If there was ever a lowcarb taste-bargain, it's pesto.
Now, in quantity, pesto can be pretty carby. But it has a pretty strong taste, so you don't need much. Usually it has around 4 carbs per 1/4 cup, but especially if the food is temperature-hot (so the pesto gets a bit thinner), it mixes very well for flavoring into pretty decent quantities of food.
My favorite chicken-pesto recipe is the Pesto Chicken Salad. Now I have a favorite morning-food:
Pesto Quesadilla with Scramble
2-3 eggs
spices: oregano, salt, pepper
some sliced hot peppers (or onions if you prefer)
scramble it.
1 lowcarb tortilla (or 2 taco-sized ones)
1-2 oz shredded cheese (whatever you like)
Spray pan and scramble the eggs, spices and peppers. Heat LC tortilla slightly (like over the gas flame or the emptied hot pan). Re-spray pan.
Spread about 1-2 Tbsp of pest on 1/2 of one side of the tortilla. Put the tortilla in the pan (pesto side up obviously) and sprinkle on some cheese, spoon in your scramble mix, add the rest of the cheese, and fold the tortilla over. Grill until melty on the bottom, flip, grill until melty on that side, serve.
It's so ridiculously good.
I'm not including counts 'cause it's something folks should figure out based on the labels of their tortilla, pesto, and what other stuff they put in it.
I might add this is really good even without the eggs, just as a cheese pesto quesadilla, but there's more protein with the eggs. It's also pretty good even without the cheese and just with the eggs (...but not as much :-) it doesn't have the "melty") if you're trying to cut calories or dairy.
I have a dilemma in that I'm sensitive to gluten yet gluten-free flour is high carb. I'm sensitive to carbs but low-carb breadishes are higher in gluten even than normal stuff. Gah! I do have a crepe recipe I need to try again--they were surprisingly good--but that's so much work compared to taking something out of a bag. ;-)
PJ
Showing posts with label mexican foods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mexican foods. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 18
Monday, April 23
A New Twist on Pork & Beans
I'm letting my kid eat fruit, carby veggies and legumes even though otherwise she is eating "with me" on my plan. We also eat small (underline small) amounts of breadishes, such as corn tortillas the last few nights. (Which got me wondering if I could come up with some variant that mixed corn meal with flax seed meal and almond flour for a sort of corny firm crepe. I never did get back to The Great Crepe Experiment and I really should.)
So I dumped a pound of pinto beans into the crockpot -- off, not heated -- and left 'em there overnight. Next morning, dumped off the soakwater, rinsed a big chunk of pork loin and tossed it on top of them, fat side up. I was too lazy to chop it into chunks and was hoping maybe it'd be ok.
I found this "pinto bean seasoning" (for refried beans) in the mexican section at walmart, and I put a bunch of that and nature's seasoning on it all, filled the water up to nearly the top of the meat, put the lid on, turned it on high, and ignored it for 11 hours. Which is really long but I've found that pork loin can cook twice as long as most stuff and it just ends up super tender and yummy instead of overcooked (it's less tender if cooked as long as I'd cook, say, roast beef). I know the seasoning stuff has carbs, but not so many per the usage/serving that I'm too worried about it.
I didn't have to chop up the pork like for chili verde which was such a relief. I didn't have to add bacon like I would for pork & beans. The flavor result was incredibly good and the kid and I had it for an afterschool snack. And the flavor, being more of the pinto bean mexican seasoning than the pork and beans type seasoning (similar but not quite the same), was perfect: we tore it up with a fork and nuked some, and dumped it into tacos for dinner. Pork tacos! It was great! I could have fried the beans for her but she loved the tacos with some beans in them too.
So counting rinsing the beans, soaking them, dumping off the water, adding the pork, the seasoning, and more water, I think the meal took me a total of about, oh, 7 minutes all total, and it gave us two good sized meals, a bunch of meat for one of the kitties, and enough to have another meal between us as well. Which although the pork isn't super cheap (it's loin, not tenderloin, so not too bad), the beans are, and that many meals out of 'em for two people makes it a great price. The time investment doesn't count the 11 hours during which I ignored it -- long enough that you can put something like this in at night and take it out in the morning.
Nothing real novel or brilliant but it worked well for me.
PJ
.
So I dumped a pound of pinto beans into the crockpot -- off, not heated -- and left 'em there overnight. Next morning, dumped off the soakwater, rinsed a big chunk of pork loin and tossed it on top of them, fat side up. I was too lazy to chop it into chunks and was hoping maybe it'd be ok.
I found this "pinto bean seasoning" (for refried beans) in the mexican section at walmart, and I put a bunch of that and nature's seasoning on it all, filled the water up to nearly the top of the meat, put the lid on, turned it on high, and ignored it for 11 hours. Which is really long but I've found that pork loin can cook twice as long as most stuff and it just ends up super tender and yummy instead of overcooked (it's less tender if cooked as long as I'd cook, say, roast beef). I know the seasoning stuff has carbs, but not so many per the usage/serving that I'm too worried about it.
I didn't have to chop up the pork like for chili verde which was such a relief. I didn't have to add bacon like I would for pork & beans. The flavor result was incredibly good and the kid and I had it for an afterschool snack. And the flavor, being more of the pinto bean mexican seasoning than the pork and beans type seasoning (similar but not quite the same), was perfect: we tore it up with a fork and nuked some, and dumped it into tacos for dinner. Pork tacos! It was great! I could have fried the beans for her but she loved the tacos with some beans in them too.
So counting rinsing the beans, soaking them, dumping off the water, adding the pork, the seasoning, and more water, I think the meal took me a total of about, oh, 7 minutes all total, and it gave us two good sized meals, a bunch of meat for one of the kitties, and enough to have another meal between us as well. Which although the pork isn't super cheap (it's loin, not tenderloin, so not too bad), the beans are, and that many meals out of 'em for two people makes it a great price. The time investment doesn't count the 11 hours during which I ignored it -- long enough that you can put something like this in at night and take it out in the morning.
Nothing real novel or brilliant but it worked well for me.
PJ
.
Sunday, October 22
MexiChickenMix (quick micro)
Highlights:
4 ingredients. 5 min max to make, 1 min to cook. Mix/cook/store/eat from same bowl. High protein low carb. Yummy. Uses pre-cooked chicken.
I was experimenting with a few goals in mind:
1 - A use for cooked chicken, because we tend to crockpot two big bags of formerly-frozen chicken breasts at a time, so we have a big bowl of cooked chicken that needs to be eaten.
2 - Something that could be made QUICK AND EASY, in the microwave even, and with not many ingredients
3 - Something with enough protein and few enough carbs that eating it wouldn't make me have to do the hula around carbs the rest of my day.
4 - Something that I could make a bunch of, put in those 1/2cup/4oz Glad containers, and eat a few times a day -- so something that could be nuked as leftovers.
This worked out really great!
As it turns out, it's even good eaten at room temp and straight out of the fridge like a sort of mexi-flavored chicken salad. It's like chopped chicken in a sort of 'creamy' mix, not very creamy, but enough to full flavor every bite in the best way.
You can vary this recipe any way you like -- add spices, add fresh herbs, add more or less hot peppers, add onions. This is more a 'concept' recipe but it comes out really yummy!!
I planned it for 'single serving' but it actually came out like 2-3 each.
Old El Paso brand is available in most groceries; they make tons of stuff, including "enchilada sauce" in mild green, red, red medium, and red hot. It comes in cans, they are yellow with red titles and available in the mexican-food section of the store.
INGREDIENTS
1 oz cream cheese,
2 oz El Paso enchilada sauce, either mild green OR red
1-2 oz chopped FRESH chilis so they are crunchy, either green OR red
(you can substitute green chilis in the can, or onions for this, but it's really good with the fresh chilis)
2 oz grated cheese: pepperjack (for green) or cheddar (for red)
4-6oz small- to finely- chopped cooked chicken (I use mine from the fridge)
INSTRUCTIONS
You can mix and cook and store and eat this all from the same bowl. I used one of those deep rectangular 24oz Glad plastic bowls.
Put the cream cheese in your bowl and nuke it till it's supersoft.
Add the enchilada sauce
Add the chopped chilis and stir it all up well
Add the grated cheese (I only had slices for the pepperjack, so I just chopped them up well) and again mix it all together well.
Add the chopped chicken and stir it all up so the chicken is totally mixed into the rest of the ingredients.
Nuke it for 45-60 seconds, take it out and stir it well.
That's it! It's yummy!
This makes about 10-12oz of stuff depending on your ingredients. I used 4.25oz as the 'serving size' in my counts below -- that's 20-25g of protein and 3-4g of carbs depending on the version.
Tips:
If you add 6oz rather than 4oz meat, obviously the same weight of serving will have a little more protein and calories and a little less carbs. So vary it as you need. It's a little creamier the more 'other' stuff you add to the chicken. Chopping the chicken more finely also makes it a little creamier. Theoretically I bet you could even blender this and use it as a 'spread' on something.
Green chilis have a tad more carbs than red chilis, if you're buying and chopping fresh. However, red chilis tend to be hotter. I have a big garden with lots of stuff. For my green I used poblano and anaheim and a jalapeno. For my red I used thai, cayenne, and red jalapeno.
The 'crunch' of the fresh chopped veggies really added a lot to this! Made it kinda like chicken salad with fresh onions or something. If you add onions instead of chilis you add more carbs but keep some of the crunch. If you add canned green chilis instead of the fresh, you keep the flavor on the green chili version but lose all the crunch.
Nutrition Info
Like all the recipes I post, it depends on how you put it together! But here's the counts on the two versions I made in my experiment, with line-item counts in case that helps ya.
GREEN VERSION
RED VERSION
4 ingredients. 5 min max to make, 1 min to cook. Mix/cook/store/eat from same bowl. High protein low carb. Yummy. Uses pre-cooked chicken.
I was experimenting with a few goals in mind:
1 - A use for cooked chicken, because we tend to crockpot two big bags of formerly-frozen chicken breasts at a time, so we have a big bowl of cooked chicken that needs to be eaten.
2 - Something that could be made QUICK AND EASY, in the microwave even, and with not many ingredients
3 - Something with enough protein and few enough carbs that eating it wouldn't make me have to do the hula around carbs the rest of my day.
4 - Something that I could make a bunch of, put in those 1/2cup/4oz Glad containers, and eat a few times a day -- so something that could be nuked as leftovers.
This worked out really great!
As it turns out, it's even good eaten at room temp and straight out of the fridge like a sort of mexi-flavored chicken salad. It's like chopped chicken in a sort of 'creamy' mix, not very creamy, but enough to full flavor every bite in the best way.
You can vary this recipe any way you like -- add spices, add fresh herbs, add more or less hot peppers, add onions. This is more a 'concept' recipe but it comes out really yummy!!
I planned it for 'single serving' but it actually came out like 2-3 each.
Old El Paso brand is available in most groceries; they make tons of stuff, including "enchilada sauce" in mild green, red, red medium, and red hot. It comes in cans, they are yellow with red titles and available in the mexican-food section of the store.
INGREDIENTS
1 oz cream cheese,
2 oz El Paso enchilada sauce, either mild green OR red
1-2 oz chopped FRESH chilis so they are crunchy, either green OR red
(you can substitute green chilis in the can, or onions for this, but it's really good with the fresh chilis)
2 oz grated cheese: pepperjack (for green) or cheddar (for red)
4-6oz small- to finely- chopped cooked chicken (I use mine from the fridge)
INSTRUCTIONS
You can mix and cook and store and eat this all from the same bowl. I used one of those deep rectangular 24oz Glad plastic bowls.
Put the cream cheese in your bowl and nuke it till it's supersoft.
Add the enchilada sauce
Add the chopped chilis and stir it all up well
Add the grated cheese (I only had slices for the pepperjack, so I just chopped them up well) and again mix it all together well.
Add the chopped chicken and stir it all up so the chicken is totally mixed into the rest of the ingredients.
Nuke it for 45-60 seconds, take it out and stir it well.
That's it! It's yummy!
This makes about 10-12oz of stuff depending on your ingredients. I used 4.25oz as the 'serving size' in my counts below -- that's 20-25g of protein and 3-4g of carbs depending on the version.
Tips:
If you add 6oz rather than 4oz meat, obviously the same weight of serving will have a little more protein and calories and a little less carbs. So vary it as you need. It's a little creamier the more 'other' stuff you add to the chicken. Chopping the chicken more finely also makes it a little creamier. Theoretically I bet you could even blender this and use it as a 'spread' on something.
Green chilis have a tad more carbs than red chilis, if you're buying and chopping fresh. However, red chilis tend to be hotter. I have a big garden with lots of stuff. For my green I used poblano and anaheim and a jalapeno. For my red I used thai, cayenne, and red jalapeno.
The 'crunch' of the fresh chopped veggies really added a lot to this! Made it kinda like chicken salad with fresh onions or something. If you add onions instead of chilis you add more carbs but keep some of the crunch. If you add canned green chilis instead of the fresh, you keep the flavor on the green chili version but lose all the crunch.
Nutrition Info
Like all the recipes I post, it depends on how you put it together! But here's the counts on the two versions I made in my experiment, with line-item counts in case that helps ya.
GREEN VERSION
cal prot carb fiber
223.00 43.00 - - 5 oz chicken
18.59 - 2.79 - 2 oz mild green el paso
enchilada sauce
99.00 2.00 1.00 - 1 oz cream cheese
109.00 7.00 1.00 - 2 oz pepper jack cheese
23.00 1.13 5.36 0.90 2 oz green chilis, fresh,
chopped
472.59 53.13 10.15 0.90 TOTAL RECIPE MADE ~11.25 OZ
42.01 4.72 0.90 0.08 per ounce
178.53 20.07 3.83 0.34 for a 4.25oz serving (~ 1/2c)
RED VERSION
cal prot carb fiber
275.00 52.00 - - 6 oz chicken
23.63 0.95 2.84 - 2 oz HOT red el paso red
enchilada sauce
99.00 2.00 1.00 - 1 oz cream cheese
223.00 13.00 1.00 - 2 oz cheddar cheese
14.00 0.66 3.12 0.50 1.25 oz hot red chilis, fresh,
chopped
634.63 68.61 7.96 0.50 TOTAL RECIPE MADE ~11.5 OUNCES
55.19 5.97 0.69 0.04 per ounce
234.54 25.36 2.94 0.18 per 4.25oz serving (~ 1/2 c)
The serving size (half a cup is around 4-4.5 oz) is reasonable because with 20-25 grams of protein this is pretty filling.
Tuesday, October 17
Chili Verde, geared to lowest-carb
My grandfather (whose family left Texas in a covered wagon in 1904 to head to California!) had two dishes he specialized in, and one was Chili Verde. Not just some pork and some tomatillos and a wimpy california anaheim chili, but a KNOCK YER SOCKS OFF mix of hot peppers and pork.
Looking back, I'm not sure why botchilism didn't kill us all, but he would make a gigantic sized pot of it on the stove, and it would literally sit there and simmer on lowest fire for DAYS. (If grandma needed the stove, he would move it to the top of the Wood Stove that was the house's heater.) Everybody in the extended family would at some point drop by and have some.
I have many fond memories of the stuff, and I didn't think of it being "low-carb-able" until I saw the recipe. Granted, I can't have the big homemade flour tortillas to go with it (primarily used to cool the fire of it in your mouth) but that's ok. I don't much like pork, either -- bacon, spicy sausage, and this, that's it. I detest 'ham'. But the meat is so good in this! I can't resist.
If you like SPICY FOOD and meat, I bet you'll like this. If you're a spice wimp, or you don't much care for things like garlic/onions/peppers, skip this recipe, or definitely use only a tiny amount of sweet peppers instead of the pepper mix and quantity I mention -- and use the 'variant' below that makes a thicker, less meat-heavy stew.
I first found the recipe here, although this is only one version (there are many I've found on the web).
Below is the version I make in my large oval crockpot -- and it is more than twice the size of the original recipe so you might want to cut this down a bit if your crockpot is the typical round-size. This stuff would freeze very well for the long term.
Ingredients
About 5-7 lbs of pork loin, chopped into bite-size chunks. (There are two 'grades' of this, one half the price of the other. The cheaper is just fine. This cooks so much that when I've combined them, I can't tell the diff anyway. The cheaper variant has a lot of fat; we cut most the fat off the outside of ours first but it's your option. We used about 8 lbs last time.)
8oz of beer and 8oz of water (we use Foster's lager. You can taste the beer if you use more than about 12 oz of it. If it's Fosters, that's not a bad thing (I dislike beer, but I don't mind the malt/hops 'influence' on this), but if you're using cheap beer I'd dilute it! ;-))
About 1/2- 2 cups of coursely chopped onion. (We used around a cup last time. Green onion has fewer carbs than regular if you care, but we used a white onion last time.
About 1.5-2.5 cups of chopped hot and sweet peppers; chop them about the size of the onions. (We used about 2-2.5 cups last time. We use our garden stuff which has poblano, cayenne, jalapeno, anaheim chili, hot banana, cherry bomb, and red bell, now that most the season is over; most of those are very red at this point (hot!) and yummy.)
About 12-14 fresh tomatillos. Chop them about the size you did the veggies. These are the small mexican green-tomatos that come in a 'husk' in the store. You can just stuff 'em in a food processor if you prefer.*
One can (I forget size. 8-10oz?) of the HOT green tomatillo sauce -- the kind you get in the mexican section of the store, NOT the green enchilida sauce.*
* Alternatively just add a few more tomatillos and no sauce, or use more of the sauce and fewer fresh tomatillos, or just forget the sauce, it's up to you. We like the spice of the canned stuff but the freshness of the real veggies.
4oz can diced green chilis.
6 garlic cloves, minced
1.5 tsp Oregano
1.5 tsp Sage
1.5 tsp Cumin
a little bit of salt and pepper
a little bit of peanut oil (or whatever you wish)
Instructions
Dice the pork into small bite-size pieces. Brown it in a big pan, separate or stirred enough that the pieces get a bit cooked on at least 4 sides. It'll take a lot of batches to do this. Toss your browned pork into the crockpot.
Add some oil to the pan and saute all your onions and peppers a little. (Note: peanut oil is good for browning, as olive oil isn't great used with heat and veggie oil usually has trans-fats.) Lower the heat so they can brown without burning. When done, dump the whole pan of stuff into the crockpot.
Mix all your spices, garlic and the water with the beer and dump it over the whole thing in the crockpot.
Put the lid on and cook on high for around 8-9 hours. If you want, you can take off the lid after about 5 hours and stir it well. You'll lose about half an hour of heating time if you do that just fyi (that you should add to the end). I should mention that when you begin this, you don't see the fluid -- it's way at the bottom -- you just have veggies and stuff all the way to the top of the crock. So stirring is a good idea.
Note: you can eat it in 5 hours if you must. But it's better cooked longer; the pork is softer and the spice is stronger and hotter. Sometimes we have a bowl for dinner and leave it cooking for several more hours.... in fact the more it's cooked the better it gets, so cooking leftovers is great.
I stuff those little 4oz "Glad" containers with it, put 'em in the fridge, and several times a day I grab one, take off the lid and nuke it for 45 seconds, and I have an instant little meal. Since it's almost entirely meat it's still pretty filling though not a big portion.
My version of it, per one of those containers of stuff (4 7/8 oz not counting container weight), comes out to around
Calories: 261.04
Carbohydrates: 1.54
Fiber: 1
ECC: 0.54
Protein: 22.10
Fat etc.: no clue
But you really need to figure your own ingredients and quantities for counts. Really. It varies a great deal depending on the quantity of beer, onions and peppers and spices.
I had to figure my counts in reverse -- by measuring how much meat vs. veggies vs. liquid was in one of those little containers we filled 'on average' and then calculate. If you weigh your ingredients in grams and then get the counts for that many grams from the USDA database for that food, you'd have a good idea what the whole recipe has... if you separate it into little bowls, you can divide up how many servings it made.
I love this stuff. Of course, the more veggies and spices you have compared to quantity of meat, the more glorious it is, but the mostly-meat variant above is still insanely good. It has finally allowed me to make a ton of food that is easy to grab a small serving of for eating, freezing for later, whatever.
I recommend most folks start with the above recipe using about 4-5lbs of meat instead. I suspect most people would like it better. I'm really trying to limit carbs is all, hence my over-emphasis on the meat in the dish.
ADDENDUM 10/26/2006: We just made this again. This time, we used a little less peppers, but a can of hot tomato+chilis (Rotel brand), a little less beer, but a bunch of water. The result was still spicy, a little more rich, and with a lot more "juice" (the yummiest part).
Looking back, I'm not sure why botchilism didn't kill us all, but he would make a gigantic sized pot of it on the stove, and it would literally sit there and simmer on lowest fire for DAYS. (If grandma needed the stove, he would move it to the top of the Wood Stove that was the house's heater.) Everybody in the extended family would at some point drop by and have some.
I have many fond memories of the stuff, and I didn't think of it being "low-carb-able" until I saw the recipe. Granted, I can't have the big homemade flour tortillas to go with it (primarily used to cool the fire of it in your mouth) but that's ok. I don't much like pork, either -- bacon, spicy sausage, and this, that's it. I detest 'ham'. But the meat is so good in this! I can't resist.
If you like SPICY FOOD and meat, I bet you'll like this. If you're a spice wimp, or you don't much care for things like garlic/onions/peppers, skip this recipe, or definitely use only a tiny amount of sweet peppers instead of the pepper mix and quantity I mention -- and use the 'variant' below that makes a thicker, less meat-heavy stew.
I first found the recipe here, although this is only one version (there are many I've found on the web).
Below is the version I make in my large oval crockpot -- and it is more than twice the size of the original recipe so you might want to cut this down a bit if your crockpot is the typical round-size. This stuff would freeze very well for the long term.
Traditional chili verde is basically a thick stew. This recipe, if you want to make that, should increase everything but meat and decrease the meat (so it's more like 4lbs meat and 4cups 'stuff' and 2tsp+ of each of the spices). However I wanted something super-heavy on the meat, so it would be really low carb, yet still with that awesome flavor and heat, so that's what this recipe is geared for. It is basically a bowl of supersoft spicy meat chunks with a bit of 'sauce' that is in the bowl that I spoon over 'em that is the beer, onions, peppers and spices all cooked together.
Ingredients
About 5-7 lbs of pork loin, chopped into bite-size chunks. (There are two 'grades' of this, one half the price of the other. The cheaper is just fine. This cooks so much that when I've combined them, I can't tell the diff anyway. The cheaper variant has a lot of fat; we cut most the fat off the outside of ours first but it's your option. We used about 8 lbs last time.)
8oz of beer and 8oz of water (we use Foster's lager. You can taste the beer if you use more than about 12 oz of it. If it's Fosters, that's not a bad thing (I dislike beer, but I don't mind the malt/hops 'influence' on this), but if you're using cheap beer I'd dilute it! ;-))
About 1/2- 2 cups of coursely chopped onion. (We used around a cup last time. Green onion has fewer carbs than regular if you care, but we used a white onion last time.
About 1.5-2.5 cups of chopped hot and sweet peppers; chop them about the size of the onions. (We used about 2-2.5 cups last time. We use our garden stuff which has poblano, cayenne, jalapeno, anaheim chili, hot banana, cherry bomb, and red bell, now that most the season is over; most of those are very red at this point (hot!) and yummy.)
About 12-14 fresh tomatillos. Chop them about the size you did the veggies. These are the small mexican green-tomatos that come in a 'husk' in the store. You can just stuff 'em in a food processor if you prefer.*
One can (I forget size. 8-10oz?) of the HOT green tomatillo sauce -- the kind you get in the mexican section of the store, NOT the green enchilida sauce.*
* Alternatively just add a few more tomatillos and no sauce, or use more of the sauce and fewer fresh tomatillos, or just forget the sauce, it's up to you. We like the spice of the canned stuff but the freshness of the real veggies.
4oz can diced green chilis.
6 garlic cloves, minced
1.5 tsp Oregano
1.5 tsp Sage
1.5 tsp Cumin
a little bit of salt and pepper
a little bit of peanut oil (or whatever you wish)
Instructions
Dice the pork into small bite-size pieces. Brown it in a big pan, separate or stirred enough that the pieces get a bit cooked on at least 4 sides. It'll take a lot of batches to do this. Toss your browned pork into the crockpot.
Add some oil to the pan and saute all your onions and peppers a little. (Note: peanut oil is good for browning, as olive oil isn't great used with heat and veggie oil usually has trans-fats.) Lower the heat so they can brown without burning. When done, dump the whole pan of stuff into the crockpot.
Mix all your spices, garlic and the water with the beer and dump it over the whole thing in the crockpot.
Put the lid on and cook on high for around 8-9 hours. If you want, you can take off the lid after about 5 hours and stir it well. You'll lose about half an hour of heating time if you do that just fyi (that you should add to the end). I should mention that when you begin this, you don't see the fluid -- it's way at the bottom -- you just have veggies and stuff all the way to the top of the crock. So stirring is a good idea.
Note: you can eat it in 5 hours if you must. But it's better cooked longer; the pork is softer and the spice is stronger and hotter. Sometimes we have a bowl for dinner and leave it cooking for several more hours.... in fact the more it's cooked the better it gets, so cooking leftovers is great.
I stuff those little 4oz "Glad" containers with it, put 'em in the fridge, and several times a day I grab one, take off the lid and nuke it for 45 seconds, and I have an instant little meal. Since it's almost entirely meat it's still pretty filling though not a big portion.
My version of it, per one of those containers of stuff (4 7/8 oz not counting container weight), comes out to around
Calories: 261.04
Carbohydrates: 1.54
Fiber: 1
ECC: 0.54
Protein: 22.10
Fat etc.: no clue
But you really need to figure your own ingredients and quantities for counts. Really. It varies a great deal depending on the quantity of beer, onions and peppers and spices.
I had to figure my counts in reverse -- by measuring how much meat vs. veggies vs. liquid was in one of those little containers we filled 'on average' and then calculate. If you weigh your ingredients in grams and then get the counts for that many grams from the USDA database for that food, you'd have a good idea what the whole recipe has... if you separate it into little bowls, you can divide up how many servings it made.
I love this stuff. Of course, the more veggies and spices you have compared to quantity of meat, the more glorious it is, but the mostly-meat variant above is still insanely good. It has finally allowed me to make a ton of food that is easy to grab a small serving of for eating, freezing for later, whatever.
I recommend most folks start with the above recipe using about 4-5lbs of meat instead. I suspect most people would like it better. I'm really trying to limit carbs is all, hence my over-emphasis on the meat in the dish.
ADDENDUM 10/26/2006: We just made this again. This time, we used a little less peppers, but a can of hot tomato+chilis (Rotel brand), a little less beer, but a bunch of water. The result was still spicy, a little more rich, and with a lot more "juice" (the yummiest part).
Sunday, September 17
Chicken Casserole Verde
Recipes are backdated to prevent interference with current blogging.
This is a slight variation on a recipe I found at the lowcarber forum (read it here) that we really liked. Next time we make it, we'll make twice as much... we really chowed on the leftovers for lunch the next day, they nuke beautifully.
Chicken Casserole Verde
INGREDIENTS
4 cups cooked chicken (or turkey) -- shredded or cubed
2 teaspoons Taco Seasoning (you can make this yourself)
8 ounces softened cream cheese (Philly light has slightly fewer carbs by the way)
1 tablespoon minced green onions or chives
7 ounce can Green Mexican Salsa (we used green enchilada sauce)
4 ounce can chopped green chiles
6 ounces Monterey jack cheese, shredded (you could make it spicier by using pepper jack, though it is a bit more carbs)
4 green onions, chopped (this is just to sprinkle on top)
Optional: we would add some super-thin sliced jalapeno and some red pepper flakes 'cause we're hot-spicy addicts but that's up to you.
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees while you grease a full size baking pan and put the chicken in it.
2. Add the taco seasoning and mix the chicken around in it to coat.
3. Mix cream cheese with the onions/chives and green sauce in a medium bowl. Stir in the chiles.
4. Pour sauce evenly over chicken and top with the cheese.
Bake for 25 minutes, until hot and bubbly. Remove from oven and sprinkle with green onions.
Makes 6-8 servings.
NUTRITION
The original recipe poster was kind enough to include this:
Per 1/6 recipe: 432 Calories; 29g Fat; 38g Protein; 5g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 4g Net Carbs
Per 1/8 recipe: 324 Calories; 22g Fat; 28g Protein; 4g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 3g Net Carbs
But personally I would figure it out yourself based on what you add, because mexican sauces in particular vary widely.
COMMENTS
This is already deemed a staple in our house. The leftovers are as good as the fresh stuff. I think I could eat this several times a week and be happy. Even the kid was nuts about it.
This is a slight variation on a recipe I found at the lowcarber forum (read it here) that we really liked. Next time we make it, we'll make twice as much... we really chowed on the leftovers for lunch the next day, they nuke beautifully.
Chicken Casserole Verde
INGREDIENTS
4 cups cooked chicken (or turkey) -- shredded or cubed
2 teaspoons Taco Seasoning (you can make this yourself)
8 ounces softened cream cheese (Philly light has slightly fewer carbs by the way)
1 tablespoon minced green onions or chives
7 ounce can Green Mexican Salsa (we used green enchilada sauce)
4 ounce can chopped green chiles
6 ounces Monterey jack cheese, shredded (you could make it spicier by using pepper jack, though it is a bit more carbs)
4 green onions, chopped (this is just to sprinkle on top)
Optional: we would add some super-thin sliced jalapeno and some red pepper flakes 'cause we're hot-spicy addicts but that's up to you.
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees while you grease a full size baking pan and put the chicken in it.
2. Add the taco seasoning and mix the chicken around in it to coat.
3. Mix cream cheese with the onions/chives and green sauce in a medium bowl. Stir in the chiles.
4. Pour sauce evenly over chicken and top with the cheese.
Bake for 25 minutes, until hot and bubbly. Remove from oven and sprinkle with green onions.
Makes 6-8 servings.
NUTRITION
The original recipe poster was kind enough to include this:
Per 1/6 recipe: 432 Calories; 29g Fat; 38g Protein; 5g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 4g Net Carbs
Per 1/8 recipe: 324 Calories; 22g Fat; 28g Protein; 4g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 3g Net Carbs
But personally I would figure it out yourself based on what you add, because mexican sauces in particular vary widely.
COMMENTS
This is already deemed a staple in our house. The leftovers are as good as the fresh stuff. I think I could eat this several times a week and be happy. Even the kid was nuts about it.
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