Matt's Fajita con carne y queso recipe.
by Matt | Published on September 23rd, 2006, 9:31 pm | Food
Well it was getting later for supper tonight and nothing had gotten started or planned. Didn't want to do fast food and there was nothing defrosted, so I headed off to the store with 3 objectives in mind:1 - Reasonably healthy
2 - Cheap
3 - Quick
I went over to the meat section first to see what was on sale. Harris Teeter had some bottom round steak pretty cheap so I got that. This recipe would improve with better cuts of meat but the bottom round would work just fine.
Next I made my way backwards and got some tortillas, green pepper (ridiculously expensive right now but the green ones were $.99 each so I got the biggest one they had), tomatoes (romas were on sale) and a big yellow onion. I also got a bag of pre-mixed salad and triple checked to ensure no spinach because of the current e-coili issues.
Then I went to the other end of the store and got some low fat sour cream and Mexican blend shredded cheese (also on sale).
Check out total: $29. Would have been around $19 but they had the fru fru beer my wife likes on sale and I bought 2 for 1 stuff. I didn't have to get 2 but it was stuff we use anyway.
At home I already had ranch dressing, taco sauce, butter, and garlic gloves.
Now I'm not real good at portioning and stuff so you'll have to adjust what you buy as desired.
-Steak, about 1/2 pound per person
-Burrito-sized tortillas
-Shredded cheese
-1 large onion
-1 large green pepper
-Sour Cream
-Ranch dressing
-Garlic Glove
-tomatoes
-Butter
-Taco Sauce (this is to taste. Left-overs from Taco Bell work well)
4 of us ate this, 2 adults, 2 kids and there wasn't much left over.
Note: A person could go really healthy by using non/low-fat ranch, sour cream, and butter. Also note you could do this with any meat by cooking it first and then slicing it. The meat I bought was on sale but like in a huge roast chunk so I had to cut it up.
Slice green pepper into strips. Cut the onion in rings and then once in half. Crush a gloves of garlic. Use the side of a butcher knife or something really flat. Smash the crap out if so it's super thin.
Dice the tomatoes
Mix some ranch and sour cream together. Thin it a little with milk or water so it's about the consistency of ketchup.
Slice the meat in as thin strips as you can. This takes a while and requires a decent knife.
I have a large stir fry wok but a good size pan would do the job. Heat it up on med-high and put in about 2-3 tablespoons of butter. Put garlic in the melted butter and let that sauté for a little bit. If you smash up the garlic enough, it'll disappear eventually and you won't bight into a chunk of it later.
Stir in the pepper and onion in the butter and cover. Every minute or so, stir everything. Keep doing this until the skin of the pepper starts to look a little wrinkled and burnt. Remove from pan into a dish or plate.
Keeping the pan very hot, spray with Pam. Put about a handful of the meat in and stir around. Cover it for about 30 seconds and stir. Do this until all the meat almost no longer pink. The meat will continue to cook for a bit after removing from the pan. So you don't want to leave it in too long or it'll dry out. You want to do this on high heat since the meat is thin and you want to lock in the flavor by searing it. When done remove from pan, drain any juice that came out. Spray again with Pam, repeat until all meat is cooked.
Take a tortilla and sprinkle the cheese on it. I like to nuke it for about 20 seconds so the tortilla doesn't crack when you roll it and the cheese melts a little. Add your meat, sauces, peppers, onions, tomatoes, etc as desired. Roll it up and dig in.
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