Mexican Poblano Burger Soup

Mexican Poblano Burger Soup

After we got back from our trip to the coast for our anniversary, I harvested the last of my chile peppers and the wee tomatillos and poblanos I managed to eke out with our short summer weather. Half the hot peppers had turned red while we were gone, but that’s OK as I like spicy!

Cooking is quite the challenge one-handed, but I’ve figured out some hacks to where I don’t ask for much assistance any more in food prep. Dicing a fresh onion is the hardest I’ve found, but luckily I have a bag of diced onion in the freezer that I brought home from a work potluck, which can be used in soups and stews.

Tips: A mini food processor can be used for a rough dice of carrots, celery, and onion, and a pair of kitchen shears does quick work on green onions. I do have limited use of my left thumb and forefinger, so I place the green onion between those two fingers and snip away!

This soup was the culmination of wanting to use my peppers and tomatillos in something as well as a large leek that needed to be cooked stat. I roasted the poblanos, tomatillos, and a serrano until charred, then had my daughter peel and mince them for me. I then scrounged the freezer and pantry and came up with a half pound of burger, black beans, and golden hominy. Combined with my homemade beef stock, a filling Mexican-style soup was on the horizon!

I’m still limiting my prep photos until I have two hands again but this is a pretty straight-forward soup recipe. Note: I used all my very small poblano peppers and tomatillos in this, but have adjusted the recipe below for standard grocery-sized produce.

Pepper and Tomatillo Harvest

Mexican Poblano Burger Soup

1 large leek, halved lengthwise and sliced
3 peeled, rinsed and roasted tomatillos
1 large roasted and peeled poblano, minced
1 roasted and peeled serrano pepper, minced
1/2 pound ground beef
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
Ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon Ancho chile powder
4 cups homemade or low sodium beef stock or broth
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can golden hominy, drained and rinsed
2 soft corn tortillas, diced large
Juice squeezed from a large lime wedge
Tortilla chips, sour cream, and cilantro for garnish (optional)

Roast and prep the peppers and tomatillos. In a soup pot or Dutch oven, brown the ground beef and leeks in 1 teaspoon olive oil until burger is browned and leeks have softened. Add the minced garlic in the last minute of cooking them.

Add the rest of the ingredients except the garnishes and stir to combine. Bring to a simmer and cook 15-20 minutes until the tortillas have dissolved and soup thickens, stirring occasionally.

Ladle into bowls and serve with desired garnishes. This soup was even better the next day!

Mexican Poblano Burger Soup

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Dehydrated Jalapeños

Dehydrated Jalapenos

This post is dedicated in loving memory to one of my cyber-foodie friends, who passed away on October 9th. I was a follower of his food blog REMCooks, and cybernetically he was one of the kindest and sincere bloggers who loved both his family and cooking with the greatest of passion. Richard McGary was also very passionate about any kind of chile peppers. He loved to cook with any type of chile, and his blog has many recipes made with a variety of spicy hot peppers.

The idea to dry the jalapeños that were harvested from my jalapeño plant this year also came about by another food blogger who actually got to meet Richard once for a weekend of food and fun, Mimi from Chef Mimi Blog. After roasting and freezing some batches of Hatch and serrano chiles, I thought it would be neat to also have some dehydrated chiles on hand for soups, stews, and salad toppings.

This is not really so much a recipe, but a method. Here is what I did:

Dehydrated Jalapeños

You can either harvest your own jalapeno plant, or simply buy some from the store. I actually had a mix of red (ripe) jalepeños, standard dark green ones, and some that were in the process of turning red left on my plant at harvest time. I like that I had the different colors for this.

My Jalapeño Plant

Make sure you wear latex gloves or plastic sandwich bags over your hands, and whatever you do, don’t touch your face or eyes in this process!

First I sliced all the peppers thinly into rounds. I didn’t bother de-seeding them, as most of the seeds will fall down into the pan in the drying process.

Jalapeño Slices

The pepper slices were then arranged on a parchment-paper lined baking sheet, and placed into an oven set at 180 degrees. You might want to do this on a day you can open your windows, as after about an hour the house will get pretty spicy! Which of course did not bother me at all.

Jalapeños at the Start of Drying Process

I left them in the oven until they were all completely dried out. This took about 2 1/2 hours. I would check them every half hour or so after the first hour to make sure they weren’t getting too crisp. You will want to make sure they are “dry” to the touch and have no wetness left in them at all.

Jalapenos Drying Out ~ This was about halfway through the process

When completely dried, I took them out of the oven and let them cool. I then poured the dried pepper slices into a cute half-pint jelly jar to store throughout the fall and winter. There! I’ve already used some in some black-eyed peas that I made for lunch one day. They rehydrate nicely when cooked in liquid, but would also be fun to add as a crunchy topping to taco salad.

And p.s. Richard, I hope you are in chile paradise wherever you are!

Unorthodox Enfrijoladas

Enfrijoladas ~ photo by Adam J. Holland ~ The Unorthodox Epicure

Well, these are not really unorthodox, they are actually quite authentic. But this new recipe came to me from my good foodie friend Adam J. Holland, who has a most interesting foodie blog called “The Unorthodox Epicure” with a fun sidebar called “Confessions of an Aspiring Food Snob.” He is neither unorthodox nor snobby, that I can tell. But he’s a fellow Texan and cooks some great authentic Tex-Mex as well as authentic Mexican food, therefore he’s OK in my book, ya heah????

I made these last night, and hoo-boy, were they delicious! My entire family enjoyed them. It took hardly any prep time and cooked up pretty darn quick. That’s a win-win in my book! I halved the recipe since there are only three of us, but it still ended up making 8 Enfrijoladas (although I did add both grilled chicken AND cheese to the insides of them). There was one left in the end. All thumbs up. Thank you Adam!

I did take some initial prep photos thinking I might actually do a blog with my own photos on this, but a crazy thunderstorm rolled through as we were cooking this all outside on the propane burner/grill, so by the time we got it all moved inside there was no time with a hungry family to do any more foodie shots after having do all that and preheat the oven.

So sit right back, click on the link below, and enjoy his blog and recipe:

The Unorthodox Epicure Enfrijoladas Recipe