Intro: Welcome, welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Suzy Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: What’s up everybody? What’s good? All right, I am back in the studio today. We had a beautiful vacation last week. We were right around like the Destin, Florida area. I think they call it 30A. It’s like Caribbean water, which is crazy because it’s northern Florida. It’s amazing. Highly recommend it if you need a really great family vacation. It is a wonderful spot to be. 

Now that I’m back in the mix, we’re going to make a really easy recipe for dinner tonight. We’re making tilapia fish tacos. I think that my husband didn’t quite get his fill of fish when we were in Florida, so we’re going to take this opportunity to make a super simple recipe that’s going to fulfill that fish craving for him. 

The nice thing about tilapia is that it’s a super quick cooking fish and it’s pretty inexpensive, especially as we’re coming off a vacation and we’ve spent all of our money. We need an economical dinner. So this recipe is going to fit that bill. 

Tilapia Tacos Recipe: Not a ton of tips and tricks today. You know, everything is pretty much straightforward. We’re going to make a kind of marinated tilapia, and then we’re going to serve it with a chipotle lime crema on tacos. So let’s go ahead and just get straight into the recipe.

We’re going to start this recipe with one and a half pounds of tilapia filets. From what I just purchased, that was about four filets. Then we’re going to marinate them really quickly. So you’re going to generously season both sides of the filet with salt and pepper. Then, in a 9×13 pan or some type of pan that will fit all of the filets, you’re going to mix together 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the zest and juice of 1 lime, 3 garlic cloves that are just chopped up, 3 teaspoons of chili powder, 1.5 teaspoons of ground cumin, 3 quarters teaspoon of smoked paprika, and a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Now if you don’t like it super hot, you can take the cayenne pepper out completely, or if you like it really spicy, add a little bit more. But mix all of that together, and then you’re going to place the tilapia filets in that mixture, and rub that paste onto both sides of the filets. You can cover that up and chill and let it marinate for about 20 or 30 minutes in the fridge. 

While that’s marinating, you could certainly get all of your other things ready. So like your tortillas, your lettuce, your salsas, get all of the taco things ready for when it’s time to eat. So now is the really quick part. We’re going to cook the tilapia filets and this happens very quickly. So in a large nonstick skillet, you’re going to heat two tablespoons of olive oil over medium high heat. You’re just going to cook those filets for about two to three minutes on each side until they’re nice and flaky and cooked through. Fish is cooked through when it reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees. You can always check that way. Now what I like to do is let that tilapia cool just a little bit and then I break it apart into one inch chunks. 

We said at the beginning, we are going to serve this with a chipotle lime crema, which is so delicious. Super easy to make. So in a small bowl, you’re just going to whisk together half a cup of mayonnaise, a quarter cup of sour cream, three teaspoons of fresh lime juice, three chipotle chilies in adobo sauce. So that’s actually a canned product that you can get in the Mexican food aisle at your grocery store. You’ll need three of the chilies that are in the can. Usually there’s five to six chilies in there. Don’t use all of them because they’re really, really spicy. So you’ll chop those up, put those in the bowl. One large garlic clove and two tablespoons of milk. Just whisk it together and that’s ready to go.

Now that you’ve got everything ready for your tilapia fish tacos, you can let everybody just make their own tacos. Or if you want, what we love to do is take either a corn tortilla or a flour tortilla, warm it up, and then put a little bit of angel hair slaw down the center. Top that with either salsa, corn salsa, esquites is really good in this taco. Then you’re going to put your pieces of tilapia on top of there. Then drizzle it with that chipotle lime crema, do a spritz of lime, maybe some extra cilantro, and it’s super, super delicious. 

So that does it for the full recipe for tilapia fish tacos. Of course, I will link every recipe that I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you so you can click through and you can print it, save it, pin it, share it, whatever you want to do when you’re ready to make these tilapia fish tacos.

Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinnertime a little easier. See ya! 

Double Dip: Alright, now it’s time for the double dip. Thank you so much for sticking around. Every week on this podcast you can stick around for the double dip at the end of the show and know what we’re going to make next week. Then you can have all of the groceries ready to cook along with me next Thursday. 

So, next week, we are making an older recipe from my website. It is for a pesto sausage lasagna skillet. We love these lasagna skillet recipes because it’s like you can have all of the flavors and the deliciousness of lasagna, but it doesn’t take you 75 hours to make.

So what you’re going to need to make this pesto lasagna skillet is one pound of ground Italian sausage. You can use any version you like. So spicy, mild, turkey, pork, whatever you want to use. You need some yellow or white onion, garlic, kosher salt, dried basil, 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes, half a cup of pesto and half a cup of marinara. Eight uncooked lasagna noodles, half a cup of ricotta cheese. Four ounces of grated mozzarella and a quarter cup of pine nuts. That’s it. 

You’re going to make a super delicious lasagna skillet. So I hope you will join me then and I hope you guys have a wonderful week ahead.

Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: Today we are going to make a wonderful side dish that you’re absolutely going to love. My little picky kids love this side dish and they request it all the time. Usually at the beginning of the week I’ll try to ask them what’s one item you want to have for dinner this week? So we can avoid tears at dinner time. These crispy cast iron skillet potatoes are one of the number one requested items on our table. They are super easy to make and any time you have a main dish that calls for a potato side dish, these can sit in perfectly instead of having to go through all of the work of making a cheesy potato casserole or mashed potatoes or potato salad. These crispy oven potatoes are perfect. 

Tips and Tricks: This is actually going to be a really quick episode. So not many tips and tricks. The only thing I’ll tell you is that number one, you do need a cast iron skillet to make this recipe. And number two, you definitely want to find the really tiny potatoes. They may even be called tiny potatoes at the grocery store. They’re going to be smaller than a ping pong ball. Maybe actually the size of a ping pong ball and smaller is what I’ll say. Then that is what allows them to get super crispy and creamy on the inside while they cook in the oven. You’re going to love them. 

Crispy Potatoes Recipe: So let’s go ahead and just get into the full recipe for these little crispy oven potatoes. So you need about one pound of tiny Yukon gold potatoes, three tablespoons of olive oil or extra virgin olive oil. 3 quarters teaspoon of kosher salt and a 1 teaspoon of dried oregano. 

You’re going to preheat your oven to about 425 degrees. Cut all of the potatoes in half and then in the bottom of a large cast iron skillet, probably like a 10 or a 12 inch cast iron skillet, you’re going to pour two tablespoons of that oil across the bottom of the cast iron skillet coating the whole surface. Then you’ll sprinkle in a half a teaspoon of the kosher salt and a whole teaspoon of dried oregano. You’ll place those cut potatoes, cut side down into the oil, making sure that all of the potatoes are touching the surface of the skillet. Then you’ll drizzle the remaining oil. You should have about one tablespoon left of oil, over the top of the potatoes and sprinkle with the remaining quarter teaspoon of kosher salt. You’re going to roast them in that hot oven for at least 30 to 35 minutes. Then at the end of that time, pull that cast iron skillet out and double check a couple of the potatoes on the bottom to make sure that they are crispy. I don’t mean they look a little golden brown. They should be crispy like a potato chip crispy. You are going to love them. So if they don’t look super duper golden brown, pop them back in the oven for about another five minutes. 

These suckers are going to be hot when they are ready. So let them cool for probably about 10 minutes and then you can go ahead and serve them. They are creamy and buttery on the inside and the outside is literally crispy like a potato chip. 

Like I said before, this is a side dish that goes with just about anything that requires a potato side dish. We love them with roasted chicken, maybe a rotisserie chicken, grilled burgers, grilled chicken, meatloaf, barbecue meatballs, hamballs, just about anything. So I really hope you make these. If you really, really love them, I would love to have you give the recipe five stars and leave a little comment about what you served these little potatoes with. 

As always, I will link all of the recipes I talked about in the show notes for you so you can go and check it out, cook with the recipe, pin it, save it, share it, whatever you want to do.

Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya!

Double Dip: All right guys, now it’s time for your double dip and I’m so excited for this. So every week when you listen to the new podcast episode on Thursday, you can always stick around for the end of the episode where I go over the ingredients you need to make the recipe for next week. 

So next week we have a fun little recipe that I think is great for the end of summer. It’s easy to make and it’s so, so delicious. This is a newer recipe on Mom’s Dinner, the website where I share all of my recipes that I go over here on the podcast. We are having tilapia fish tacos next week. You are going to love these. Tilapia is great. It is really economical and it cooks up super fast.

So what you’re going to need for these tilapia fish tacos is one and a half pounds of tilapia filets, salt and pepper, olive oil, a couple limes, garlic cloves. chili powder, ground cumin, smoked paprika, and cayenne pepper. 

Now, of course you want to have anything you want to have with your tacos. So either flour shells or corn shells. We like to do a little bit of angel hair slaw on the bottom. Then we do a chipotle lime crema that gets drizzled over top. Let me tell you what you need for that. Some mayonnaise, sour cream, some more lime juice. You need a can of Chipotle Chios…. This is always, this is always a tongue tie for me. Chipotle chilies in adobo sauce. So just one can. Garlic and milk. So I hope you’ll join me next week when we make these tilapia fish tacos.

Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: All right, we’re up for a little controversial recipe today. I had no idea how much controversy surrounded cornbread, but when I posted a recipe on Pinterest about cornbread, I got all sorts of comments. I am telling you. People feel very passionately about cornbread. 

So what I’m going to say, the disclaimer for this episode is that this is my take on buttermilk cornbread. If you don’t like it, don’t make it, don’t shame me. We love it. But maybe you won’t love it. But I think it’s a perfect combination of corn flavor, cornbread texture, but still enough moisture so that the cornbread is tender and not dry and crumbly. So if that sounds good to you, then I highly recommend you try this buttermilk cornbread recipe. 

We’re also going to make a delicious honey butter to go on the cornbread. So yummy. This is obviously not a full dinner, but it makes a great side dish for especially any soups in the fall. Like chili white chicken chili, even chicken noodle soup. Cornbread is wonderful as a side dish, kind of across the board there. It’s also great with a lot of grilled items. Maybe not burgers or things that are served on a bun, but something more like a barbecue grilled pork tenderloin, even ribs. It’s a great side dish for ribs. 

Tips and Tricks: So let’s get into a couple tips and tricks and myths about cornbread. When I say myths, it’s not really myth, it’s just that there’s a lot of different takes on letting your batter rest. So when I read on the internet about letting your cornbread batter rest before you bake it, there’s all sorts of different reasons. You know, activating the baking soda. Letting the corn flour absorb the liquid. There’s something about air being added. People that say it helps the cornbread rise better, especially if you’re making muffins, then it will have a bigger crown. I have found that this recipe works just fine without letting the batter rest, but if you want to let the batter rest, they recommend like 15 to 20 minutes, and then pour it in the pan and bake it. But I find that it’s completely fine just as it is. 

In this recipe, we’re using buttermilk as part of the liquid for the mixture. The buttermilk is going to serve two purposes. Obviously, as the wet ingredient that’s mixing into the cornbread batter. Then, it’s also considered an acid, so it’s going to activate your baking powder, which is the difference between baking soda and baking powder. Baking soda is already activated, it doesn’t need that activator. Baking powder needs an acidic activator to help it work.

Otherwise, everything is pretty much straightforward for this recipe. You will need a nine inch round baking pan or dish to make this buttermilk cornbread. You could also use a nine inch round cast iron skillet, which would work here as well.

Cornbread Recipe: Let’s get into making the full recipe for buttermilk cornbread. It’s actually pretty easy. So you’re going to preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Then you’re going to prep a 9 inch round pan by spraying it with non-stick spray. In a large bowl, you’re going to stir together the dry ingredients, which is going to be one and a half cups of medium grind cornmeal, one cup of all purpose flour, and three tablespoons of sugar. That’s going to add just enough sweetness to enhance the flavor, but not so sweet that it tastes like cake instead of cornbread. One teaspoon of baking powder, one teaspoon of baking soda, and one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt. Just stir that all together. Then you’re going to whisk together the wet ingredients. I like to do this in my, I have a large four cup Pyrex liquid measuring cup and this works perfect for this. So you’re going to measure together one and a half cups of buttermilk, two large eggs, and a quarter cup of vegetable oil. Whisk that all together so that the eggs incorporate into the liquid. Then what you’re going to do is you’re going to stir the wet mixture into the dry mixture. So pour that wet mixture right into the dry mixture and just stir until everything is wet. Don’t over mix your batter. 

Now at this point, you can let it sit. Or, you can pour it right into your 9 inch round prepared baking dish, and then bake it at 400 degrees for about 30 to 35 minutes. Your cornbread is ready. Let it rest for 5 to 10 minutes, and then you can cut it into wedges, like pie wedges, and serve it up.

We’re going to take it to the next level, and we’re going to make a little bit of homemade honey butter to go with that cornbread. Super duper easy. You only need three ingredients to make this honey butter. I want to talk about just a couple of the ingredients. With this recipe, we are using salted butter. I do not believe in unsalted butter. I can’t believe I admitted that in public. Unsalted butter is basically like grease to me. It doesn’t taste like anything. You need that salt in there to give that butter its sweet, creamy flavor. So please use salted butter here. 

Then the recipe calls for a flake sea salt, like Maldon sea salt. If you don’t want to use that, then if you’re going to use just a kosher salt, you’re going to want to start with about a quarter teaspoon and then add more to taste. That flake sea salt is a little bit more delicate than some other salts, so we can add a little bit more. It adds, oh my gosh, it adds the most beautiful little texture in your honey butter. So if you can, get that flake sea salt. You will not be disappointed. 

Alright, to make your honey butter, in a small bowl with a spoon or a spatula, you’re going to mix together that room temperature salted butter. It’s 12 tablespoons of salted butter, two and a half tablespoons of a good quality honey, and three quarters teaspoon of flake sea salt.

You’re just going to whip it together. Now, if you want to use a handheld mixer, or you want to use your stand mixer, you can absolutely do that. It’s not totally necessary to get all that equipment out. You can just do it with a spoon or a spatula, promise. Now, what I like to do is once it’s completely incorporated and mixed together, I like to put it in a little ramekin and then I sprinkle a little bit of extra flake salt on top and I drizzle a little extra honey over the top and then serve it at room temperature so it’s nice and spreadable with cornbread, muffins, waffles, whatever needs a little bit of sweet butter. A little sweet and salty and creamy. It’s just the perfect mixture. So this can be stored for a few days in a covered container at room temp, but to keep it longer, like up to two weeks, three weeks, you want to keep it in the fridge and then pull it out like an hour before you need it to soften it up just a little bit.

All right, so that does it for the full episode today on cornbread and honey butter. If you are enjoying these episodes, I would love to have you subscribe or follow on your preferred podcast player. As a newer show, it just helps us to be shown to new listeners. 

Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya!

Double Dip: Alright guys, now it’s time for your double dip. Thank you so much for sticking around. Every week, I will share the next week’s recipe that we’re making, so that if you do enjoy cooking along and you want to make the new recipe, you can make sure that you have all of the ingredients you need to cook along with me.

So next week, we are making one of our very favorite side dishes that we have all the time here. It’s a highly requested recipe from my kids. We are making crispy oven potatoes. So you don’t need much to make these. Basically, what you’re going to need are these really tiny potatoes. Sometimes they actually are called tiny potatoes. They will be smaller than a ping pong ball. Really, really tiny. Usually they come bagged in your grocery store. So they’ll be in a branded bag of some sort. 

So you’ll need one pound of tiny Yukon gold potatoes, three tablespoons of olive oil or extra virgin olive oil. Then three quarters teaspoon of kosher salt and one teaspoon dried oregano. You’ll also want to make sure that you have a cast iron skillet to cook these in. So I hope you will join me then and make these delicious little crispy potatoes and I hope that you guys all have a wonderful week ahead.

Intro: Welcome, welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: Fire up those grills, everybody. Today, we are making a grilled chicken burger that is full of flavor. You are not going to have a dry piece of shoe leather for dinner tonight.

This burger, I’m gonna give you all of the tips and tricks for cooking with that ground chicken that can tend to be a little bit flavorless. It can be a little bit hard to work with. If you don’t spice it up just right, it can be a little bit dry. So we are going to make sure that your chicken burgers are amazing.

One thing that I love about this chicken burger is that when you serve it, you serve it with an adobo aioli that you make just with chipotles in adobo, you know, that little can of those spicy little peppers and some mayonnaise and a couple spices, and it just makes your burger so, so yummy. 

This recipe will make about four or five chicken burgers for you, will take about 15 minutes to prep, probably about a 15 minute total cook time and cooling time. So you’re in about 30 minutes for this dinner. 

Tips and Tricks: Now let’s start by going over a couple tips and tricks for this Chipotle chicken burger recipe. First of all, when you’re buying your ground chicken, you want to make sure that you’re buying a ground chicken that just says ground chicken. You don’t want all lean breast meat ground chicken or extra lean ground chicken or 99% lean ground chicken. That is going to be all breast meat and be way too lean to make a really good chicken burger. The ground chicken that you want is probably going to be more around like 93% lean, meaning that it has some fat and some dark meat in the mixture so that you have more flavor and you have more juiciness. That’s what you’re looking for. 

Now you’re also going to use a little bit of bread. With most of the ground meat recipes on Mom’s Dinner, we’re making something called a panade, which just is going to help keep your burger extra juicy. So it says one slice of white or wheat bread. What you want to avoid, you know, you could use sourdough, you could use a ciabatta, you can use just sandwich bread. You just want to avoid any kind of bread that has a lot of seeds or nuts, because you’re not really looking for that in your ground chicken burger. 

Alright, one other ingredient is the chipotles in adobo. This is going to be a little can that’s going to be called chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. You just need one can. They’re very spicy, so don’t be fooled when you open the can and you smell it. It smells nice and smoky and looks like little red peppers in the sauce. They are very spicy. So I think the burgers call for about a tablespoon of the sauce from the can and then the aioli that we’re going to make calls for a little bit of that sauce as well as one of the chipotle peppers. The rest of the can you can save to make something else. You can put them in the freezer. But that’s all you’ll need for this recipe. 

The other thing that you want to make sure you have on hand is plenty of nonstick cooking spray. When you’re working with ground chicken, it’s very wet and very sticky. So you want to make sure you have that non-stick cooking spray so that you can transfer the burgers to the grill and then also ensure that they don’t stick to the grill.

Chipotle Chicken Burger Recipe: Okay, I think that’s all my tips and tricks for this recipe. Let’s get into making the full recipe for your Grilled Chicken Burgers with Adobo Aioli. You’re going to want to start by preheating your grill to high heat and get ready for direct heat cooking. So if you have a gas grill, a charcoal grill, anything will work here.

Then you want to take a baking sheet and line it with wax paper that you’ve cut into squares about the size of a burger. This is going to help you transfer those sticky chicken burgers to the grill. You want to spray all of those wax paper squares really generously with that non-stick cooking spray.

Now you can set all that aside. We’re going to go ahead and make the mixture for your chicken burgers. So in a medium bowl, you’re going to combine one tablespoon of flat leaf parsley that you finely chopped, one tablespoon of that adobo sauce, two minced garlic cloves, one teaspoon of onion powder, three quarters teaspoon of kosher salt, half a teaspoon of black pepper. Two tablespoons of milk and two tablespoons of mayo. Give that a really good stir. Then you’re going to add in that one slice of white or wheat bread. You can remove the crust or leave the crust on, totally up to you, and just either cut it into small squares or rip the bread apart and put it into that mayonnaise and milk mixture.

Give it a really good stir so that the bread starts to absorb all of that milk and mayonnaise and adobo sauce. Then you can add in that one pound of ground chicken. Give it a really good stir, either with a fork or with clean hands, just until it combines and it looks basically like a burger mixture. 

Now you’re going to want to form that mixture into about four or five equal sized patties. They’re going to be really, really sticky. So what I like to do is slightly wet my hands and then start forming the patties. I just make basically a big meatball and then I press it onto that prepared wax paper. Make a little divot in the top with your thumb by pressing your thumb into the middle of the patty. Then spray the tops of the patties really generously, I mean really generously, with that non stick cooking spray. That will help prevent your burgers from sticking to the grill. 

Now once those are all made, you can either refrigerate them for a little while, or you can take them directly to the grill. You just want to grill your burgers over direct heat for about four or five minutes on each side. Since this is chicken, you want to make sure, and actually you don’t want to, you need to make sure that your burgers are cooked to 165 degrees internal temperature with an instant read thermometer to make sure that that chicken is cooked all the way through.

Now at the very end of cooking, I like to move mine to indirect heat and top each one with a slice of pepper jack cheese, pop the lid on the grill, and just let that start to melt for about a minute. 

Now, while you’re out at your grill, if you want, you can toast your buns. We love to toast our burger buns on the grill. Just brush them with a little bit of olive oil or butter, pop them over the heat just for 30 seconds, and they’ll be nice and toasty. 

You also want to make sure you have some of your other favorite burger toppings, maybe lettuce, tomato, red onion, would be great on top of this burger. 

Now, bring everything inside and what you want to do next is make your Adobo Aioli while the burger’s cool. So this is super duper simple. All you need to do is mix together half a cup of mayonnaise, three quarter teaspoons of sugar, one small chili pepper from that chipotle in adobo can. Just pull one of the chilies out and mince it up really well. One minced garlic clove. Juice of about a half a lime and half a teaspoon of that adobo sauce from that can. Now just mix that all together and that’s your Adobo Aioli.

To put it all together, you take a bun, slather some of that Adobo Aioli on, maybe put some lettuce, tomato, red onion, your chicken burger with the pepper jack cheese, and then top it off with more of that Adobo Aioli. Then serve them up. 

We love to serve these with just some chips or fries. Some sweet potato fries would be really good. Some grilled corn on the cob since you have your grill going. Maybe some chips and guacamole or just grilled vegetables. You can make skewers of zucchini, bell pepper, onion, mushrooms, asparagus. Those can all be a wonderful side dish for these burgers. 

All right, so that does it for this full recipe. As always, I will link all of the recipes I talked about in this show right in the show notes for you so that you can click through, check it out, print it, pin it, share it, and make this recipe for dinner. You will not be disappointed. 

Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya. 

Double Dip: All right. Now it’s time for your double dip. Thank you so much for sticking around guys. So next week we are not doing a full dinner recipe. This is more of a side dish, but it’s one that you are absolutely going to love. We’re going over how to make buttermilk cornbread and honey butter, which makes an excellent side dish for so many dinners. A lot of grilled dinners in the summer and then some really delicious soup dinners in the fall and the winter.

So if you want to join me next week and make that delicious buttermilk cornbread and some honey butter, here are the things that you need to grab. One and a half cups of medium grind cornmeal, one cup of all purpose flour, three tablespoons of sugar, one teaspoon of each baking powder and baking soda, one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt, one and a half cups of buttermilk, two large eggs, a quarter cup of vegetable oil, and then some kind of nonstick baking spray or just additional oil.

Then, if you want to really go over the top, which I know you do, for the honey butter, here’s what you’ll need. Twelve tablespoons of salted butter that’s softened at room temperature. Two and a half tablespoons of good quality honey, and then three quarters teaspoon of flake sea salt, like Maldon sea salt. Or if you’re using a kosher salt, you want to just start with about a quarter teaspoon. So we will make both of those things on the podcast next week. 

Until then, I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend and week ahead.