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!

Good stuff.

After a long holiday week of binge eating turkey and cookies, Betsy and I got off the plane and the first thing she said was, “Can we just eat salad for a week?”

I was happy to oblige for at least one dinner. My body was sort of screaming at me to pack in some veggies.

A lot of times I hear people say that they can’t make a meal out of salad and my response normally is, “You’re not making the right kind of salad!”

For me, a salad can definitely be a meal if it has a lot of different vegetables, textures, and flavors. One key element of the salad, for me, is always a delicious dressing.

While ranch dressing can be heavy, a little goes a long way and the subtle spice and herb flavors of this version can really round out a salad and make it a full meal.

Jalapeno Ranch Dressing

Yield: Makes about 3 cups.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1/2 cup buttermilk (if you want a dip, use 1/4 cup)
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup fresh parsley
1/4 cup fresh chives
1 tablespoon fresh dill
1 jalapeno, minced
2 tablespoons lime juice
Pinch of salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Dice garlic clove and add it to a bowl with a pinch of salt. Using a fork, mash the garlic and salt together to form a garlic paste.

2) Mince all the fresh herbs and add them the garlic paste. Mash them all together a bit and combine them well.

3) Mince jalapeno finely and add to the bowl. If you want the dressing to be really spicy, leave in seeds and pith of the pepper.

4) Add mayonnaise and greek yogurt to the bowl and stir well. Add in lime juice as well.

5) Thin the dressing out with buttermilk until it's the desired consistency. For a dip I would use 1/4 cup, for a dressing, use 1/2 cup.

6) Stir or shake dressing together well and use immediately or store for a week or two in the fridge.

Dressing Ingredients

Ranch dressing normally has sour cream in it, but I subbed Greek yogurt to make it somewhat healthier. Of course, it still has mayonnaise and buttermilk.

You can’t win them all.

The good news is that because of all the delicious herbs and stuff, just a few tablespoons of this dressing will add a lot of flavor to any salad. You don’t need to drown your salad to add a lot of flavor to it.

Lots of good fresh herbs.

Mincing and Mashing

When I’m making a dressing or sauce with garlic in it, I like to mince my clove of garlic and then add it to a bowl with a pinch of kosher salt. Then I grab a fork and just kind of mash the garlic and salt together.

This releases a lot of the juices in the garlic and makes a salty garlic paste. It’s why you definitely only need one clove of garlic for this recipe. Two would be over-powering.

One clove is all ya need.

Besides the garlic, take the time to really mince up the ingredients finely. It’s a dressing after all and you don’t want any huge pieces of any one thing.

For the jalapeno, I decided to take out the seeds and just mince the pepper. I think if I made this again, I would actually leave the seeds and pith of the pepper in to make it even a bit more spicy.

It’s just personal preference though. If you want it spicier, leave in the seeds and pith. If you want it more mild, take them out!

You could leave the seeds in if you wanted it real spicy.

All the herbs should be diced pretty finely. While you could leave out the dill in this recipe, I think the parsley and chives are pretty mandatory.

Gotta have chives in ranch.

Once all your herbs are chopped, add them to the bowl with the garlic paste. Squeeze in some fresh lime juice and mash everything together a bit to combine the flavors.

Good green stuff.

A Dip or a Dressing?

After your herbs are chopped and mixed, stir in the mayo and greek yogurt.

Then comes the decision part. Do you want a dip or a dressing? If you want a dip, add in just a tiny bit of buttermilk to give it some tang but leave it thick. If you’re shooting for a dressing, thin it out more with the buttermilk.

I used about 1/2 cup of buttermilk for my dressing version. At the end of the day though, you could thin it out more or less. Again, it’s personal preference on this.

Buttermilk is very important.

The Salad

When I’m making a salad as a meal, I like to pile on lots of interesting flavors and textures. Sometimes this can mean a protein like grilled chicken, but it doesn’t have to. In this case, I didn’t add any meat.

I did add some homemade croutons though that I tossed with some olive oil and garlic.

I also roasted some small beets which are the last thing I harvested from my summer garden! These were really sweet and delicious in the salad.

Yum.

Besides those things, my salad was basically a large chunk of the produce section.

Green lettuce, shredded carrots, cucumbers, red peppers, scallions, radishes, avocado, cheddar cheese…

A salad can be a meal.

As you can see, I just added a few drizzles of dressing and it was more than enough to flavor the salad.

This was a delicious meal and left me FULL.

The dressing will obviously not last as long as store-bought ranch dressing because it doesn’t have any preservatives or anything in it. The tradeoff is that it has a lot more flavor, so you need to use less of it.

I think it will easily last 2 weeks in the fridge though.

Give this dressing a shot if you’re in a salad rut!

These are suprisingly ranchy.

Enter Doritos. Not only one of my favorite snack foods, but the favorite snack food of my Macheesmo taste-tester (aka girlfriend). One day I was working through a bag of Cool Ranch when I looked over at the ingredient list and said, “Hey. I think I can make these!”

What I was worried about obviously, was the spice. The chips I knew I could meet if not beat. But the spice… that was going to be tricky. I had an obvious place to start though:

This stuff is strong!

I poured this stuff into a bowl and thought it might just work as is. Boy was I wrong. The plain spice pack is incredibly strong. It is bitter and makes your eyes almost water. So I had to find a way to “dilute” the spice pack so it wasn’t so strong. This was the recipe I ended up with:

Kind of Cool Ranch
- One Ranch Dressing spice pack
- 2 to 3 Tablespoons season salt
- 1 Tablespoon Paprika
- 1 Teas. Garlic Powder

Helpful Equipment:
- Cast Iron Skillet
- Candy/Deep Fry Thermometer

Mix that up and it should be much less bitter and more salty which is what you want.

Spice Dilution

Next, let’s make some tortilla chips. Homemade tortilla chips are one of my favorite treats because A) they are cheap B) they are easy C) they are better than anything you can buy in the store.

I like to use white corn tortillas cut into sixths.

Cheapest Chips on the block.

Now you can bake these at 400 degrees with just a brushing of oil on them and that is fine. Personally, if I’m eating snack food, I want these guys fried. I’m throwing down with Doritos here. Frying is the way to go.

I filled my trusty cast iron skillet with about 1 1/2 inches of corn oil and let it heat up to 350 degrees. You know when it is the right temperature because your tortilla will float and bubble immediately. If you want exact results though, I recommend using a deep fry thermometer for the oil.

Looking good guys.

The chips are pretty easy to make, but it might take a few times to get it right. The biggest problem I have is if you don’t have the oil hot enough or you don’t let them cook long enough on both sides, you end up with a tortilla chip you can bend. NOT APPETIZING.

The one trick I’ve learned is that the chips will be crispy when they stop bubbling. The reason being that all the water is out of the tortilla which makes it stop bubbling and also super-crispy. Silent tortillas are crispy tortillas.

When they are done, take them out and put them on a paper towel to drain off some of the oil and sprinkle that awesome seasoning on them immediately.

Season now!

I would recommend starting light on the spice as it is pretty intense. Just give a little sprinkle and then try them while they are hot. How many of you can say you have had Doritos while they are hot? Well, these are awesome hot!

Doritos ain't got nothing on me.

I definitely did not use all of that spice that I mixed up earlier. I probably used about half of it on a batch of maybe 60 chips. I started to eat them from the plate and something just wasn’t right. So I put them in a big Ziploc bag and they immediately tasted better. Not sure what the deal is with that but homemade Doritos in a bag taste better than on a plate.

So if you get bored one weekend, I recommend these! They were actually quite tasty. The Macheesmo taste-tester and I had no problem polishing off the entire bag.

If you have suggestions for junk food I should try to make either comment or shoot me an email.

Also, if you liked this post, I would love it if you passed it along using the below links. I’m certain the vast Internet is dying to know how to make Doritos.