Kind of a hot mess.

Let it be known! For any Tex-Mex dish in existence, there is an equally delicious breakfast version of that dish.

For evidence to back this idea, I offer exhibit A – The Breakfast Nachos.

The topping possibilities are pretty unlimited, but should probably include some sort of egg and cheese, plus some good veggies.

They are actually very easy to make and definitely fun to eat. Just be careful or you might find yourself in a very solid food coma for the day.

Breakfast Nachos

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

8 ounces spicy pork sausage
4 large eggs, scrambled
1/4 red onion, diced
1 jalapeno, minced
2 cups pepper jack cheese, grated
Tortilla chips
Avocado
Cilantro
Salsa
Sour cream

Directions:

1) Lay out tortilla chips on a baking sheet in an even layer. Top with grated cheese.

2) In a medium pan, add sausage and begin to brown over medium-high heat. Crumble sausage as it cooks and cook until it's well-browned, about 10 minutes.

3) Scramble eggs and pour into pan with sausage. Cook until eggs are barely cooked, another few minutes.

4) Add eggs and sausage to tortilla chips on top of the cheese.

5) Top with diced veggies.

6) Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes until cheese is melted.

7) Top with avocado and cilantro and serve with salsa and sour cream.

The Prep

There’s actually very little prep for these bad boys. Feel free to combine them with some of the more advanced nacho techniques I’ve used over the years like the individually topped chip or the cheese sauce method.

If you’re starving though, you can just throw some chips on a baking sheet!

The chips are down.

Obviously you could add a lot of veggie toppings to these. I kept it pretty simple though and just diced up a jalapeno and a chunk of red onion.

Just some basic chopping

Eggs and Sausage

When it comes to a good hardy breakfast, it’s pretty hard to beat eggs and sausage. So that’s what I used here! While you could definitely leave off the sausage for a veggie version, I’m not sure I’d leave off the eggs because then you’d just have nachos and not breakfast nachos.

If you are using the sausage though, just add it to a pan over medium-high heat and break it up as it cooks until it’s nice and browned.

Well-browned!

Then pour in your scrambled eggs! The grease from the sausage will be more than enough to help the eggs cook.

This will work. Trust me.

Stir the mixture vigorously as it cooks and it’ll just take another minute or so to cook the eggs.

Don’t worry if the eggs are slightly under-cooked. We are going to bake them also so it’s better to under-cook them a bit at this point.

A bit undercooked is fine.

Finishing the Nachos

Nothing rocket science about it. Add your cheese to the tortilla chips. I like a good pepper jack, but feel free to use almost any cheese.

Then add your egg/sausage combo followed by your veggies.

This guy is ready for the oven!

Cheesed and topped.

These will need to bake for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile you can prep your toppings. I think Betsy would leave me if I served nachos without avocado, so I sliced up one.

It is the most marriage saving of all toppings.

Essential.

As soon as the nachos come out of the oven, top them with some avocado and cilantro (if that’s your thing).

I like to serve salsa and sour cream on the side so people can add their own.

Delicious breakfast.

This is obviously a pretty filling breakfast, but it really hits the spot on a cold winter morning. Especially if you maybe had a longer than expected night at the bar the previous night!

And yes. We did eat this entire tray of nachos. Do not judge!

Better than it looks. Promise.

The first time I saw tempeh in the store I thought that whoever first made it must have been very hungry. It doesn’t look too appetizing.

The first time I ate tempeh I thought that whoever first made it was a freakin’ genius.

I think it’s one of the most under-rated foods around. Trust me. It’s not just for vegetarians and health nuts. It’s for anyone who likes really good food that easy to make.

Tempeh has more flavor and texture than tofu and is about ten times easier to make.

In fact, one of my favorite tacos to this day is my crispy tempeh tacos. This is actually kind of a riff on that dish made as a breakfast instead of a dinner. I ate this breakfast two days in a row which is pretty rare for me. It was just that good.

The Tempeh Scramble

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

4-6 ounces tempeh, crumbled
1/2 red or orange pepper, diced
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
2 scallions, diced
2 tablespoons salsa
4 large eggs, scrambled
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
3 ounces pepper jack cheese, grated
1 avocado, sliced
Cilantro
Flour tortillas
Salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Cast Iron Skillet

Directions:

1) Crumble tempeh and dice all your veggies. Mix the veggies in a bowl with salsa.

2) Add the small amount of vegetable oil to a cast iron skillet and get it hot over medium-high heat.

3) Add the tempeh and cook until it's well browned, about 5-6 minutes.

4) Stir in veggies and salsa and season with salt and pepper. Cook for a minute or two until veggies are soft.

5) Scramble eggs and add eggs to skillet. Stir vigorously so eggs mix with other ingredients. Cook until eggs are almost all cooked, probably just a minute or two.

6) Add on grated cheese and stick the pan in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for about a minute just to melt the cheese.

7) Serve scramble with warm tortillas, cilantro, and avocado!

Tempeh Tempeh

I’ve already raved in this post about my love for tempeh, but the reality is that it might be kind of hard for you to find. I only know of one health food store in my town that sells it.

Most grocery stores don’t carry it unfortunately. Maybe the demand isn’t quite there yet. But call around to a few places and you should be able to find it somewhere.

If you’re curious what tempeh is, it’s basically just fermented whole soy beans that have been mixed with other flavors like flax seeds or, in this case, random vegetables.

The nice thing about tempeh is that you can prepare it a million different ways. You can slice it thinly or just crumble it up. I thought for a scramble like this, it would be better to just crumble it.

Super easy to use.

The Veggies

While I listed specific vegetables in the recipe, I’d just encourage you to use what you have in your fridge. Some kind of pepper is good and something like an onion or scallion is a good idea.

It’s pretty flexible though… kind of like an omelet.

A few chopped veggies.

Whatever veggies you are using, dice them up and then stir them together with some salsa. This will give the dish a nice Tex-Mex feel.

Adding a tex-mex element.

Cooking the Scramble

I used my cast iron skillet for this dish, but you could use any large skillet really. I do recommend using one that is oven-safe so you can transfer the pan to the oven at the end and melt the cheese quickly.

The first step is to brown the tempeh. Add a small drizzle of oil to the pan and then add all the tempeh. Over medium-high heat, it’ll take 5-6 minutes to brown nicely. It’s pretty hard to burn this stuff. It’s very sturdy.

Way easier than tofu!

Once the tempeh is browned, add in the veggies and salsa and cook for another minute or two until the veggies are soft.

Then pour in your scrambled eggs!

Already smells good.

Everything will cook pretty fast at this point.

Just stir it all together and let it cook until the eggs are almost completely cooked.

This is about perfect. It looks like a hot mess, but it’ll smell great.

Not sure how many style points I get here...

Top the whole scramble with some cheese and stick it in a hot oven for a minute or two just to melt the cheese.

Can't forget the cheese.

You could just eat this as-is or serve it as a side. If you want to make a really good meal out of it though, serve it with some flour tortillas, avocado, and maybe some fresh cilantro.

Delicious breakfast.

There’s a lot of nice things about this meal. For one, I guarantee you that you won’t miss the meat. The tempeh is very flavorful, filling, and has a great texture.

The other nice thing is that this whole thing takes less than 30 minutes to make. You could also easily double or triple it and feed a crowd.

This is a great introduction to tempeh if you’ve never tried it before so hunt some down and give it a go!

Pretty healthy for tex-mex!

My dad stopped by a few weeks ago and brought me some salmon that he caught on a recent trip to Alaska. When you catch the fish, they basically filet it and flash freeze it so it’s still incredibly fresh when you eat it later.

At first I was going to just grill or sear the fish to really let the fresh salmon flavors shine, but then my creativity got the best of me.

I’ve made a lot of fish tacos, but a lot of times the fish is fried which is delicious but not healthy and definitely hides the fish flavor. So I thought I would keep these tacos very simple with just a few toppings.

While the tacos were absolutely outstanding, what I did with the salmon skin was even better.

Salmon Tacos

Yield: Makes 6-8 tacos

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound salmon, skin removed and seared
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Flour Tortillas
Avocado, sliced thin
Salsa

Marinated Red Onions
1/2 red onion, sliced very thin
1 lime, juice only
1 teaspoon Kosher salt

Spicy Sour Cream
1 cup sour cream
1 jalapeno, diced (remove seeds for less heat)
1/2 lime, juice only

Helpful Equipment:
Silpat mat (for skin)

Directions:

1) For marinated onions, slice them thinly and toss them with lime juice and salt. Let them sit for at least 15 minutes before using.

2) Mix together ingredients for sour cream.

3) Remove skin from salmon and, optionally, cut the skin into strips and lay out on a silpat mat.

4) Sprinkle skin chips with oil and salt and bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes until very crispy.

5) For salmon, rub with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper. Sear on medium-high heat in a large skillet for about 3 minutes per side, until it's cooked through.

6) Using some small/medium flour tortillas, add a spoonful of salsa and sour cream. Lay in a piece or two of salmon (or some salmon skin). Top with avocado, cilantro, and marinated onions.

The Toppings

There’s really nothing to these tacos and you can throw them together in under 30 minutes. The toppings are where it’s at though.

I started by jazzing up some sour cream by adding some fresh jalapenos and lime juice to it.

Dice that pepper.

If you want the sour cream to have some some real heat to it, leave the seeds and guts in the jalapenos, otherwise you can just scoop them out before dicing the peppers.

Stir these into some sour cream with a squeeze of lime juice.

This stuff is fantastic on tacos.

Tasty stuff.

Marinated Onions

One of my favorite toppings for tacos is simple marinated red onions. The key to these is to slice them as thin as you can. No need to use a professional slicer or anything, but just take your time and get them thin.

Toss them with some lime juice and salt and let them sit for a few minutes. The onions will get slightly soft as they marinate and will be really delicious.

One of my favorite toppings

In my house, tacos without avocados is a pretty big no-no.

Also good to have.

The Salmon

Salmon comes in many different shapes and sizes these days depending on how you get it. I prefer to buy salmon with the skin on because it keeps it a bit fresher (I think) and I also think the skin is delicious (more on that in a minute).

But for tacos, step one is slicing the skin off the filets. This isn’t too hard if you have a decent knife. You can just run it under the filet and the skin should peel off pretty easily.

Straight from Alaska!

For the actual salmon, just rub each filet with some olive oil and season them well with salt and pepper on each side. Then just sear them over medium-high heat for about 3-4 minutes per side. Salmon, like most fish, will cook pretty quickly and you don’t want to over-cook it or it will get really dry.

The total time it’ll take to cook depends a lot on the thickness of your filets so just keep an eye on them and start checking on them after they’ve been cooking for 6 minutes or so.

When the salmon is done, just dice it up into big pieces that would fit nicely in a taco!

Try not to overcook it!

The Skinny

The first time I had salmon skin was actually at a sushi place. They were charging like $5 for a roll with salmon skin in it. I thought this was very inventive and a great use for a piece of the fish that most people probably just throw away.

Oh… and it also happened to be delicious. It’s one of my favorite rolls now and I order it every chance I get.

I quickly learned how to reproduce it at home.

The key to doing this correctly is to cut the skin into strips and use a nonstick mat (like a silpat mat). I’ve made these without the mat and they still work (parchment paper is another option), but you really need something like that or they will just stick pretty badly to the baking sheet.

So just lay out your skin pieces and drizzle them with oil and give them a good sprinkle of kosher salt.

The skinny.

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes until they are very crispy. No need to turn them or anything, just let them bake.

Normally, I eat these just like this. Little salmon chips!

It may sound weird, but they are seriously addictive and use a piece of the fish that most people discard.

These are seriously delicious.

The Tacos

I think you know the story from here on out. Basically just spread some of that delicious sour cream mixture on a tortilla and maybe a spoonful of salsa. Top with a few piece of salmon, some cilantro, avocado and some of the marinated onions.

A salmon taco!

If you want to get crazy, you can put the salmon skin right in a taco! While I made a few all skin tacos, a better way to do it is to just put one or two salmon chips in with a normal taco which makes it nice and crispy.

An all skin taco was great also though.

My favorite.

The next time you get your hands on some salmon, consider the taco. It’s about as healthy as a taco can get and is super-flavorful. It’s also a good way to stretch out what can be an expensive cut of fish.

But seriously, salmon skin. Sounds weird. So delicious!

Fun, quick, delicious. What more do you need?

For quite some time now the most popular post on Macheesmo was a recipe that I made kind of on a whim almost two years ago. It was just a simple breakfast sandwich with two twists:

1) You could freeze them.

2) They were made in a muffin tin so you could make a bunch of them at a time.

Based on the comments and emails I’ve received about the post, I think the muffin tin thing was what people really liked. It totally takes the guess work out of eggs and you can cook them in big batches.

I also do not think it’s coincidence that a muffin tin is the perfect size for an egg.

Something that great couldn’t be coincidence.

So I started brainstorming quick breakfasts that could use a muffin tin, but didn’t involve actual muffins.

These guys were the first dish that I tried and I loved them about ten times more than the breakfast sandwiches. We’ll see if they get ten times the traffic…

Tex-Mex Egg Cups

Yield: Makes 6 cups.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

6 corn tortillas
Butter or oil for muffin tins
6 tablespoons salsa
6 teaspoons Adobo sauce (from chipotle can - optional)
6 large eggs
3 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
1 avocado, cubed
Cilantro, garnish

Helpful Equipment:
Muffin tin

Directions:

1) Lightly butter or grease muffin tins and form corn tortillas into the tins. It's okay if they get folded a bit.

2) Add a spoonful of salsa and a tiny dab of Adobo sauce into each corn tortilla. You could also add in some black beans or something.

3) Crack an egg in each cup.

4) Bake eggs at 350 for 15 minutes.

5) Top with cheese and bake for another few minutes.

6) Top with cilantro and/or avocado and serve immediately!

Prepping the Cups

While eggs are a perfect fit in a muffin tin, corn tortillas are not. Luckily they are flexible so you can make them fit!

So corny.

There are two very important steps to make sure this goes down smoothly.

First, grease your muffin tin. You could use butter, vegetable oil, or even a nonstick spray. Doesn’t matter. If you don’t do this though, the corn tortillas are going to stick horribly to the pan.

Second, microwave the tortillas for about 10 seconds on high. That will loosen them up and make them easier to work with.

Then you just kind of shove them in there! There’s no science to it and they might fold and break a bit. Don’t worry about it.

Grease or butter those cups!

The Bottom Layer

I knew my middle layer in these cups was going to be an egg. I knew my top layer was going to be cheese.

I struggled with the bottom layer. At first I thought black beans would be a good thing, but then I worried that it wouldn’t have enough kick.

So I went with some salsa and this stuff!

Kick it up a notch.

I didn’t want the actual chipotle peppers, just the Adobo sauce! This stuff has fantastic flavor.

Now, you could use a whole bunch of different stuff in this layer, but just don’t add too much stuff. Remember that we have a lot of other stuff to fill!

This was my bottom layer of flavor.

This is a spicy cup.

The Egg Business

Next step is the eggs. Nothing rocket science about this… just crack them in!

If you’re worried about shells, you can crack them into a separate bowl and then pour them into the cups.

Perfect fit.

We are going to add some cheese to these later, but I like to bake them for a while first so they are almost done.

So throw your muffin tin in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile you can prep your toppings. I went with some grated cheddar, cilantro, and avocado.

Good flavor toppings

When your cups come out of the oven, most of the whites should be cooked, the tortillas should be starting to crisp up nicely, but the yolks should still be soft.

This is perfect.

Almost done...

Then sprinkle on some cheese for each cup. You don’t need a lot, just enough to give each cup a light layer of cheese.

Then back in the oven for another 4-5 minutes just until the cheese is melted.

Pull these guys out and carefully remove them from the muffin tin. They shouldn’t stick much, but you might still need to go around them with a knife to loosen them a bit.

Then just top them with some avocado and cilantro and serve them up!

Yolks should still be a bit soft.

I definitely recommend making these soft so that the egg yolks are still a bit on the runny side, but you could cook them hard also.

Just like the breakfast sandwiches, these guys are definitely freezable. After they are done cooking, let them cool and then pop them out of the muffin tin. Freeze them on a baking sheet and when they are frozen solid you can individually wrap them in foil and then store them in a freezer bag.

Good luck having leftovers to freeze though…

See what I did there?

Sometimes indecision can lead to greatness.

For example, I love John Stewart’s Indecision election coverage. He always makes it very clear how much of a hot mess politics can be on both sides of the old aisle.

I’m not so indecisive about politics though.

I’m more indecisive about sandwiches.

On this occasion I was torn between making a grilled cheese sandwich or a club sandwich. My indecisiveness led me to just smack them together and call it good. And trust me, it was really good.

Grilled Cheese Club

Yield: 1 sandwich

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

3 pieces of bread
2-3 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, grated or sliced
1 chipotle pepper, diced
1 tablespoon salsa
1/2 avocado, sliced
2 slices bacon, crispy
Cilantro
Butter

Directions:

1) Butter two pieces of bread. Slice or grate the cheese and dice up the chipotle. Cook bacon either in a pan until crispy or on a wire rack in a 350 degree oven until crispy, about 15 minutes.

2) In a small skillet, add one piece of buttered bread, butter side down. Top with cheese, pepper and salsa. Top with other piece of buttered bread, butter side up.

3) Cook grilled cheese over medium heat for about 6-8 minutes, flipping occasionally until bread is browned and cheese is well-melted.

4) Toast other piece of bread. Top with bacon, sliced avocado, and cilantro.

5) When grilled cheese is done, add entire sandwich to the top of the open-faced part of the sandwich.

6) Slice and serve immediately!

A Tex-Mex Flair

When slapping together a grilled cheese sandwich and a club sandwich, almost any toppings will work. This is more a post about a simple idea rather than an exact recipe.

I decided to go with a tex-mex version though with chipotle peppers, cilantro, avocado, and salsa. Feel free to adapt to your tastes.

Some of my personal favorite flavors.

The Grilled Cheese

You might ask why I wouldn’t just shove all the ingredients into one grilled cheese sandwich.

The answer is two-fold. First, I don’t think they would all easily fit. Second, things are just better when they are stacked. Take my word for it.

The grilled cheese sandwich itself is pretty basic. I always recommend buttering the bread for a grilled cheese, but you don’t necessarily have to go as heavy on the butter as I do. I have a heavy butter hand – no question.

Butta that bread.

Add one slice of bread, butter side down, into a small skillet and then top with cheese, diced chipotle pepper and salsa. If you want to not have it be super-spicy, leave out the chipotle and just use some salsa.

Also, your cheese will melt easier if it’s grated. I didn’t grate mine on this occasion because I just plain forgot.

Some spicy stuff.

Cover this with the other piece of bread (butter side up) and cook it over medium heat until the cheese is melted and the bread is nice and brown. It’ll probably take about 8 minutes.

The key with cooking a grilled cheese is not to cook it over high heat. If you do, the bread will brown before the heat has time to transfer through to the cheese and you’ll end up with a burned sandwich.

Just keep it over medium heat and flip it every few minutes and you should be good to go.

The Club Section

I just couldn’t make a club sandwich without bacon. It’s not to say that you couldn’t, but I couldn’t.

I like to bake my bacon in the oven on a wire rack at 350 degrees so it gets nice and crispy.

The only way to do bacon.

Toast your third piece of bread and then add your bacon to the bread.

You’ll also need to slice up some avocado and grab a few cilantro leaves. I went heavy on the cilantro because I wanted a lot of herb flavor, but use it to your tastes which for some people is not at all.

Sandwich building 101.

Stack the avocado slices and cilantro right on top of the bacon. Notice that I didn’t put down any mayo or anything. You don’t really need it for this sandwich because the avocado has a creamy texture to it and there’s lots of cheese in the grilled cheese half.

Half of a sandwich.

Putting it all together

This isn’t rocket science, but I was pretty giddy while making it.

When your grilled cheese is done, it’s as simple as plopping it right on top of your club sandwich half.

Stacked up!

Slice it up so it’s easier to eat and you’re good to go.

I just love the layers in this bad boy. It was really good.

This worked.

This might be a bit more complicated than a normal grilled cheese, but it’s also more filling and has some really complex flavors which I liked.

The thing that takes the most time for the recipe is actually cooking the bacon. If you’re rushed you could leave it out or sub it with deli meat or something.

While indecision created this lovely thing, you should be decisive about making it as soon as possible.

Hello veggie burger!

One of my ongoing quests is to find the perfect veggie burger.

Here’s a hint: It’s definitely not in the freezer section of your local supermarket. Unless, of course, cardboard is your idea of perfect.

In my opinion, the perfect veggie burger should be really filling and have a substantial texture (like meat). It should have lots of flavor and spices and should leave you not missing meat.

Honestly, I try a lot of different veggies burgers and I rarely post them because I find them to be kind of blah.

To date, my best veggie burger attempt, in my opinion, was the beet burgers I made over a year ago.

I still like those burgers, but I think this brown rice burger might surpass it as my favorite for one simple reason: it’s a lot easier to make! You can use leftover rice and have a very delicious burger in no time.

I’m not kidding at all when I say that I would take one of these instead of probably 95% of beef burgers in the world.

Brown Rice Burgers

Yield: 4 burgers.

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cups brown rice, cooked
1/2 sweet onion, sauteed
1/4 cup cilantro, minced
1 tablespoon garam masala
1 large egg
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/3 cup oat flour
Salt and pepper
4 large buns, toasted
1 avocado, sliced

Mango-pineapple Relish:
1 cup pineapple
1 mango, cubed
1-2 Serrano peppers, with seeds

Helpful Equipment:
Food Processor for relish

Directions:

1) For relish, combine ingredients in a food processor and pulse until smooth. If you don't have a food processor, you can also just dice everything very finely.

2) Cook brown rice according to package and let cool or use leftover rice.

3) Sautee diced onion in 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat until the onion is translucent, but not browned, about 5 minutes.

4) Mix onion, cilantro, and garam masala with rice. Crack in an egg and combine well. Stir in oat flour. You might need a bit more oat flour. Your rice should be firm and stick together if you press it into a ball.

5) Form 4 large burgers with the rice mixture and season each burger with salt and pepper.

6) Cook the burgers in a heavy pan over medium-high heat with 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the pan. Cook until browned evenly on both sides, about 4-5 minutes per side.

7) Toast buns and serve rice burgers on bun with relish and topped with sliced avocado.

Hello Mango

The other nice thing about this burger is that it’s actually incredibly healthy for a burger. No cheese or mayo or anything. For the sauce, I just pureed a few really flavorful ingredients into a spicy relish that was very delicious.

Great flavors.

Ideally, just cube up these ingredients and add them to a food processor and pulse them until it’s mostly smooth.

I used one Serrano with the seeds and I thought it was pretty spicy, but if you wanted to up the heat level even more, you could use two.

If you don’t have a food processor, don’t fret. Just dice up the ingredients very finely and you’ll have more of a salsa, but it’ll still be really tasty.

Some chunks are okay.

Making the Burgers

The one down side of these burgers is that brown rice does take a while to cook. While you could use white rice for it, I worry that the burgers would end up being a bit bland. Brown rice has a nice nutty flavor that really adds to the burgers.

In an ideal world, you could save a few cups of leftover brown rice for a separate meal and then use it to make these burgers. That would cut your prep time down to just minutes.

Leftover rice would be great.

Once you have your rice, add to it your sauteed onions (just cook them over medium heat in a drizzle of olive oil until they soften). Also add the minced cilantro and stir this all together.

Cook the onions first!

At this point, the burgers have a great texture and some good backbone flavors going on, but I thought they needed a hit of a good spice.

Enter garam masala! This was the perfect spice for these burgers. These days you should be able to find this spice mixture in most supermarkets.

If you’ve never used garam masala before, it’s a pretty popular spice mixture for Indian food. It normally has a pretty large list of ingredients in it, but almost always has some cumin, cardamon, cloves, and various peppers. It’s good stuff.

Spice is nice!

The Binder

Now our burgers should be pretty tasty, but there’s no way you’ll get this rice mixture to stick together as is. So crack in an egg and mix in some oat flour.

You can easily substitute all-purpose flour for oat flour, but the oat flour does add a little bit of extra flavor to the finished burgers.

The binder!

Making and Cooking

Make a test burger to make sure that the mixture sticks together well. If it seems really sticky, add in a bit more flour.

Once it’s a nice firm consistency, make four large burgers out of the mixture.

4 big burgers.

Season these burgers with salt and pepper and then cook them in a large heavy skillet over medium high heat with a drizzle of olive oil (about 2 tablespoons). Cook them for about 4-5 minutes per side until they are nicely browned.

I didn’t try it, but I think you could grill these guys. They were pretty sturdy actually and I think as long as you didn’t mess with them much on the grill, they would hold up just fine.

Any pan will work really.

Serving the Burgers

As always, I’m a fan of a toasted bun for my burgers so I definitely recommend that. Then add a good slather of the relish to the bottom bun.

Check out that color!

Love that color!

Stack on a burger and a few slices of avocado and you’re ready to go!

The 'cado is key.

The avocado acts like a creamy element for the burgers. It’s very essential in my opinion.

Betsy and I both gave these guys two thumbs up and fought for the extras for lunch the next day.

She w0n.

Just a great burger.

Now, if you are completely set on sabotaging my veggie burger recipe, you could make a beef burger and slap it between this relish and some avocado and still have a pretty tasty thing.

But try it with rice. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

This warms the soul.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted something made in my crockpot, almost two years in fact. So I was very happy when a crockpot dish won the poll last week.

Plus, it just makes sense. It’s cold and you’re probably busy this time of year so a dish that you can RONCO (set it and forget it) is probably helpful.

Funnily, this soup fits almost all of the categories in the poll last week. I swear that wasn’t planned… sometimes it just works out that way.

I’ve made chicken tortilla soup before, but never posted on it. This version was, by far, the best version I’ve ever made though. Something about letting the flavors just kind of mingle all day long really gave the finished soup an interesting and deep flavor.

You’d be silly not to try this!

Crockpot Chicken Tortilla Soup

Yield: Serves 5-6

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 8 hours

Ingredients:

1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 Serrano pepper, diced (with seeds)
1 red pepper, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 chipotle pepper, minced
1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 pound chicken breasts
2 dried New Mexico chile peppers (or poblano)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
6 cups chicken stock
A few sprigs cilantro
3 corn tortillas, diced
1 cup corn
Salt and pepper

Garnish:
Corn tortilla strips
Avocados
Limes
Cotija cheese
Sour cream

Helpful Equipment:
Crockpot

Directions:

1) Finely dice the onion, garlic, peppers, and celery and add them to a crockpot.

2) Also add in the chicken breasts, canned tomatoes, bay leaves, cumin seeds, dried chiles, and chicken stock. The stock should just cover all the ingredients.

3) Cover and set the crockpot on low. Cook for 6-8 hours.

4) Remove dried chiles and bay leaves and discard. Remove chicken breasts, shred, and return to crockpot.

5) Add in cilantro sprigs, corn, and a few corn tortillas cut into bits. Let the crockpot simmer for another 30-60 minutes.

6) Season soup with salt and pepper.

7) To make tortilla strips, dice corn tortillas into strips and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned and crispy.

8) Serve soup piled high with tortilla strips. Other fun garnishes include lime wedges, crumbled cotija cheese, avocados, and sour cream.

Preparing the Veggies

I know what you’re thinking: ”Holy crap that’s a lot of ingredients!”

True. But hang in there. Most of them are basic stuff and once they are all in the pot, there’s very little work involved in this meal. You can go cross stuff off your list and come home to a delicious soup.

These are the few veggies that you need to start this soup.

Just a few basics.

The key to these is to dice them pretty finely.

For the Serrano pepper, I left the seeds in. You could take them out though if you’re worried about the heat.

Then just toss all this stuff into your slow cooker!

A fine dice.

Besides the veggies you need a few other things to get this soup going.

This is where a lot of the flavor comes from in this soup.

Flavor town.

Add all this stuff to the crockpot along with your chicken breasts. I would shoot for about a pound of chicken but you could use more if you wanted.

For the chipotle pepper, make sure you dice it very finely. Nobody wants a big bite of chipotle in their soup.

For the dried peppers, you can use almost any dried pepper. I went with New Mexico chile peppers, but poblanos would work also. Just break up the dried peppers into a few pieces and scrape out the seeds. Then throw the dried pieces into the crockpot along with the chicken breasts.

Everybody in the pot!

Add in all your chicken stock which should just barely cover all the ingredients.

A Slow Cook

Set your crockpot to a low heat and let this sucker cook, covered, for at least six hours. If you wanted you could cook it for even longer though. Six hours is the minimum.

After that, your house will smell amazing and your soup will look something like this.

6 hours later...

Finishing the Soup

There’s a few things we need to do to finish this soup now that most of the cooking is done.

For starters, take out the bay leaves and dried peppers from the soup and discard them. They’ve given the soup plenty of flavor and there’s no need to hang on to them.

Next, take out the chicken breasts and use a few forks to gently shred the meat. Then you can return it to the crockpot.

Get it?

Finally, there are three new ingredients that I recommend adding at this point as they don’t need to simmer all day long.

First, add some corn and cilantro sprigs. Second, cube up a few corn tortillas and add those cubes straight to the soup.

Just some more flavor!

Cover this and let it simmer for another 30-45 minutes. The tortillas will soften and some will completely disintegrate into the soup which will give it a really rich texture. The cilantro will give the soup a nice herb flavor.

After it’s second cooking, remove the cilantro stalks and season the soup generously with salt and pepper.

The Garnishes

My favorite part of chicken tortilla soup is serving it with tons of fun garnishes and toppings and then people can kind of make their own bowls.

The essential topping (in my opinion) is crispy tortilla strips. These are super-easy to make. Just cut a few corn tortillas into long strips and bake them at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.

The strips will be lightly browned when the are done and super-crispy.

Great garnish.

Some other topping ideas that I like are sliced avocado, crumbled cotija cheese (or any cheese really), sour cream, and lime wedges.

Some other fun add-ins.

Once your soup is seasoned well with salt and pepper just ladle it into a bowl and pile on the toppings!

From above.

It’s actually a very filling meal for soup because of the chicken, tortillas, and cheese. It’s very warming and just a complete winner of a meal in my book.

Don’t be daunted by the ingredient list here, people. You can and should give this a shot sometime this winter!

The cute little napkins in this post were kindly donated by Oh Little Rabbit.

Good lookin' wrap!

“I think I’m good on cookies for a while.”

That’s what Betsy told me a few days ago and I couldn’t agree with her more. After a full week of nothing but cookies and sugar, I’m ready to move back into the land of the savory.

Heck. I don’t even have a sweet tooth really so I’m very excited to post something without sugar in it.

This quick wrap is something that Betsy and I have been eating recently. I love it because it works great for a lunch dish, but is also good to have if you want a lighter dinner option. It’s pretty healthy actually and jam-packed with flavor.

Baja Chicken Wraps

Yield: 4 wraps

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound chicken breasts, grilled and chopped
Lettuce
Avocado
Ranch Dressing (homemade is good)
Hot Sauce
Large tortillas

Chicken Marinade:
2 limes, juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

1) Mix together marinade ingredients. Add chicken breasts and let marinate for a few minutes.

2) Grill chicken over high heat for about 8-10 minutes per side until they are cooked through.

3) Slice chicken thinly.

4) In a bowl, mix together chopped lettuce, a drizzle of ranch dressing, and a dash of hot sauce.

5) Lay out a large tortilla and put down a layer of the lettuce mixture.

6) Top with about 1/4 of an avocado and a layer of chicken. I recommend about 4 ounces of chicken per wrap.

7) Top with a drizzle of ranch and an extra dash of hot sauce and roll the wrap up.

8) Slice and serve!

Prepping the Chicken

I decided to grill the chicken for these wraps even though it’s December. I’m a year around griller, but if you don’t want to venture out in the cold just to grill a few chicken breasts, you can definitely just sear these in a pan for a few minutes a side and then finish them off in a 350 degree oven.

Whether you grill or not, I recommend giving the chicken breasts some serious flavor with a quick marinade.

Tasty marinade.

I just whisked together some spices with some lime and olive oil and then tossed in my chicken breasts.

You don’t need to marinate these guys very long to give them some flavor. Even 10 minutes in this mixture will do the trick.

All mixed up.

So, like I said, you have two options for cooking the chicken in my mind.

1) Grill them. Pretty straightforward, just toss them on a hot grill for about 8-10 minutes per side until they are cooked through.

2) Sear them in a sturdy pan. Cast iron would work well, but any pan should do the trick. After you sear them for a few minutes over medium-high heat, stick them in a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes to finish cooking them. If the pan you sear in isn’t oven-safe, just transfer the breasts to a baking dish for the oven cooking.

The reason you will probably want to finish the chicken breasts in the oven is because they might burn if you keep them over high heat for too long. Finishing them in the oven solves that problem and still gives you a nice sear on the outside.

I just tossed mine on the grill though. That’s easiest and best way to cook chicken breasts in my opinion.

Who says you can't grill in the winter?

Once the chicken breasts cool a bit, slice them up!

Keep in mind that we’re going to be adding these slices to a wrap so try to keep the slices pretty thin.

Thinner the better.

The Lettuce

I love lettuce in wraps, but I wanted to use the lettuce as a flavor vehicle also.

So I ripped up some lettuce (a few cups) and then tossed it with a few tablespoons of homemade ranch dressing and a few dashes of hot sauce. Of course, you don’t have to make homemade ranch dressing for this, but the homemade version is really packed with flavor.

Hot sauce is very important.

Mix this all up really well and you’re ready to make a wrap!

Making the Wraps

You should be able to get about 4 wraps out of one pound of grilled chicken. Of course, that largely depends on how big you make your wraps…

I use the biggest tortillas I could find just so I could really stuff them.

Start by laying down a nice layer of the lettuce. Then add about 1/4 of an avocado that’s sliced up.

Don't skimp on the 'cado.

Top that with some of the grilled chicken and maybe give it an extra drizzle of ranch or hot sauce.

Then you’re ready to roll.

Get it?

Fold the ends toward the center and just roll the wrap up tightly.

While you don’t have to slice this in half, I think it’s a little easier to eat in two pieces. Plus it looks good.

That's a wrap!

There’s a lot of good flavors here. The lime marinade goes perfectly with the rich avocado. The lettuce gives it lots of good crunch and flavor because of the dressing and hot sauce.

If you didn’t want to use chicken, I actually think you could sub tofu for this without too much trouble. I would still marinate it and grill it just like I did with the chicken.

If you’re looking for a really tasty wrap, give this a shot. I thought it was absolutely delicious!

Hello delicous salad!

I can only think of two possible explanations why orzo exists:

1) Elaborate joke. ”Look at this huge rice! But wait… joke’s on you. It’s not rice. It’s pasta. I just blew your mind!”

2) Elaborate mistake. Something went horribly wrong with the spaghetti machine and orzo happened.

Anyway, I’m glad that this joke and/or mistake happened at some point in history because orzo is one of my favorite ways to make pasta salad. This was one of my most recent versions of the dish that went over really well. It’s very fresh and reasonably healthy for a pasta salad.

Greek Orzo Salad

Yield: Serves 6-8.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound orzo pasta
1 cucumber, seeded, peeled, and diced
1 red pepper
1/2 red onion, diced
6 ounces feta cheese
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1 avocado, diced
Salt and pepper

Quick Lemon Dressing:
1 clove garlic
1 lemon, juice only
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt

Directions:

1) For dressing, dice garlic clove and mash it together with salt in a small bowl to form a rough paste. Then whisk in lemon juice and olive oil and season with salt. You might not need all of the dressing.

2) Cook orzo according to package.

3) Dice all the veggies finely. Take your time to make sure they are even-sized. For the cucumber, be sure to scoop out the seeds and peel it.

4) Mix orzo with veggies and crumble in feta cheese.

5) Drizzle on dressing and stir well. Start with half the dressing and add more if you want. It should be very lightly dressed.

6) Stir in chopped avocado and sliced almonds and season with salt and pepper.

7) Serve room temperature or chilled!

Orzo. What are you?

I like to imagine that at some point in history there was an old Italian mother who learned how to make orzo by hand. She then promptly relegated the task to her children.

Whatever your job is, be thankful that it’s not making orzo by hand.

I do not know how you are made.

Luckily, orzo is much easier to cook than to make. Just boil it like you would any pasta, in a large pot of salted water. Check your orzo directions for cooking times, but you’ll probably want to cook it for around 8 minutes.

Be sure not to overcook the orzo or it will get really mushy. Mushy pasta is no good.

The Salad Ingredients

Besides the orzo, just a few simple vegetables and some feta cheese is all it really takes to make a great salad here.

Basic veggies.

I’ve given onion cutting lessons a few times on Macheesmo, but to review: The best way to cut an onion is to slice it in half down the root. Then lay it flat on a cutting board and cut off the stem end.

Remove the skin and slice the onion horizontally and vertically to form a grid.

Then you can easily turn the onion and dice it up.

Get it?

Spend some time with the veggies in this recipe to make sure they are all chopped up evenly.

For the cucumber, be sure to scoop out the seeds and peel it.

Take your time with these.

Once your pasta is cooked and drained, toss it in with the veggies and stir everything together.

This is a good start, but it would taste a bit bland if you left it like this.

All mixed up.

The Dressing

I recommend using a very light lemon and oil dressing for this salad. To start it, use the garlic technique from my ranch dressing recipe. Dice up the garlic finely and then mash it with the salt to form a rough paste.

A quick dressing.

Then just whisk in your lemon juice and olive oil and season it well with salt. You might not need all of the dressing for your salad. I recommend starting with half of the dressing and taste it. You can always add more, but it’s pretty hard to get dressing out of a pasta salad once it’s in there.

So go slow on it.

Some Good Add-ins

Besides the veggies, pasta, and dressing, I recommend tossing in some extra add-ins just to give the salad a bit more flavor.

First, feta cheese is a logical choice. It goes well with all the flavors and will give the salad some saltiness and creaminess.

Second, avocado. Who doesn’t love avocado?

Third, slivered almonds. They give the salad an awesome crunchy texture.

The almond toss.

Stir this all together and serve it in a big old bowl.

Such a good salad.

You can serve this bad boy at room temperature or chill it.

It’s perfect as a side for a dinner party or you can make it and eat it for lunch during the week.

If you wanted to make a meal of it, you could grill some chicken or tofu and serve it on top of the salad. I think it’s a pretty filling salad as is though.

Give those orzo makers some business and give this a shot!

Quick. Simple. Delicious.

There’s come a point after every Thanksgiving I’ve ever hosted or attended where there’s a few huge bags of leftover turkey meat in the fridge and everybody has pretty much had as much turkey as they can take.

You will eat it with stuffing, put it on a sandwich, and probably sneak it at midnight, but sometimes even with all of that, you’ll be left with more turkey than you know what to do with.

This is when fajitas come in and save the day. They may just be the perfect way to use leftover turkey. Let me explain:

1) They take just a few minutes to make. After slaving away over the stove for days, it’s nice to have a quick meal.

2) They are somewhat healthy. They are mostly lean meat, veggies, and salsa. It’s actually a somewhat light meal after days of gorging.

3) They have a different flavor profile. Even though you’re using turkey, it has a completely different taste because of the spices.

Even though the actual turkey day is still a few days away, this is a great way to put a dent in some of those leftovers!

Leftover Turkey Fajitas

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1-1.5 pounds leftover turkey, chopped
1 red pepper, sliced
1 orange, yellow, or green pepper, sliced
1 yellow onion, sliced
1 jalapeno, sliced thin
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
Salt and pepper
12 flour tortillas

Toppings:
Sliced avocado
Salsa
Sour cream

Directions:

1) Chop up turkey roughly. You can use white or dark meat. Also slice peppers and onions into strips.

2) Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees and wrap tortillas in foil. Add tortillas to oven and let heat up for 5-10 minutes.

3) Add oil to a large skillet over high heat. Once hot, add the peppers and onions and cook until they are slightly caramelized, about 4 minutes.

4) Add chopped turkey to skillet with spices and a pinch of salt and pepper.

5) Toss ingredients together well and cook until the turkey is slightly browned.

6) Serve turkey mixture with warm flour tortillas and toppings.

Peppers and more Peppers

Like I said, one of the great things about fajitas is it gives you a chance to use some nice fresh veggies after days of carbs.

I like my fajitas to be really pepper-heavy so I usually use a red pepper, one other kind of pepper, and a jalapeno or two.

Essential fajitas ingredients.

Slice up the peppers and onions. For the jalapeno, if you’re using one, remove the seeds and chop it a bit smaller. Nobody will enjoy a huge slice of jalapeno in their fajitas.

This might take 5 minutes to prepare.

A good guide for size of slices.

Gobble Gobble

As far as the turkey goes, you can definitely use white or dark meat. I used leftover turkey from my apple cider brined turkey. I was worried about the apple flavors not going well with the fajitas, but they were delicious.

No problems at all.

There are some options when it comes to prepping the turkey. You could shred it, but I like my fajitas to have larger chunks of meat so I just roughly chopped my leftover turkey.

I like big chunks in my fajitas.

Cooking the Fajitas

Before you actually start cooking your fajitas, I’d recommend wrapping your tortillas in some foil and sticking them in a hot oven for 5 minutes or so to get them nice and warm.

The fajitas themselves only take about 10 minutes to cook at the maximum.

Start by heating your oil in a large skillet over high heat. Once it’s hot, add your onions and peppers and cook them until they start to caramelize a bit, about 5 minutes. Then add the turkey and spices and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Cook this all for a few more minutes and you’ll be ready to rock.

Really easy dish to pull together.

Cook the fajitas on a high heat is key so you get some browning on the veggies and on the turkey.

While they cook, I always like to get some fun toppings ready. For this meal, I just used some salsa, sour cream, and diced up an avocado.

Can't go wrong with these toppings.

Serve the fajitas with a few flour tortillas and pile on the toppings.

Two or three fajitas is a really good meal.

A good fajita.

There’s nothing tricky or hard about this recipe. It’s just straightforward good food which is all you need when you’re looking for a way to use your leftovers and relax.

If you have some turkey leftover after Thursday (who doesn’t?), try out the Tex-Mex route!