiian luau was a great success!

We used this Vanilla Frosting Recipe to frost the rainbow-sprinkle-filled cupcakes. Buttercream or Swiss Meringue Buttercream would also work well. The swirl was made using a Wilton 1M tip.

How to make Rainbow Frosting

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Prepare frosting and divide into 3 bowls (or as many colors as you are using). Tint each bowl with paste or gel food coloring. Place each color in a separate piping bag (or use Ziploc bags). Don’t fill bags all the way. An easy way to fill piping bags is to place the empty bag in a tall drinking glass and fold the top of the bag over the edge of the glass. Spoon frosting into the bag. Rainbow Cupcakes 112-1

Secure tops of the filled bags using a rubber band or clip. You can secure them together or separately. Cut ends off of the bags. DO NOT put a piping tip on these bags.

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Place a large tip (I used a Wilton 1M) on a separate clean bag. Place your frosting filled bags into the empty bag with the tip. Make sure that the ends of the frosting filled bags go into the tip of the empty bag. Don’t fill the frosting-filled bags too full, or they will not fit well in the empty bag. You will probably need to refill the bags before you are done frosting all of the cupcakes. To refill bags, place the entire set of frosting bags (leave them inside the bag with the tip) in a tall drinking glass. Remove rubber band or clip. Fill each bag with an equal amount of frosting. Re-secure the ends of the bags.

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This technique also allows you to easily switch the frosting-filled bags to a different sized tip, if you want to create different effects on your cupcakes.

Happy Birthday Little J! Love you always!

5 Comments

Filed under Desserts, Kids' Cakes, Tips and Tutorials

Tagged as birthday, birthday party, cupcakes, flip flops, Hawaiian, how to make rainbow frosting, luau, multi-color, rainbow frosting

December 12, 2011 · 1:29 pm

How To . . . Keep Cookies Fresh

Now that you’ve made all of those Christmas cookies, how do you keep them from going hard and dry before delivering them to all of your friends and neighbors?

Here are a few tips for keeping large quantities of cookies fresh:

Refrigerate or freeze uncooked dough. Uncooked dough can be kept in Ziploc bags or wrapped in plastic wrap (especially logs of dough) in the fridge. Take out dough and bake small batches of cookies. Many types of cookies actually taste better after letting the dough sit in the fridge overnight before cooking. For drop cookies, freezing dough is very helpful. Prepare cookie dough and place scoops of dough on parchment lined baking sheets. Freeze raw dough until solid, then transfer dough balls to Ziploc bags. Pull out just as many cookies as you want to bake.
Refrigerate or freeze cooked cookies. Baked cookies will also stay fresh longer if stored in the refrigerator or freezer. Store cookies in Ziploc bags or seal-able containers and freeze or refrigerate until ready to serve. Be sure to keep different kinds of cookies in different containers. Mint and gingerbread cookies do not go well together!
To store cookies at room temperature: You can still keep cookies fresh without freezing all of them. Use containers that are as air-tight as you can find. Place a small piece of BREAD in the container with the cookies. The bread will lose its moisture more quickly than the cookies, allowing the cookies to stay soft longer than they normally would. Replace the bread with a fresh piece as it dries out. This will not keep cookies soft indefinitely, but it will extend their shelf life to more than a week.

Just a note of warning: if you put bread in your cookie jar, every time your kids open the jar, they will ask, “How come there’s bread in the cookies?” Some may even choose to eat the bread over the cookies, which will prompt you to ask (when you go to sneak another cookie for yourself get a cookie for a starving child), “What happened to the bread I put in the cookie jar?” No one, of course, will admit to eating the mysteriously disappeared stale bread.

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P.S. This also works to keep your brown sugar soft. The bread will last much longer in your canister of brown sugar than in the cookie containers. Maybe because it doesn’t get opened quite as many times throughout the day!

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Filed under Cookies, Tips and Tutorials

Tagged as Cookies, freezing cookie dough, hard brown sugar, how to, keeping brown sugar soft, keeping cookies fresh

December 10, 2011 · 10:52 pm

How To . . . Blanch Almonds

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Blanched almonds are delicious in these Chinese Almond Cookies and are the basis for making almond flour. Blanched almonds sold in stores are extremely expensive, but you can easily make them at home. All you need is a bag of raw almonds.

Bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Remove from heat. Add raw almonds to the hot water. Let sit for 1 minute (not longer). Drain and pour into a bowl of ice cold water.

Leave almonds in ice water only until they are cool, about one minute. Drain.

To remove the skins: pinch almonds between your thumb and index finger to slide the almond out of its skin.

Pat dry. Allow to dry completely before using in recipes.

If you over-soak your almonds and they don’t dry properly: preheat oven to 200°F. Turn oven OFF. Place almonds on a baking sheet and put into the warm (but OFF) oven. Leave almonds in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

To make almond flour from your blanched almonds: place completely dry blanched almonds in a blender or food processor and blend until almonds form fine meal.

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Blanched almonds are also great in cookies like these Chinese Almond Cookies.

How To . . . Make Great Waffles

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Basic Waffle Tips & Strategies

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Make sure that your waffle iron is very hot. Cool iron = lots of sticking. My new Calphalon waffle iron is non-stick and does not require any oil or spray to keep the waffles from sticking.
Don’t overfill the waffle maker pockets. Spillage is not fun to clean. Start with a scant amount of batter on the first few waffles, until you are sure of the right amount. Different recipes will rise more or less while cooking, so don’t think that the same amount of batter will work with different recipes.
Once your batter is mixed, do not keep stirring batter between batches. The air pockets in the batter (from the baking powder/soda or whipped egg whites) will collapse with over-stirring.
Use a ladle or measuring cup (1/2 cup size works well for my waffle maker) to scoop batter. This minimizes the stirring or pouring which will deflate your batter.
If you are using add-ins like blueberries or chocolate chips, sprinkle them on the batter in the waffle iron (instead of in the batter in the bowl); then use a heat-safe rubber spatula (or the back of your ladle) to move some batter over the berries/chips so that they don’t stick to the top plate of the waffle maker. If stirred into the batter in the bowl, these heavier items tend to sink, requiring more stirring, which will deflate your batter.
Cool waffles on a wire cookie sheet, not a plate. Letting the air circulate around the waffles will keep them from getting soggy.
If you are not serving the waffles immediately, place the wire cooling rack in a warm oven (200°F or lower) until ready to serve.
Waffles are great for making in large batches and freezing in Ziploc bags for busy mornings. Reheat in the toaster to maintain crispy edges.
Buttermilk substitute: Place 1 Tbs lemon juice in a one cup measure; add milk to one cup line. Stir; let sit for 5-10 minutes before using. Or try dried buttermilk powder that stores in the fridge. Or use kefir.
Oil (in the batter) makes for crispier waffles; melted butter makes for softer, more cake-like waffles. I prefer using oil in most recipes. Use a mild flavored oil.