The Nifty Foodie

As you may know, I’m a big fan of tex-mex cuisine. I haven’t really enjoyed much of it, though, because I can’t really trust myself in a restaurant where I can just get a margarita within 2 minutes or mindlessly eat chips and queso (I swear, my stomach is a bottomless pit when it comes to chips and queso). It’s kind of sad how much I miss it, because really, it’s just food right? At least I try to tell myself that when I’m reaching for a Ben & Jerry’s pint at the grocery store.

I first heard about these “cupcakes” when I met Emily of Emily Bites at IFBC last year in New Orleans. Emily’s blog features healthier recipes, which I can really appreciate, so when I heard about them, I swore I’d make them ASAP. Well, I sort of forgot about this recipe, like I always seem to do, until my coworker mentioned them recently. (Random thought of the day: For some reason, I find it SO weird when I find out people I know are reading food blogs. I know blogs are usually very popular, but where I live, a lot of people are really unfamiliar with the concept of a blog.) Anyway, when she brought up how much she LOVED these things, I had to make them ASAP. Unfortunately, wonton wrappers were out of stock for about 2 weeks, which really stunk. I contemplated cutting egg roll wrappers, but eventually, I found a pack in the store. SCORE!

The night I made these, my husband kept asking what I was cooking. When I said taco cupcakes, I’m sure the poor guy was pretty darn confused. When they came out of the oven, I quickly threw a few on a plate and scarfed them down. These are delicious! The crunchy wonton wrappers make it seem like you’re enjoying a crunchy taco, minus getting neck aches from leaning over to eat a taco. My husband was pretty darn surprised about the taste too, so these will definitely be a part of our regular recipe rotation in our house. Besides being tasty, while these cupcakes don’t seem that large, they are pretty darn filling too! Just a small note, though…the main thing that I changed was that I used corn instead of black beans (since I am not a fan of beans, personally). I’m sure they’re wonderful with beans too, and I imagine with beans, they’re even more filling!

Taco “Cupcakes”
Source: mildly adapted from Emily Bites

Ingredients:

• cooking spray
• 1 1/2 tsp. canola oil
• 1/2 lb. 90% lean ground beef
• 1 tbsp. taco seasoning
• 3/4 cup canned corn, drained
• 16 wonton wrappers (found in the produce section)
• 5 tbsp. + 1 tsp. of queso (plus more for drizzling)
• 1 cup chunky salsa
• 1 cup reduced fat shredded Mexican cheese

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Prep your muffin tin by misting 8 of the cups in a muffin tin.
2. Heat the canola oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Then, add the ground beef as well as the taco seasoning, and cook the meat, breaking it up with a spoon or spatula, until the meat is browned. Add the corn to the meat and cook the mixture (stirring often) for a few more minutes, until the mixture is warm.
3. Gently push a wonton wrapper into the bottom of 8 of the muffin tin cups, and spoon a tsp. of the queso into the bottom of the wonton wrapper, using the spoon to spread the queso evenly along the bottom. Add some of the meat mixture into each cup (evenly using 1/2 of the mixture for all 8 of the muffin cups), and then add some of the salsa into each cup (evenly using 1/2 of the salsa for all 8 of the muffin cups).
4. Sprinkle some of the shredded cheese (evenly using 1/2 of the cheese for all 8 of the cups). Then, gently push another wonton wrapper on top of the cheese, and layer the “cupcakes” the same way you just did (queso, meat mixture, salsa, shredded cheese) using the rest of the layering ingredients.
5. Bake the “cupcakes” for 18-20 minutes until the wontons are golden brown. The tips of the wonton wrappers will get seriously dark while in the oven if you want the rest of the wonton wrappers to get pretty crispy. Allow the “cupcakes” to cool for 5 minutes before taking them out of the muffin tin. Feel free to drizzle them with more warm queso after baking. Enjoy!

When I was first learning to cook, I used to cook tacos all the time. I’d buy those little packages of seasoning mix and supper was figured out. The convenience was awesome. Then, I was just poking around Allrecipes a couple of years ago, and I saw “Taco Seasoning I” on the sidebar. I was totally intrigued, and made it that evening. I already had all of the spices for it, but the big question was did it taste as good as the seasoning packets I was so used to?

It did.

I love the idea that I can make my own taco seasoning, and the spices required for this particular one features fairly common spices. I also love that I know exactly what is in my taco seasoning, not to mention that it’s much cheaper to make this seasoning on your own.

I don’t use this for just taco seasoning. I also tend to use it when I make fajitas, I sprinkle a little bit in the blender before making salsa and use some of it when I’m making a quick salsa slow cooker chicken. It’s such a good seasoning blend for standard tex-mex dishes, in my opinion, and couldn’t be any simpler to throw together.

Taco Seasoning
Source: Allrecipes

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp. chili powder
• 1/4 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp. onion powder
• 1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/4 tsp. dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp. paprika
• 1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• 1 tsp. black pepper

Directions:

1. Add all of the ingredients to a bowl and mix them together, until the seasoning mix is well blended. Store in an airtight container.

Whenever I cook any mexican cuisine in our home, it’s really hard not to grab some chips and queso to go along with it. It just feels right. Of course, whenever we go to our favorite mexican restaurant, we snack on chips and queso. Bonus points if the restaurant serves queso blanco. That’s my absolute favorite.

We’ve always wanted to recreate the queso blanco that we love in our own home, and while we LOVE this recipe, I was curious about this particular recipe that I saw, since it seemed so much quicker to throw together. You just throw the ingredients in a bowl and nuke it. And for those of you who aren’t fans of Velveeta, no worries…there’s no Velveeta in this recipe!

Microwave Queso Blanco
Source: Pennies on a Platter

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 lb. block White American Cheese (commonly found at the deli counter), cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1/4 cup diced green chiles
• 2 pickled jalapenos, chopped
• 1 oz. pickled jalapeno juice
• 2/3 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup cold water
• pinch of cumin (optional)

Directions:

1. Place all the ingredients in a large bowl, that is safe for the microwave. Microwave the mixture for 5 minutes, stopping to stir the cheese every minute. Don’t worry if the mixture doesn’t look like it’s going to come together at first. Eventually, it will.
2. Stir the cheese well again and serve. If you have leftover queso, just stick it in the fridge and reheat in 30 second intervals in the microwave until the cheese is hot again.

My husband went out of town recently, and I decided to surprise him with a homecoming dinner when he came back. It wasn’t anything like filet mignon, but that’s not something that would necessarily thrill him. You’re probably thinking, what man doesn’t like filet mignon? While my husband likes him some steak, it’s really Tex-Mex food that makes him a happy man. Oh, and the spicier it is, the better. So, I made him some crazy spicy carnitas (recipe coming soon) with homemade flour tortillas.

When I mentioned to him that I was making homemade tortillas, I think he had his doubts. Heck, I had my doubts. When I started making these, I thought…surely, they couldn’t be that easy. I must have done something wrong, but y’all..they were seriously *that* easy and they really don’t take that much time at all to come together. They’re also way cheaper than buying a bag of tortillas at the store. I always hate paying $2-$4 for a dozen tortillas (yeah, y’all know I’m cheap), so from now on, unless I’m in a time crunch, it’s gonna be homemade all the way for us! By the way, if you’d like to make these whole wheat, just sub half of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat.

I came across this recipe on Homesick Texan, and for those of you who would prefer not to have lard in the house (which traditional tortillas call for), this recipe doesn’t call for it. The only problem that happened with these is that my first tortillas were kind of thick. You really need to roll these tortillas THIN. Get that arm work-out in!

Flour Tortillas
Source: Homesick Texan

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. of baking powder
• 1 tsp. of salt
• 2 tsp. of vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup of warm milk

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and vegetable oil. Slowly add the warm milk and stir until the ingredients are mixed and a loose, sticky ball of dough has formed. Remove the dough from the ball and knead on a well-floured surface for two minutes, until the dough has formed into a soft, but firm ball.
2. Place the dough back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and allow it to rest for 20 minutes.
3. Break the dough into 8 equal pieces, and form them into balls. Place the dough balls on a plate (where they aren’t touching), cover with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rest for 10 more minutes.
4. After the dough has rested, you’ll roll them into tortillas one at a time. First, flatten the dough into a circle with your hands until it’s 4 inches wide. Then, using a rolling pin, roll the dough until it’s 8 inches wide. The tortillas should be very thin at this point. Be careful not to over-work the dough, to prevent the tortillas from becoming stiff. Once the tortillas are rolled out, cover them until you are ready to cook them.
5. To cook the tortillas, heat a skillet on high heat, and cook each tortilla one at a time, for 30 seconds on each side. You’ll be able to tell that it’s finished cooking when the tortilla starts to puff in the skillet. Once the tortillas are cooked, cover them with a napkin until you’re ready to serve.

Man y’all. The past couple of weeks have been crazy. I haven’t really gotten sick in a few years, and on Valentine’s Day, as luck would have it, I caught some sort of cold-like virus. Ugh. Lesson learned…do not stop taking Vitamin C gummies. (yup, I totally take gummy vitamins) I’ve recently started feeling better, which means I’m back in the kitchen! It felt so weird not cooking for two weeks, but thankfully, my husband is pretty darn awesome in the kitchen, which helped immensely when I didn’t feel like getting off the sofa.

I made this salsa one night to try a green salsa with the chicken taquitos that we fairly regularly make, which is actually the salsa intended for this recipe. However, usually I just throw in some red salsa when I’m in a hurry, but I had some time to make this. I have a confession, though…I’ve never worked with or even had tomatillos before this. I remember being in the produce section, overwhelmed by how to tell a good tomatillo from a bad one (I’m a worry worm…what can I say?), but I think I survived haha! I was very surprised at how flavorful this salsa was. I was worried I’d hate tomatillos, but it was quite the opposite! This salsa was fantastic, and really wasn’t that bad to make either!

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa
Source: Pink Parsley, originally from Rick Bayless Mexican Everyday

Ingredients:

• 4-5 medium tomatillos, husked, rinsed, and halved (about 8 ounces)
• 2 large garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 jalapeno
• 1/3 cup loosely packed, roughly chopped cilantro
• 1/2 small white onion, chopped
• juice of 1/2 lime
• salt

Directions:

1. Heat a large, nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Place the tomatillos (with the cut-side down), garlic and jalapeno in the pan and cook for 3-4 minutes, until the tomatillos are well-browned. Also, watch the garlic to ensure that you don’t burn it…it will taste bitter once burned. Flip the ingredients in the pan and take a couple of minutes to brown the other side of the vegetables.
2. Remove the tomatillos and garlic and add them to a food processor or blender. Brown the jalapeno on all sides and then move it to a cutting board to cool.
3. Once cooled, peel off the burned skin (which should happen very easily) and scoop out the ribs and seeds (unless you REALLY like spicy). Chop the jalapeno and add to the food processor or blender with the tomatillos and garlic.
4. Add 1/4 cup of water, the chopped onion and chopped cilantro to the food processor/blender until it’s a coarse puree. Feel free to add a little water if the salsa is too thick. Add lime juice and salt to taste and serve.