chicken burrito bowl/casserole



We absolutely love Mexican food, Tex-Mex, spicy Southwest, California Fresh-Mex, or Baja-Mex. Yum. I never get tired of it and could eat it every night of the week.  So it's no wonder that I always have the seasonings, just waiting for its turn to make my eyes water and my lips burn!

I made my Chicken burrito bowl/casserole

It was inspired by a local taqueria. I watched them and basically came up with my own and frankly it's just as good.

10 frozen chicken tenders
1 can of black beans
3 cups of seasoned Mexican rice * (see below)
2-3 cups (or handfuls) of shredded pepper-jack cheese
1/2 cup of shredded sharp cheddar
Your favorite Taco seasoning mix
green onion
cilantro
cut-up Roma tomato
sliced avocado
shredded cabbage
salsa, taco sauce, hot sauce

  • I cook the frozen tenders in a small amount of olive oil with some garlic. When cooked through, I chop up the chicken in the pan, add some taco seasoning, and a little water for a slightly saucy sauce with the seasoned chicken.

  • In another pan, follow directions for Instant rice.  Bring the water, butter, and about 3-4 tbsp of taco seasoning, and some Knorr bouillon to a roaring boil. Add the rice.  If you have some dried onion - throw it in.  To get my family to eat brown rice, I usually make half and a half and you can buy instant brown rice for this. But I didn't have any last night. I don't use regular rice for this - I want to keep it quick and simple. 



I love casseroles. Mainly because it's easy to have everything there - not a lot of bowls to clean up. So I used a 13x9 cake pan because my other Pyrex was in the freezer with a spaghetti casserole.

  • I spread the rice in the bottom of the pan and sprinkled some of the pepper jack cheese on the hot rice.
  • Then I spread the black beans
  • The seasoned chicken
  • the rest of the pepper-jack cheese (save just enough to put on top)
I placed it in a warm oven - while I shredded the cabbage, green onions, cilantro, tomatoes - and cheddar cheese

Then just before serving I topped with the cabbage, and all of the above - and some sliced black olives.

Now my family likes to use flour tortillas and pile the mixture inside the tortilla to make burritos. I like to just eat it without. My version of a burrito bowl.  (fewer Carbs) 

I've done this also with leftover Taco beef meat.

Note: Because I am only using what I have - I didn't have the following:

green onion, cilantro, brown instant rice, avocado.


4 comments:

  1. Yum. That looks good. On my birthday last year I chose a cheap sorta divey Mexican place for dinner. It was authentic.

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    1. Best real authentic Mexican food I ate was when I went down to Baja to help build some houses and teach some of the village kids - and every day, we had the best beans, rice and hand made tortillas, both corn and flour. Every meal, they have that - along with eggs for breakfast or chicken, beef. I was in heaven. The aroma lingers in the air - my mouth started watering as soon as we crossed the border!

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