Mexican Archives - A Calculated Whisk

Carnitas con huevo

April 24, 2017 By Becky 40 Comments

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Try carnitas con huevo–crispy slow-cooked pork with fried eggs–for a hearty and irresistible paleo breakfast. There’s avocado crema involved, too!

I’m sorry for the silence here last week! I hadn’t planned on taking a week off from sharing recipes, but suddenly Easter and several deadlines for freelance work and a few other things snuck up on me. I’m back, though, with one of my favorite breakfasts of all time: carnitas con huevo (slow-cooked, crispy pork with an egg on top) with avocado crema.

If you’ve by any chance been reading since I started this site in 2013, you may recognize this recipe as one I posted back then during my first attempt at a Whole30. It was long overdue for a reshoot, though. Just for fun, I’ve included one of the original photos below right before the recipe card. I’m constantly working on improving my food photography and styling, but looking back on photos from a few years ago makes me feel really good about how far I’ve come already.

Whole30 Breakfast Nachos

January 30, 2017 By Becky 36 Comments

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These Whole30 breakfast nachos are ideal for game day or anytime you’re craving a decadent plate of nachos but still want to stick to paleo ingredients. They take just half an hour to make!

Where have breakfast nachos been all my life? They’re a million times better than any nachos I’ve ever had before, despite being free of gluten, grains, and dairy. They’re super fast to make and just as welcome in the evening as at breakfast time. What’s not to love?

For these Whole30 breakfast nachos, we’re using thinly sliced potatoes cooked to a crisp in bacon grease instead of tortilla chips. This is one of those healthier substitutions that just so happens to taste way better than the original. The potatoes get really nice and crunchy around the edges, but still retain a little toothsome chew near the middle. I’d happily eat a sheet pan full of them with no adornment whatsoever.

I can’t say no to any of these toppings, though. We’ve got crispy bacon, eggs cooked to your liking (bring on the runny yolks for me!), rich avocado, thinly sliced scallions, crispy bits of radish, fresh cilantro, tart lime, and some salsa on the side. And once you break that yolk and let it mix a bit with the potatoes and toppings, I swear to you it will taste like these nachos have cheese in them! You just have to try it to believe it.

Crispy Chicken Salad with Pineapple Pico de Gallo

January 5, 2017 By Becky 28 Comments

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This crispy chicken salad with pineapple pico de gallo is full of fresh, vibrant ingredients to brighten up your winter. Plus, it’s paleo and Whole30 compliant!

Crispy chicken: I’m starting to worry I talk about it too much. The thing is, it just doesn’t get much better. And it definitely doesn’t get ANY better when we’re talking about a Whole30-compliant salad. This crispy chicken salad with pineapple pico is the stuff dreams are made of!

While my usual method for crisping up chicken is to use skin-on chicken thighs (see exhibits A, B, and C), this time I wanted crispy breaded chicken. I didn’t want to use bread, of course, and almond flour doesn’t quite produce the requisite level of crunch. I was planning to try crushed up plantain chips, but I couldn’t find any that were made with Whole30-friendly oil. It was in my search for plantain chips that I laid eyes on EPIC’s sea salt & pepper pork rinds.

The ingredients are Whole30-compliant, and I confirmed on the forums that if pork rinds are used in the context of a nutritious recipe and not just for mindless snacking, they’re fine. In this case, I eliminated any (convenient) snacking possibilities by smashing the rinds to smithereens while they were still in the bag.

Anyway, they make a wonderfully flavorful breading for crispy chicken, which then graces the top of this salad that’s already packed with just the right combination of sweet, spicy, crunchy, peppery, juicy, and creamy bites.

Five-Ingredient Instant Pot Carnitas

October 5, 2016 By Becky 22 Comments

These easy five-ingredient Instant Pot carnitas are tender and juicy, with a great citrusy flavor. They are wonderful over rice, in tacos, in lettuce wraps, with an egg on top, or just plain!

These slow-cooker carnitas lettuce wraps are one of my favorite dinners, and ever since getting an Instant Pot, I’ve been working on converting the carnitas recipe so it can be made more quickly. It’s not necessarily weeknight quick because it takes about an hour and a half to make, but that’s a lot less than the 8-10 hour slow-cooking time. This is perfect for whipping up on a weekend afternoon to have a stockpile of delicious meat for the days ahead.

To make this recipe extra easy, I’ve streamlined the ingredients list. You only need five things (not counting salt, pepper, and water). Also, this recipe is made start to finish in the Instant Pot, without any broiling at the end or any other dirty pans.

Carnitas are traditionally made on the stovetop like this, where they cook low and slow, often with spices and citrus juices. Eventually, all of the juices cook off, and the carnitas begin to caramelize and crisp up a little in the dry pan.

When I make carnitas in my crockpot, I have to discard most of the juices and broil the carnitas after slow cooking to crisp them up and get that characteristic carnitas texture. With the Instant Pot’s sauté feature, though, I can cook off all of the liquid pretty quickly without using more than one pot. That means Instant Pot carnitas are just as easy as the original stovetop version, but much quicker.

Grapefruit Jalapeño Margaritas

April 26, 2016 By Becky 10 Comments

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Grapefruit jalapeño margaritas sweetened with honey are perfect for Cinco de Mayo! Tequila quickly infused with jalapeños gives these just the right amount of kick.

How do you feel about spicy cocktails? I’m pretty much obsessed, and these grapefruit jalapeño margaritas are my current drink of choice. I hope this doesn’t make me sound insufferably picky, but I’m starting to feel the same way about non-spicy cocktails that I feel about non-salted desserts. If my sweets are not salted or my cocktail doesn’t pack a punch, I’d almost rather go without. The depth of flavor that the jalapeños give these margaritas really makes them for me.

That being said, I aim to please, and you can definitely skip the chiles and just make a delicious grapefruit margarita if spicy drinks are not your thing. It’s easy to make some margaritas spicy and some not according to each person’s tastes. Ben took a sip of my spicy margarita and declared it “interesting”, but preferred the plain grapefruit ones I made per his request.

The inspiration for these grapefruit jalapeño margaritas comes from my friend Lauren, who shares amazing gluten-free recipes over at Wicked Spatula and has quite an impressive array of creative margaritas. If you read my site often, you may remember that we swapped guest posts back in the fall. Last weekend, we met in real life for the first time! Lauren lives about a three-hour drive from me, and we decided to meet up at her place and road trip together all the way up to Pittsburgh to go to a workshop led by Jessica Merchant of How Sweet Eats.

Mole-Spiced Hanger Steak with Strawberry-Avocado Salsa

April 18, 2016 By Becky 6 Comments

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Hanger steak is seasoned with an irresistible mole-inspired dry rub with a hint of chocolate and served with a refreshing strawberry-avocado salsa. Thank you so much to ButcherBox for sending me grass-fed meat for this post!

Wouldn’t you be thrilled if a giant box with of a wide variety of cuts of grass-fed meat showed up at your door, just chilling over some dry ice and waiting for you to defrost as you please and get creative in the kitchen? I think any paleo or real-food cook would love it, and that’s why I’m so excited about ButcherBox.

ButcherBox is a grass-fed meat subscription service that carefully curates a unique selection of cuts each month and sends them straight to your door, complete with informative cards showing where each cut comes from, explaining how to best prepare it, and detailing a delicious recipe to try with each one. I shared about my first box and what I did with it in this slow-cooker Cuban short ribs post, and now I’m sharing a delicious hanger steak recipe along with some info on my second box. All the meat I’ve eaten from ButcherBox has been exceptional, with such good taste and texture that it’s hard to believe it was ever frozen.

This month’s box contained hanger steak, four ribeye steaks, two pounds of ground beef, thinly sliced beef (perfect for stir-frying or pho), and a Scotch roast, and paleo bacon (if you’re interested in paleo bacon, too, you can get a package of it for free when you buy your first ButcherBox right here!). I was especially excited about the hanger steak because it’s so flavorful and so hard to find–it’s also known as butcher’s steak because butchers often keep it for themselves instead of selling it.

When I started thinking about how to season the steak, mole came to mind. Mole is an amazing and complicated Mexican sauce that’s usually served with chicken, and I’ve loved it ever since one of my students’ mothers first brought me a plate of it when I was teaching in Houston. I have a great recipe for chicken drumsticks with mole poblano in Paleo Planet, but I usually save it for special occasions because there are so many ingredients and it takes a while to make. I’ve really been craving the taste of mole lately, though, so I decided to use some of its main ingredients in a simple and easy-to-make dry rub.

Mexican Almond Pulp Brownies

February 20, 2015 By Becky 12 Comments

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Mexican Almond Pulp Brownies | acalculatedwhisk.com

These grain-free, paleo-friendly Mexican almond pulp brownies are a delicious way to use up almond pulp and satisfy chocolate cravings at the same time.

Have you tried making your own almond milk? It’s really good, and nothing like the store-bought kind. I like to put it in my coffee, add it to smoothies, or just drink it plain, alongside a delicious paleo baked good. (If you’re not a fan of almonds, you can follow the same steps to make milk using pecans instead! If I had to choose my favorite between almond milk and pecan milk, I would have a hard time).

So, if you have made your own nut milk, then you know about the pulp problem. After squeezing the last vestiges of creamy milk out of the cheesecloth or nut milk bag, you’re left with a bunch of pulp.

It’s sad to just throw it away. Especially when you could use it to make brownies instead!

These Mexican almond pulp brownies are adapted from a brilliant recipe by Alanna of The Bojon Gourmet. (Alanna takes some of the most gorgeous food photos out there, so if you haven’t visited her site, be prepared to want to make every single thing.) My version gets its unique flavor from a teaspoon of cinnamon and a dash of cayenne pepper. The result is like a Mexican hot chocolate in brownie form.

Pico de gallo de frutas

May 2, 2014 By Becky 4 Comments

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This pico de gallo de frutas is a spicy take on fruit salad that is paleo, gluten free, and vegan. It’s perfect for Cinco de mayo or anytime!

After I graduated from college, I moved to Houston and became a bilingual teacher. I had the most amazing group of students, and was lucky enough to be their teacher for three years in a row: kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. We spoke Spanish almost all day, except for an hour or so of ESL. Their kindergarten year was my first year of teaching, as well as my first year living far away from home. While those things made it a difficult year for me, my kids and their families were absolutely fabulous. A lot of people may say this, but I truly think I could not have asked for a better group of students. They worked as a team almost from the beginning–embracing me, each other, and all the new students that trickled in (and sometimes out, and sometimes back again) over the course of our three years together. They were unbelievably kind, patient, tolerant, bright, and hilarious.

At the end of three years, I had learned a huge amount of Spanish (I had thought I was fluent before taking the job, but the Spanish spoken in Texas is so different from what I’d practiced while studying abroad in Argentina that I had to learn new words for much of what I wanted to say). Most of them had learned a huge amount of English, and had learned to read in both languages. I had also learned so much about teaching, about children and families, and about life. I know that sounds very expansive, but it was a foundational experience for me, and I think of those kids and their families almost everyday. Shockingly (to me, because it makes me feel so old), they’re in middle school now, and I’m happy to still be in touch with several of them.

Slow-Cooker Carnitas Lettuce Wraps with Pineapple & Avocado Salsa

April 3, 2014 By Becky 9 Comments

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Crisp and tender slow-cooker carnitas are wrapped in butter lettuce and topped with pineapple and avocado salsa for a paleo dinner or appetizer with an ideal balance of sweet and savory flavors.

Ben is out of town this week, so I have been left to my own devices. Last night I got home and decided to read the first chapter or two of the kids’ novel Because of Winn-Dixie, which I needed to preview before using it in a lesson. Turns out the book is really good, and also a bit sad. A girl named India Opal, whose mother left when she was little, moves to Naomi, Florida with her dad and ends up adopting a stray dog who helps her make all kinds of interesting friends. Each friend has their own poignant story. I may have ended up crying several times (just enough to need a tissue, not straight-up bawling), and finishing the whole book in less than two hours. Now, that’s what I call a fun evening! Tonight I might watch the film version.