Not according to the many Mexican cookbooks I own. I’m not saying they are wrong, but I don’t want to source all the other ingredients – that costs money. Inspecting the pantry, I have a can of Diced Tomatoes with Jalapeños. It’s a generic store brand and it is 1 year past the Best-By date on the top of the can. Perfect! I took out 1 bone in chicken thigh that I put in the freezer a coupe of days ago to defrost. Said thigh came from a whole supermarket chicken on sale that I cut up and froze just because it was on sale.

Serves 2 people.

Brown and cook the chicken thigh in the soup pot (10 minutes or so) in a little oil. Remove from pot. Add 1/2 small onion, chopped. You may need more oil. Add a finely diced carrot and one stalk of celery to sauté along with the onions. When the veg is soft (10 minutes) then add one clove of smashed garlic.

Add the 14.5oz can of tomatoes (with Jalapeños) to the pot. Bring to low simmer and add the chicken stock (around 4-6 cups for me) to the pot, bring to simmer. Taste and then add some seasonings. Chili power and ground cumin, probably with a light hand on both. I used a cup of leftover Enchilada sauce and that was all the seasoning I needed. Obviously, you have to taste it to know that. I put the stick blender to it to make a smoother sauce. Simmer slowly for a while (30 min? or more if you need to reduce it).

Meanwhile shred the cooked chicken thigh, discarding skin, bone, and other ugly bits you don’t want to eat. Don’t put the chicken in the fridge or the soup since the tastes will go off (IMO). Cut two tortillas into thin strips and fry in the oil until crispy. Drain on a paper towel.

In your soup bowl, put some fried tortilla strips, a portion of the shredded chicken and fill the bowl with your soup. If you’ve got some other garnishing veg in the fridge like green onion, radish, parsley, cilantro, chives well this might their moment. I didn’t bother garnishing.

According to the cook books, this is served with crusty bread.

Now for my judgment: Damn, that’s tasty!

Frankly, the shredded chicken chicken didn’t add much, so it could be left out. This recipe goes into my file of do this again. I’m always making chicken stock for the freezer and this a good way to used large amounts. Would it be better if I had blackened ripe tomatoes and re-hydrated dried chiles and used the best and freshest spices and herbs? Probably.

You can only get perfect tomatoes at one time of the year. You’ll also spend a lot more money than that can of tomatoes with jalapeños cost me. What I created was a fine knockoff that you can make at home, on the cheap. Clearly you can fancy it up. Enchilada sauce build the hard way from dried chilies is superior to my Tex-Mex chili powder sauce. I that because I’ve done both, many times. I also how long it takes, what it costs and when good enough is good enough. This recipe for Tortilla Soup is good enough.

The enchilada sauce recipe (aka chili gravy): Make a light colored roux of 1 TBL lard and 1 TBL flour. Then add 1 TBL of pure chili powder, let it toast up for a few seconds and then add chicken or beef broth slowly, whisking it some. Just simple gravy making. Add a pinch or two of oregano, possibly another 1/2 to 1 TBL of chile, maybe a tsp of ground cumin. The smallest pinch of ground cloves you can get. You can thin it out with more stock or water as needed or simmer to reduce if you added to much. You can use all water instead of broth but it’s going to be different. I only use lard because I think it adds body and the right flavor and once you buy the box or tub of lard, you might well find uses for it.

It does take forever to make a dozen or even a half dozen if you do a shallow pan fry as I do. Create the filling the day before and make the dough, fill, fry, and freeze the next day. Then again, leftovers have never tasted so good. Sadly, there’s no way to tell you how much filling you need

Experienced bakers (not really me) might see what’s happening in the ingredients. To me, it’s a rich dough but not too heavy and surprisingly doesn’t taste of the lard in the dough or the oil it was fried in. It would probably work for sweet fillings too, but I don’t do sweets.

I often do a half recipe (beat 1 egg really well and divide that). Here’s the full recipe.

3 Cups flour (all purpose)
1.5 tsp salt
.75 tsp baking powder.
6 Tbl of lard
1 egg
.75 Cup milk

Turn on the burner to heat the skillet of oil (7 or 8 on the knob for me on the small electric burner in an 8″ skillet with 1/4 to 1/2 inch of oil).
Mix flour , salt, baking powder in a bowl.
Cut lard into dry ingredientss until until course meal size (its a pie dough, maybe a bit finer, don’t worry).
Beat egg and cold milk together. Gradually add to dry ingredients, mixing into a thick dough. You could let it rest a few minutes if you feel the need.

Divide into 12 pieces. Roll each into a 5 inch circle (or rectangle or some other shape). You may need a floured surface or rolling pin. May not. It’s more like biscuit making than pie dough. In the center add 1/4 Cup of your filling. Seal edges with egg wash

Fold and crimp with the tines of a fork or what ever you pastry sealing technique you prefer. I roll and and pinch (may not need the egg wash, just saying)

Fry in the oil until a medium golden brown. Turning once. A few minutes per side. Depending on the burner and pan and amount of oil you might have to turn the burner up, or down. Not to worry, even the bad ones are pretty damn good.

[Update Oct 23, 2009]
I did a batch of 12 turnovers and I fried 6 and baked 6. The baked are OK, just not as good for a couple of reasons: Frying seals up the seams quickly. Backing gives them the chance to pull apart at the seams and ooze the insides onto the hot baking sheet which means smoke (alarms) at 350F. Taste wise, they were fine. Different but fine.

The trick is you need a lot of burning charcoal and an empty water pan. At least two full chimneys of hot charcoal. That’s a bit tricky if you only have one chimney. From lighting the first chimney to full temp it’s going to take at least an hour. I thought about doing it the Weber kettle but I’ve done that before, I want some WSM skills.

I was running 325 until the shade covered the smoker. If I have to finish in the oven, I can do that. I’m not going to be al purist about it. In fact, this was some bargain brand, enhanced bird – so I didn’t bother to brine it or even apply a rub. I’m not a fan of the skin either so I won’t worry about that either. Actually, it cooked the turkey to 165F internal in an 1.5 hours which is what I would have guessed. (I Did guess., didn’t?) I foiled it and put in n a cooler for a while. Maybe an hour. It was just right for slicing.

There wasn’t a lot of liquid in the foil. Hmm. Not much in Smoker’s drip pan either. Most of the meat was moist enough. Of course it tasted fine, all Q tastes good. Now I know, I should have brined. A light smoke flavor which is exactly what I wanted. It’s a win on technique and there’s nothing wrong with the bird. Just might have needed some extra juice. I’ve got a summer’s worth of turkey sandwiches. That’s not a bad thing.

Remember. All things BBQ here are variations from the fount of BBQ wisdom at the Virtual Webe Bullet. See the cooking topics, and then the forums. I never Q without looking to see what’s new or checking their recipes for the starting point.

Pork Ribs
Pork ribs are thought not to be so tasty when frozen and then defrosted and reheated. I happen to believe that. Wrap them in foil and put them in the fridge. Reheat in the foil in a low oven 200F or even less.

Or as I discovered recently, reheat them and shred meat and you treat them like pulled pork bark.

Pulled Pork

Finishing pulling it all into shreds, get rid of the bone, skin and other things you don’t want. Store in the fridge and/or wrap imeal or single serving sizes . I wrap them in plastic wrap, and I put those bundles in a ziploc and freeze them.

Mix with some BBQ sauce in a small sauce pan on low until warmed thru and make a sandwich. Or add to a pot of Chili or gumbo to just to flavor some beans (boiled or baked). Or fried rice or in a hash

Brisket
Slice the leftovers and package them in meal size or single size servings. (see the pulled pork ideas). Brisket hash is terrific! That’s what I with mine.

Beef Ribs
Wrap in foil, freeze and thaw at room temperature. Reheat in a low (200F) oven.

Ham
Slice into severing sizes. Bundle chunks and bits into sizes to “flavori” a pot of beans or gumbo. Defrost the bigger pieces for sandwiches , or breakfast.

Chicken/Turkey
This one is hard. It’s really easy to over smoke poultry and the next day it’s like sipping off the bottle of liquid smoke. I happen to believe dark meat is really prone to a two strong smoke taste. Still, it’s going to happen, so we need ideas for that. Gumbo or jambalaya will take anything and a good place for the dark meat.

You could make a sandwich with sliced breast (white) meat if not over-smoked. Heat it slowly if you have to, but you won’t do that more than once. Tettrazini or Ala-King or other baked pasta would work well. There’s always gumbo and chili and fried rice and omelet filling.

Summary

Learn to make gumbo and how to cook a pot of beans and a white sauce and baked pasta. Big bonus points if you make your own bread to go with or use in BBQ left overs.

I made about a half recipe or slightly less which was plenty for me and another meal.

Some Thoughts:

1. The chicken fell apart from the long stewing. That is not a bad thing, IMO
2. Use a flavorful sausage. Or ham or bacon plus a touch of liquid smoke might work.
3. It’s better the next day. A lot better. I used a shake of “creole seasoning” in the initial cooking which is pretty pungent, maybe too pungent. That mellowed out in the fridge. Nice

11/7/06 – I did make it again. An even smaller amount using a keibalsa sausage, less chicken and none of that creole seasoning stuff (I used some dried thyme). Excellent. Leftover would have been good but I ate it all.

11/16/06 – Used 1/3 lb of the Keibalsa, and a quarter pound of smoked pulled pork. Half of the stuff in the master recipe. I didn’t measure the oil and flour or veg amounts. Bullion instead of chicken stock. Seriously good. It takes a lot of time but this recipe doesn’t need a recipe, i just did it. A new favorite comfort food. How cool is that?

Nothing is all that original to me. I always start a BBQ session by searching the pages and forums at the Virtual Weber Bullet. Here’s my starting point. I’m not going to buy a gallon of apple juice but i did have a quart of Apple Cider in the fridge and a really old container of frozen orange juice concentrate so I used those and 3+ quarts of water, 3/4 C Kosher salt, 1/2 C honey, 3/4 C white sugar, 1/4 C brown sugar. I didn’t measure those very carefully because my bargain bird was brined at the factory (AKA self basting) and I’m not convinced I’ll tastes the apple or the orange or the sugars. It is good to get that stuff out of the fridge though. I didn’t boil it the brine, just heated the solution until all the sugar dissolved and put it in the fridge to cool.

On the chance that the new brining solution will replace the old brining solution, I soaked the breast in lots of cold water. Lot’s and lots of cold water, like you would do to defrost a frozen bird in a hurry. Seems silly to waste a bunch of paper towels drying the bird just before dunking it in the brine for a long time. I cleaned up bird, cutting off some of excess skin and fat.

I’m not a huge fan of turkey skin, crisp or otherwise, so I probably won’t do some of that other stuff in the master recipe, like trying to run the WSM at 325 to 350 degrees, and using a boat load of fuel. If high heat is what I wanted, I’d using the Weber Kettle grill. Done that with turkey (and it was good). I like the low and slow, fret and worry approach. This is also where the poultry police show up.

One thought is that a low and slow turkey spends too much time in that “kill you” danger zone temperature. If I was doing 30 lbs of cold turkey on the WSM, I might worry about that. 7 lbs? That’s like two [small] chickens. Yes the distribution of the mass is different but lets use a little logic and experience. The turkey will have been brined (mine and the factory’s) for a number of hours (or days) and mine uses a fair amount of salt and I’ve yet to die or even get sick from low and slow chicken, some of which were almost as hefty as this turkey breast and brined at lot less aggressively. I probably won’t die from this. You could probably search the web and find the statistics for poultry related illness vs just being in the wrong spot at the wrong time incidents. I think I’m more likely to get hurt driving to the store to buy the stuff than eating it. But I haven’t done that analysis.

It’s all in fridge now, brining. I could smoke it Friday or Saturday but I’m leaning towards Saturday, unless I think the OJ citric acid is going to cause major changes. It could.Then again, it’s mostly headed for sandwich meat and leftovers. Showy presentation and crispy skin and gravy makings is not a priority.

[Next Day]
It’s been in the brine for a full day, maybe more. Now I need to decide what I’m going to do next. The drying thing, or or. Or actually, I don’t really have a choice. It has to unbrine right? I’m a bit worried about that OJ turning it to mush meat if I leave it in there much longer. What to do?

It’s only a turkey. I’ll follow the recipe, sort of and see what happens. It wouldn’t hurt me to see if I can get the WSM up to 325F or higher. The citrus did cook some “look at me, I’m so alone” turkey bits, but not as much as I feared. I smell a success. I think I’m about to invite six or seven or eight people over. I baked up a full batch of the beans, I’ve got a butt load of sourdough bread in the freezer as well as all the pulled pork they can eat and more damn lettuce than one person should see.

[The Cook Day]
It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have some trouble. Timing is the first one. Turns out out I’m going to take the turkey to a friends house so I don’t have the luxury of them setting at my house waiting for me to finish. The bright side is my cleanup is minimal. So, I carefully miscalculated that the bird needs to come out at 6:20 (or sooner), and the bird should go in the 325 – 350 degree smoker at 4:00PM. I decided to follow the recipe in the link above rather than low and slow for 7 hours. Follow the recipe if you don’t know what your doing and I’ve never run the smoker at that high a heat so that I’ll teach me something.

The plan was to light a full chimney of charcoal at 3:00PM and when ashed over, put that in the charcoal ring of the smoker, cover that with another chimney of unlit charcoal and by 4:00PM, it should be running at a pretty high heat. I lit the first chimney at 3:10PM. I’m already late. The first chimney didn’t light. 3:20PM, try again. 4:15PM: My newly installed thermometer say’s 270F at the top. Crap! I’ve used up all my safety margin of time!. I put the bird in, added the smoke wood. The temp dropped to 220F but quickly went back to 270F. And stayed there while I fretted. I fretted a lot. I decided I’d better get some more lit charcoal in there and I fired up another chimney. While the newspaper was still smoking, I had the bright idea to use my old candy thermometer in the top vent hole. 335F! Perfect! Damn new thermometer. I know, I should have tested it.

I smothered the other chimney and sort of fretted just slightly less. All vents are 100% open, it’s low 70’s outside and there’s a small breeze. 6:00PM, the meat probe is 131F and I want 165F and even worse the the smoker temp is dropping, even after a little stirring of the coals. The two chunks of apple wood are gone so there’s no more smoke to be had, so I turned on the indoor oven to 350F and transferred the bird to the oven. I even turned on the convection part of the oven. The temp on the probe started climbing, I called my hosts said I was running 15 minutes late.

When those 15 minutes were up, the probe read 163F. I wrapped the bird in foil, put it in the cooler and drove over (10 minutes). They too were having charcoal delays (for grilling steaks), but with a cold one in my hand and nothing more that could be done for the turkey, I finally relaxed. Even if the turkey is bad, no one will leave hungry. A half hour later, we opened the foil and sliced the turkey. I grabbed a small bit to taste. Pretty good. Not underdone, a little closer to too dry than I wanted, but not bad considering I had to finish it in a convection oven at 350F which is going to dry it out and the citrus in the brine. Light but obvious smoke flavor. The smoke component is just right.

Of the 9 people, 8 claimed it was very good to “best turkey ever”. Several times each. I held to my “it’s pretty good” rating. If all you know about smoked turkey is the stuff in the deli or the mega-mart, then it would indeed be the best ever. It may even be the best I’ve made, but I know I could have done better or made fewer mistakes. That’s me.

The true telling is in the aftermath. Properly smoked poultry won’t be off putting the next day so when they cleaned up and asked what to do with left overs, I said I just wanted enough for a sandwich if there was any left over. I spent another hour outside smoking and joking with the crowd and then it was time to leave so I went to collect my left overs. “They’re in the cooler”. So I looked. The carcass was wrapped in foil and the hostess explained that the kids had decided I probably had enough meat on the carcass for a sandwich and the rest of the beast should stay at their place.

That is a thumbs up vote on my Q when they won’t let me take the left overs. That made me grin. A lot. Then I knew that their “best ever” talk wasn’t just saying nice things to the old guy. The host started to explain and I cut that short, “Dude! You fed me steak, we’re even”. The blogging rights alone make us even not to mention my big grin.

Then they (successfully) convinced me to take home four bottles of the St Pauli Girl six pack that they bought when they heard I was coming. I protested mightily since I’m walking out with more dollars in hand than I walked in with. I wonder what they would have done if the turkey was better than pretty good.

For the record, skip the OJ. I think it cooked (toughened) some of the outside and as best I can tell there’s no taste of it in the result. If it was me, I’d skip the Apple Juice too (Cider in this case). I didn’t taste that either. Brining is important though and using enough unlit charcoal and some more time would be a worthy improvements. Still, I pulled this Q out of my ass, as we say up here when the result of many screw-ups is still “pretty good”. If I could talk these folks into buying a packer brisket and the beer…

OK, That’s just crazy talk. Sorry. Won’t happen again.

 

I recreated this one myself from a local restaurant’s dish. It’s different enough though to pretend I made this up on my own. This will serve two. The original recipe grills the chicken breast and slices it across the grain and served on the top of the pasta bowl. I prefer not grilling during the winter so I pan fry the chicken and add it to the sauce. Naturally you can add more or less of the chicken and veggies, depending on whats available and what you like, but try the recipe first before you start fixing it. The only tricky part is timing the pasta and the sauce so the chicken won’t be too badly overcooked. If the pasta is done early, drain and cover, it will keep warm long enough to finish the sauce.

I suggest not spending a bunch of money the first time you make this. Generic brands if you can. Fully enjoyable as written. If you’re a gourmet you can punch up the next batch.

Notes:

Don’t put afraid of the 4 or 5 chipotles because the cream and the butter and the cheese will cut the heat down substantionally. But be sure to deseed and devein the chiles and don’t touch your eyes or private parts without a thorough washing of the hands. Twice.

The first time you make it, you’ll overcook the chicken and/or not cook the sauce down enough while waiting for the pasta or you won’t use enough chipotles. Even so it will still be good enough for you enjoy and dream about the next time.

The restuarants version has a thinner but hotter sauce. I suspect they use 2 canned chipotles and don’t rinse the canning adobo sauce off very hard nor do they deseed/devein since you can remove most of the seed and vein if you only use the bottom two thirds of the pepper.  I’m guessing they don’t reduce the sauce as much or just use milk. I like my version better, and I think you will too.

Don’t forget the sliced olives. You can fool with veggies all you want (adding zuchhini or squash for example), but the olives finish the dish off. Would you believe I’m not a big fan of black olives? In this case they make a huge difference and they won’t annoy you any more than they would on a pizza.

Substitutions and Additions:

I suspect (but don’t know) that you could use shrimp instead of chicken, but after browning you would add them to the sauce much closer to the end. If someone tries that, let me know.

I suspect you could do without the chicken (or substitute) entirely but I like protein with my dinner. It would be a good side dish or pasta course, but too much trouble for me to do as a just side dish. If someone tries that let me know.

I suspect that a little tomato sauce or paste wouldn’t hurt this and if I didn’t have a handheld food processor and had to sieve the chile pulp, I’m pretty sure that using a quarter cup of tomato sauce (slowly) would help get the chili paste thru the sieve properly. Let me know how that works out.

Helpful hints

If you buy a can of chipotoles to make this you’ll have some left over. Rinse them, pat dry and wrap each one in a bit of plastic wrap. Put the indivdually wrapped peppers in a freezer bag and pop into the freezer for months (or maybe years).  Then you can take out just one, defrost it, seed and devein it and chop into really tiny bits and add as a garnish to chicken soup. Trust me