ok so ive been refining a dish for the last few months (it takes a while unless you want to eat the same damn thing over and over every couple of days) and i think ive got the basic dish down pat to the point i like it. actually, i more than like it, i think its out-fucking-standing. ridiculously delicious. anyhow, if you want to make it yourself, heres the recipe:
Taco Goulash
ingredients:
* 1 lb ground beef or ground turkey
* 1 oz (-ish) packet your favorite taco seasoning mix
* 1 can 7.75 oz of El Pato Jalapeno Salsa (find in the "mexican" section of your local supermarket)
* 1/2 can 15 oz Rico brand aged cheddar cheese sauce (condensed) (my local wal mart carries this, your supermarket may or may not, see "variations" below for what to do if you cant find it)
* 1 can 11 oz green giant mexicorn, drained (or other whole kernel canned corn of your choice)
* 1 rounded cup white rice
* 3 cups hot tap water
dishes needed:
* 1 10-inch skillet w/ lid
* tupperware to hold the leftovers. this makes a fuckton of food.
directions:
start by browning the meat. drain, return to skillet. add taco seasoning, salsa, cheese sauce, rice, and water. bring to a boil while stirring regularly. cover and reduce heat to simmer.
every 4 minutes, stir well then re-cover. after 8 minutes, add corn. total cooking time will vary depending upon the rice you used, and the consistency youd like. basically, keep cooking and stirring every 4 minutes until the rice is done and its nice and thick. then, eat up. its some good shit.
variations:
this is just the base dish, theres a LOT of room for creativity here.
your rice selection will affect the amount of water you need and how long you have to cook it. i use basmati because i like how it tastes and the firmness of the grains, but it takes more water and has to cook longer. you can reduce this time by soaking the rice in an inch of COOL tap water while you prepare the meat. drain the rice then add as usual. itll still take the same amount of water, but it wont take as long to cook.
you could also substitute some kind of pasta (usually a thick elbow macaroni for a more traditional "goulash" dish) for the rice, but since this always has leftovers for me, and i dont like how pasta generally holds up when being reheated, i stick to rice. i also think the rice tastes better.
you could easily add stuff like sliced jalepenos, green chilis, chopped bell pepper, leaf baby spinach, black or pinto beans (drained), chopped onion, garlic, etc... some things youll want to add at the beginning to let them cook more, others youll want to add at 4/8/12 minutes, use your own judgement. but youll probably need to make it in a bigger pan or pot. the default recipe will just barely all fit in a standard 10" skillet. its a fuckton of food, as i said. i guarantee you when its done youll be amazed at how damn much food you got out of those ingredients.
you could also turn this into a chili-cheese goulash just by swapping the taco seasoning for chili seasoning.
feel free to sub your favorite salsa for the el pato. depending on the salsa, youll have to adjust the water though. some salsas (especially white-people salsas like pace) are really watery. same goes for rotel tomatoes.
you can sub a different cheese in for the rico, but i recommend against it. yes, i know, youre thinking to yourself "rico, as in, the shit they pour on stadium nachos??" to which i respond "NO not the stadium nacho shit"... same brand, DIFFERENT product. you want the rico AGED CHEDDAR sauce. its real cheese (unlike velveeta/cheese whiz) and i assure you, its the cheese this dish WANTS. i did more experimentation with the cheese than any other part of this dish. i tried grated cheddar. i tried velveeta. i tried cheese whiz. i tried queso blanco. forget them all, the dish didnt really come together until i used the rico. just trust me on this one.
anyhow, if you try it out, let me know what you think, and what if any you added/subbed.
The world according to Tim
Taco Goulash
Comments:
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I am a novice cook, so this was a big help to get me improvising different meals. My strong areas have only been grilling and breakfast, up to this point. Thanks for the timely motivation.
That El Pato salsa is fantastic! I would never have guessed. At first, I thought it was a typo, and you meant El Paso. My second thought was that it was a hell of a typo since the keys were so far apart. I looked further down the aisle, and there it was, mingling with the oriental section.
also, yeah, the el pato ("the duck") salsa was a real find... in the course of putting this dish together, i tried a lot of different salsas, and hit on the el pato at random... but i knew as soon as i cracked open the can that i had found my salsa. i mean, it SMELLS fantastic, which is almost always an indicator that its going to taste great too. ive started using it on everything, its great on eggs...
your variation sounds pretty good, a kick-ass burrito version, ill have to try it, although ill probably go with partly-mashed black beans over the refritos, to make it a little healthier (and i just prefer black beans).
i know for novice cooks, probably the most intimidating part of cooking is straying from a recipe. they always worry that it wont turn out right... and sometimes it doesnt, but thems the breaks :) the worst that happens is you have to order pizza instead, and at least you know what DOESNT work after that. anyhow, thats why i provided the variations, to give people a jumping off point... i think the biggest thing that makes cooking fun (aside from eating what you make) is the experimentation.
the key to varying a recipe is to go with what you know. i mean, think about it. youve been eating your whole life... you KNOW what tastes good together and what doesnt. just go with that intuitive sense and youll usually be fine. as you get more experienced, youll be able to start altering the seasoning as well as the bulkier ingredients... the seasoning is probably the trickiest part, because most non-cooks never know, think about, or even can identify the different spices in the dishes they eat, so they lack that intuitive sense of what works and what doesnt.
bottom line the secret to good cooking, like most things, is a combination of 1) proper preparation and planning and 2) lack of fear and a willingness to fail.
90% of all the effort in cooking should happen BEFORE you cook. you should have all your ingredients on hand and ready, all the utensils and cookware laid out and ready, and know the recipe from memory before you begin. after you start cooking is the WRONG time to discover youre out of something, or that you needed to chop those onions, or that you cant remember if youre supposed to saute them before or after you brown the meat (or maybe at the same time)...
the other part is just to not be afraid of fucking up. its going to happen. ask ed. man, i tried to make a curry stir fry one time that SHOULD have been awesome... everything i know about cooking said it WOULD be awesome. it wasnt awesome, it was TOTAL SHIT. omg it was bad. you just order pizza and move on :)
eventually youll feel brave enough to do what i did to wind up with this dish... just go to the store with a hand basket, pick out an item at random, and resolve to build a dish around it. then start strolling the aisles adding ingredients as the recipe starts to take shape in your head. then get ready to make it several times as you get it just right.
if you keep it simple, like i did with this dish, youll be able to refine the base recipe with only a few ingredients and get it down, then youll have a solid foundation from which to experiment and expand, into places like burrito territory like you did, or maybe into a casserole, or even a soup/stew...
its surprisingly fun, and as far as hobbies go, pretty darn practical as well...
I am getting fancy now. :) This last time, I dumped all of the liquid ingredients into a large pyrex bowl and heated it in the microwave for two minutes before adding to the hamburger. I used the 2 1/2 cups of water to rinse the cans, then poured that into the big pyrex so there was no waste! Then I used the empty cans to hold the grease drained from the hamburger.
I have to get one extra dish dirty, but it allows me to do my preps in a more practical order.
but yeah, as you go, youll get better and better at efficient prep, and youll find that those insights transfer easily to other dishes and other styles of cooking. also as you experiment with ingredients youll begin to develop that intuitive sense of what "works" together when cooking. it really isnt as mystical as a lot of non-cooking people seem to think it is, and its not a huge leap from "ive only ever cooked this one thing" to "i cook all KINDS of stuff, and at a very high level of competency (and deliciousness)"...
really, cooking is just chemistry. and just like a chemistry experiment, if you use the same ingredients and follow the same proceedures you should be able to expect the same results in a highly regular and repeatable fashion. 85% of cooking is just developing good lab skills :) the rest mostly takes care of itself.
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