Intro: Hey. Hey everybody. Welcome 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: What’s up everybody? Hello. Hello. Happy Thursday. I am so glad you’re here. We are kind of jumping right into summer, which I talked about last week. So we’re trying to make some dinner recipes here that are easier, lighter, aren’t going to heat up your house, and don’t require a ton of work or focus, and this one is one that I absolutely love. It’s newer on my website, Mom’s Dinner, but it is so delicious and when we serve this for dinner, everybody loves it.

We’re making Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad for dinner tonight. So the thing about this recipe is that we are making our own Caesar dressing, and we’re going to make it without anchovies. I have to be honest. I don’t love it, I don’t eat a ton of fish. I will say, when I have Caesar salads I don’t love the really strong, fishy flavor that some Caesar dressings have. So I wanted to set out to make a Caesar salad dressing that was still really deep in flavor, rich in flavor but didn’t contain that fish element. If you are like me or if you have trouble finding, you know anchovies, this is going to be a great recipe for you to make for dinner this summer. 

Tips and Trucks: So let’s go over a couple of tips and tricks for making your Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad. The very first thing that I do want to say is that the recipe calls for Worcestershire sauce. If you look at the ingredients of Worcestershire sauce, usually it does contain anchovies. However, I am very sensitive to that anchovy flavor, and I personally cannot taste it there. If you are making this dressing, because you can’t have the anchovy, if it’s an allergy thing, you’ll want to avoid using the Worcestershire sauce or find one that is anchovy free completely.

Another ingredient that we are putting in the dressing is Parmesan cheese. I say this with all of our recipes that contain any kind of Parmesan cheese, always buy the best one you can. Parmesan cheese will vary greatly in flavor. So you can get just the little processed triangle at the store, it will definitely do the job. But if you go to a grocery store that has a larger wheel of Parmesan cheese that they’re cutting chunks of Parmesan from, it is going to have a completely different flavor for you. It is a little bit more tart and way more nutty and deep in flavor, which is what you want when you’re making a Caesar salad dressing. 

Let’s also talk about serving size really quickly. In this recipe for the dressing, one recipe will coat about one large head of romaine lettuce. So you can kind of start to do your math from there. If you think that one large head of romaine lettuce will feed your entire family, then you just need one recipe of the Caesar salad dressing. If you think it’s going to take two, then go ahead and make two recipes of the Caesar salad dressing. For my family, if we’re having salad, we’re probably going to eat a lot of salad. So we have a family of four and I would probably most likely use two heads of romaine lettuce.

Now obviously we’re making a Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad. So for the grilled chicken, if you have a grocery store that has grilled chicken in the deli section, grab that, chop it up, and put it on top of the salad. If you want to actually get your grill out and maybe you’re even planning ahead of time, I have a fantastic recipe for buttermilk marinated grilled chicken on Mom’s Dinner that I will link in the show notes for you. When you marinate your chicken breast in buttermilk, woo. It makes it so tender and juicy and amazing and flavorful. I’m telling you, when you grill chicken, it is the only way to go. So I will link that for you right in the show notes. 

Let’s go ahead and get into making the full recipe for Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad for dinner tonight. You’re going to want to start by processing your romaine lettuce. Anytime you’re making a salad, if you’re going to wash the lettuce leaves, you want them to be dry so that the salad dressing will stick to the actual leaves. So what I recommend is washing up your romaine lettuce, wrapping it either in paper towels, or you can put it in a salad spinner, and then just let it sit while you get everything else ready.

If you’re going to grill the chicken, go ahead and do that now. Otherwise, we’re going to go on to make the Caesar salad dressing. You know what, I’m going to preface this by saying we’re making one recipe that will coat one large head of romaine lettuce. So if you want more, then you’re going to double what I’m saying here.

So you’re going to take one large clove of fresh garlic, you’re going to put that on your cutting board, and then you’re going to take a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt. You’re going to put that over top of the garlic, and then you’re going to take the backside, just the flat side of a large knife, and you’re going to run it across that garlic using the salt as an abrasive. You’re going to mash that garlic down into a paste. Once it’s down to a complete paste, you’ll scrape it up with that knife and transfer it to a bowl. Then you’re going to add in a quarter cup of fresh grated Parmesan cheese, one tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice, two tablespoons of mayonnaise, one teaspoon of Dijon mustard, and one teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce. Half a teaspoon or just a couple of dashes of hot sauce. This would be like Tabasco or whatever your favorite hot sauce is. Then a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. You’re going to whisk or stir that all together. Let me tell you this if you’re making more than one recipe, so if you’re making 2, 3, or 4 recipes of this, you can actually do this process in a blender or a food processor.

All right, so after you get that all mixed, you’re going to slowly drizzle in a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil while you’re whisking. So maybe if you’re right-handed, have the whisk in your right hand, have a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil in your left hand, and just slowly drizzle it in while you’re whisking with your right hand, or if you’re left-handed, vice versa.

So at the end of this process, you’re just going to taste it for additional seasoning. Salt, pepper, if you want more lemon juice if you want more garlic, maybe it’s too tart, you can even add a dash of honey if it’s too tart. Then you can use it or you can store it in your fridge for up to a week.

But since we’re making it for dinner, we’re going to go ahead and toss that on our washed and dried romaine lettuce. Then what I like to do after I toss that, is add the croutons and the shaved or shredded Parmesan cheese and I toss it again. Then when I serve it, I top each person’s portion with a little bit of grilled chicken and maybe serve it up with some garlic bread or some warm ciabatta bread and dipping oil, and that’s the complete dinner.

Super easy and super perfect for summertime. Now, the Caesar salad, I will also tell you it’s a great side dish to any Italian dinner. You can make it and not add the grilled chicken and just have it as a side dish. Amazing. 

All right, so that does it for the full recipe and for this episode today of Let’s Make Dinner. As always, I will link all of these recipes for you in the show notes, but also just to let you know, you can find all of my recipes on my website, Mom’s Dinner, and that is momsdinner.net. That’s where I share all of these recipes and they are free. You can print them, pin them, you can cook them right from the website.

If you need to go to the grocery store and you’re on your phone, you can actually text yourself all of the ingredients in the recipes that you want, and a link back to the recipe. Super user-friendly. Let me tell you about this other feature. If you are cooking from your phone, and you know how sometimes when you’re cooking and your phone goes dark, and then you’re like, oh God, now I gotta touch my phone and my fingers are dirty, there’s something on my recipe card called Cook Mode. If you click it on, it’s right in the middle of the recipe card, it will prevent your screen from going dark while you’re cooking. Super user-friendly. 

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

Double Dip: All right guys, now it’s time for your double dip. Thank you so much for sticking around. If you are loving these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner and they’re helping you get dinner on the table, every week, you can stay and listen to what we’re making next week. You can grab the ingredients and be ready to cook along for dinner next Thursday.

We are making Frito Taco salads. This is a great meat-free dinner salad idea. It’s hearty enough to be filling but easy and light enough that it’s perfect for summer. So let’s go over the full ingredient list that you want to have when it’s time to make dinner next week. You need one large head of iceberg lettuce. You could also use Romaine if you prefer that. 15-ounce can of chili beans in sauce, Catalina dressing. It’s an orange dressing that you’ll find just with all of the other salad dressings, and you only need a little bit, so you can just buy the smallest container that they have available at the store. You’ll need two cups of Fritos, and one cup of chopped fresh tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes, or Roma tomatoes work really well here. One cup of shredded cheddar cheese and half a cup of chopped green onions and that’s it. It makes a wonderful dinner. So I hope you’ll join me then and make a Frito Taco salad with me next week.

Until then, have a wonderful week ahead. See ya.

Intro: Hey. Hey everybody. Welcome 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: Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome in. Happy Thursday. All right, I’ve got a great dinner recipe for you today. I feel like summer is basically here. I mean, if we’re listening to this real-time, my kids have, I don’t know, seven and a half days of school left. So we are right on the cusp of summer. In our house, summer means we are grilling dinner and we are getting outside, enjoying the warm weather. It’s wonderful. I fully look forward to it. 

So sometimes we get sick of grilling just the same old hamburgers over and over again. So over time, I have created a few different recipes for different types of burgers. So pork burgers, which actually is really popular in my hometown in Iowa. Pork burgers, Turkey burgers, regular hamburgers, some different toppings, some different aiolis, bacon jam, and now, we have such an amazing recipe for Grilled Chicken Burgers that I cannot wait to share with you. This is not your traditional, dry, bland chicken burger. It is pumped up with flavor. Then, when you serve it, you’re going to make a dill pickle slaw that is so delicious. It just amps the flavor up of the whole entire thing. Then, the piece de resistance is a garlic aioli that you’re going to put together. It’s just three ingredients and you stir it together and slather it all over your chicken burgers. When I eat it, I’m actually dipping my burger into more of the garlic aioli. It’s that good.

Tips and Tricks: So tips and tricks. Today I want to talk about a few ingredients and methods. For these chicken burgers and the slaw. So let’s start with the chicken burgers. If you’ve been here a while, you know anytime we’re making a ground meat recipe, we are adding a panade to that ground meat to keep it really juicy when it bakes or cooks or grills. So in this case, we are going to add a mixture of bread and milk. The mixture of those two together is going to keep that grilled chicken, that ground grilled chicken, nice and juicy. The note about the bread here is that you want to just use white or wheat bread. You want to avoid anything that is overly seedy or it has lots of nuts or grains in it. You don’t want that in your grilled chicken burger, so just white or wheat. Now, if you choose something like a French or ciabatta or Italian loaf, you can absolutely use that. If it has a really thick crust, you’ll want to remove that first and just use the soft insides. 

A couple more ingredients that help keep these ground chicken burgers nice and juicy. We’re adding a little bit of mayo into the mixture, so that’s like adding a little bit of fat into your burger to keep it super juicy. We’re also adding a little bit of tomato paste, which again is going to add some juiciness, but it’s also going to add flavor throughout your entire burger. 

Let’s talk a little bit about the ground chicken. When you go to the store to buy ground chicken, there may be a few different options. You may see something that says extra lean ground chicken, or all-breast meat ground chicken, or it may even say 98% lean ground chicken. You actually want to avoid those options. Those are going to be too lean, and you’re going to end up with something that eats like the bottom of your shoe. It’ll be so dry. It’s the same thing with ground Turkey, when you’re looking for ground Turkey for Turkey burgers, you want to avoid that 99% lean ground Turkey because it’s just too dry.

When you’re making burgers, you need a little bit of fat. Number one to stay juicy, and number two for flavor. So you just want to buy something that is a ground chicken. Generally, ground chicken that has some dark meat in it, some fat in it, is going to be more like a 92 or 93% lean ground chicken. Then you’re going to add a bunch of yummy spices and flavorings to that ground chicken. So you’re going to make it super delicious. 

So let’s talk about the dill pickle slaw. There are a few ingredients here that I just want to mention really quickly. Number one is the actual coleslaw mix. So when you go to the store, you’re going to see all the different coleslaw mixes, you know, that’s just like the shredded carrots and cabbage in a bag. Look for the angel hair coleslaw. It’s going to be a lot thinner and is the perfect thickness and crunch and texture for your chicken burger. The other thing is you’re going to have some red onion in that dough pickle slaw. If you find that you’re really sensitive to onion flavor or that sometimes you feel like onion flavor takes over an entire dish when you use it raw, what you can do is slice off a chunk of the red onion. Rinse it under a little bit of cold water for like a minute, and then thinly slice it. That will rinse away the enzyme that makes red onion stick with you for a really long time or makes red onion take over your entire dish. 

Now it’s a dill pickle slaw. So obviously we’re using dill pickles. What I recommend here is that you use a refrigerated dill pickle. So one that you buy at the grocery store, out of the refrigerator. There are tons of pickles that are shelf stable, they’re great. But for this recipe, you want maximum flavor and maximum crunch, and you’re going to get that out of a refrigerated pickle. Of course, we love Claussen dill pickles but I’ve also purchased the Aldi refrigerated dill pickles, and they’re great too. You’ll also need pickle juice for this recipe, so don’t drain out the pickle juice before you need it. You’re also going to put jalapeno in this dill pickle slaw. The heat of the jalapeno is actually held in the seeds and then the white ribs on the inside of the jalapeno. So if you don’t want any spice, just use the outside green edges of the jalapeno. If you like it spicy, use the entire jalapeno. If you’re like, I don’t even want to think about spice, maybe try using a poblano pepper instead of a jalapeno pepper. 

The last tip that I want to talk about when you’re making these grilled chicken burgers is when you make that ground chicken mixture, that patty mixture, it’s going to be incredibly sticky. So when we go through the recipe, I’m going to talk about a few different tips and ways that you can keep the chicken burger number one, from sticking to your fingers in your hands. Number two, from sticking to the grill. 

Chicken Burgers Recipe: So let’s go ahead and get into making the full recipe for your grilled chicken burgers with dill, pickle slaw, and garlic aioli. You’re going to start by prepping your grill with either gas or charcoal. Whatever you use will work here, but you want something that you can cook at a high heat with direct heat. Then you’re going to prep a rimmed baking sheet. This is going to be for carrying your burgers out to the grill. So prep it by putting large squares of waxed paper on the baking sheet, probably four or five, depending on how many burgers you’re going to make, and you’re going to generously coat those with a non-stick cooking spray. This is number one, going to help the chicken burgers, the raw chicken burgers from sticking to your pan. Number two, it makes a great little carrier to transfer the grilled chicken burgers to the grill without having them stick to your fingers or to a spatula.

All right, so now we’re going to make the grilled chicken burger patties. So in a medium size bowl, you’re going to combine one tablespoon of flat leaf parsley that is minced, one tablespoon of tomato paste, two minced garlic cloves, two tablespoons of milk, two tablespoons of mayonnaise, a three-quarters teaspoon of kosher salt, one teaspoon of black pepper. One teaspoon of onion powder. You’re just going to stir that all together, so it makes a nice little mixture. This is going to be the base for your panade. Next, you’re going to add in bread cubes. So like I said, you need one slice of white or wheat bread and just tear it or chop it into little cubes. Then you’re going to stir that into the mixture of mayonnaise and milk and tomato paste. Sometimes if the bread doesn’t absorb all of that liquid right away, I like to let it sit for just a few minutes so that the bread will start to soften. Once that’s nice and soft and all mixed together, you want to add half a cup of grated asiago cheese and one pound of ground chicken. Now, if Asiago cheese is not your jam, you can absolutely sub in another hard cheese. So maybe a Grana Padano, Romano, Parmesan, Gruyere, or something like that will work in place of the Asiago cheese. 

Now, once you’ve got everything mixed together, you’re going to form your four to five equal-sized patties. Again, this is a really sticky mixture. So what I like to do is wet my hands just a little bit and then form the chicken burgers. Pop them on top of those little squares of wax paper that you prepped ahead of time and then give them a really nice, generous spray on the top with some of that non-stick spray. That’s going to help prevent them from sticking to the grill. 

Now it’s time to take them out to the grill. Okay, so you’re going to grill your burgers over direct heat for probably about four to five minutes per side. Here’s the thing with ground chicken; you have to cook it to well done, to be safe to eat because it is chicken. It’s poultry. Well done means 165 degrees Fahrenheit internal temperature. So you can take that temperature with an instant-read thermometer is what we like best. So if you made really thick burgers, they may take longer than four to five minutes. If you made really thin burgers, it may only take three minutes per side. Just be conscious of cooking to a temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit, not necessarily time. 

Now take those burgers back inside. I like to let them just rest for a little bit. We’re going to make that dill pickle slaw and the garlic aioli. So for the garlic aioli, you can actually make that ahead of time if you’d like. It’s so simple. In a small bowl, you just stir together half a cup of mayonnaise, two minced garlic cloves, and one and a half teaspoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice. That’s it, then it’s ready to go. As I said, you can make it ahead of time and pop it in the fridge for probably up to five days, maybe even a week. So make that ahead of time if you’d like. 

For the dill pickle slaw in a large bowl, you’re just going to stir this together. Are you ready? Two cups of angel hair coleslaw. A third a cup of thinly sliced red onions. A half a cup of chopped dill pickles, and I like to chop them into maybe a quarter-inch size, so they’re a little bit bigger. One tablespoon of chopped jalapeno, two tablespoons of pickle juice, one tablespoon of olive oil, and a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt. You just mix that all together and that’s it. You pile it high on top of your burgers and it’s so delicious. 

What I will say about the slaw is you really can’t make that super duper in advance because as it sits with all those salty ingredients, the coleslaw and the onions and the jalapeno will start to release juices and all that salt will also start to break down the coleslaw. I would say make that at most an hour before you serve the burgers. 

So when we serve these, I like to do a brioche bun. You can toast it on the grill or not toast it, totally up to you. Take the bun, slather on a ton of that garlic aioli, pop on your chicken burger, and then top it with a pile of the dill pickle slaw. You are absolutely going to love these. You’re going to go crazy for these. They’re so good. 

So just like anytime you’re grilling, when we’re serving these, we like to do a starch and a veggie, so keeping it in the grilling family. For starches, you could think of potato salad, a cheesy potato casserole, twice-baked potato casserole, or pasta salad, or you can keep it really simple with potato chips, fries, or tater tots are always a good idea as well.

Then as far as vegetables, maybe we’ll do corn on the cob, roasted asparagus, roasted broccoli, or carrots, whatever. You know, depending on what time of year it is, we’ll decide what veggie we’re going to eat. So of course I will link all of those recipes for you right in the show notes so you can find everything you need to make this recipe when it’s time for dinner.

If you are enjoying these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love to have you subscribe or follow your preferred podcast player. That will just make it easier for you to find all of our new episodes right in your podcast feed. 

Outro: 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. You guys, thank you so much for sticking around, and looking forward to our episode for next week. So next week we’re going to follow in this same grilling vein and we are going to make a Grilled Chicken Caesar salad for dinner. We love having Grilled Chicken Caesar salads for dinner in the summer. It just is a nice light dinner that is still super delicious and everybody loves. The thing with this Grilled Chicken Caesar salad is that we’re making our own Caesar salad dressing and we are not adding anchovies to it. So if you’re opposed to anchovies, if you don’t love that kind of fishy flavor that Caesar salads sometimes have, or if you find that anchovies are kind of hard to find, this is going to be a great recipe for you.

To make this next week. Here are the ingredients that you’re going to need. Obviously, you’re going to need some chicken breasts and I always love to do an air-chilled chicken. I find it has better flavor and better texture. You need a little bit of kosher salt, black pepper, and some buttermilk because we’re going to marinate the chicken before we grill it. Then obviously romaine lettuce for the salad, Parmesan cheese, and some croutons. Then for the dressing, you’ll need garlic, kosher salt, Parmesan cheese, one tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, two tablespoons of mayonnaise, and one teaspoon of Dijon mustard. One teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, half a teaspoon of hot sauce like Tabasco or Frank’s red hot, black pepper, and a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil. That’s it. So if you want to look at this recipe, there will be a link in the show notes for you so that you can take a look at it before you make it for dinner.

As always, if you ever have any questions about any of the recipes or anything we’re doing here on Let’s Make Dinner or on the Mom’s Dinner website, you can always email me. My email address is Susie, that’s s u s i e@momsdinner.net. 

All right, until next week, I hope you guys have a wonderful week ahead. See ya.

Intro: Hey. Hey everybody. Welcome 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: Hey. Hey everybody. Welcome. Happy Thursday. So before we get into this episode, I am actually going to give a little disclaimer. We have a lot of construction going on in our basement right now, and my office is right above where they are doing the construction. So we may hear a little bit of pounding, some nail guns, and some saws, but hopefully, it’s not too distracting. So let’s go ahead and talk about the recipe that we’re making for dinner tonight.

We are making barbecue baked meatballs for dinner, and this is such a delicious recipe. It is super flavorful. The meatballs are actually flavored. You know the actual ground meat mixture is flavored, and then it’s also flavored with your favorite barbecue sauce, which makes it kind of custom to your family. So if you like more of a spicy barbecue sauce if you like more of a vinegar or a sweeter stickier, which is the kind that I like. We’re in Kansas City and that is traditional Kansas City barbecue. Use whatever type of barbecue sauce your family likes, and that way it is suited to your family and your taste buds.

So this recipe is probably going to take you about 45 minutes to make and bake, and then dinner will be ready. You are going to have about 22 meatballs when you’re done. I say serve three meatballs per adult. If you’ve got some really hungry ones, serve four meatballs. If you’ve got some kids, maybe one or two meatballs. So this is going to serve anywhere from five to seven people. As far as side dishes, we love a garlic mashed potato with the barbecue baked meatballs then add a veggie on the side. Whatever you can grab in the grocery store – green beans, roasted broccoli, corn on the cob, even frozen peas is excellent.

Tips and Tricks: So let’s get into a few tips and tricks before we get into the full recipe. First of all, you’re going to be using ground beef and ground pork. When we talk about ground pork here in this application, we’re talking about true ground pork, not ground sausage. You want just plain ground pork, which actually is a super economical ground meat to add to just about any meatball recipe. It is super inexpensive. Then with the ground beef, you know when you go to the grocery store, there’s all different percentages. 85/15, 90/10, 93/7, 80/20. You want to stick in that 85/15, 90/10 range for your meatballs because it’s going to have enough fat to be really nice and flavorful, but it’s not going to be so fatty that you’re going to have greasy, disgusting meatballs. Nobody wants disgusting meatballs. 85/15, 90/10 is going to be your window right there. Leave that 80/20 for grilled hamburgers. It’s perfect for grilled hamburgers.

Another little secret when you’re making meatballs, and this goes for just about any meatball, is to use what’s called a panade. A panade is basically a mixture of starch and a liquid that keeps a ground meat recipe nice and tender and juicy, even if you cook it for a long time. In this recipe, we are using a mixture of bread and milk to keep things nice and juicy, and moist. I know that’s the worst word in the whole world, but it’s true. 

The other two things, let’s talk about really quick are the barbecue rub and the barbecue sauce. So we said in the beginning, use the barbecue sauce that your family likes. Pretty much anything will work unless you’ve got a super watery barbecue sauce that’s more of like, a liquid than a thick barbecue sauce. You want something that’s a little bit thicker that will cling to the meatballs while they’re baking. 

Number two, you’re going to make a barbecue rub seasoning that you’re going to put into the actual meatball mixture. If you have a barbecue rub that you really like or a barbecue seasoning, use that. Take those kitchen shortcuts when you can find them. 

BBQ Meatballs Recipe: All right, I think that’s all the tips and tricks that I have for this recipe. So let’s go ahead and get into making your barbecue-baked meatballs for dinner. You’re going to start this recipe by preheating your oven to 400 degrees, and then you want to grab a really large-rimmed baking sheet and cover that with parchment paper. That’s going to help your barbecue meatballs bake, but not stick to the pan. Then we’re going to make the barbecue meatball mixture. So in a large bowl, we’re going to start with the panade. You want to combine two cups of bread that are torn into pieces. For the bread you can use just plain white bread, you could use a French loaf, you could use ciabatta. The tip here is don’t use really seedy bread. Just use traditional white or wheat bread. Then if it has kind of a crusty crust, remove that first. If it’s just a piece of plain white bread, you can add the crust in there. 

So mix that bread with half a cup of milk. Sometimes I will just wash my hands and then get my hands in there and kind of squish it together so it makes a really nice mushy panade for your meatballs. Now, if you don’t want to get your hands in there, that’s fine. I would let it sit for just a few minutes so that the bread can soak up all of the milk. Then to that mixture, you’re going to add one lightly beaten egg, one and a half tablespoons of your favorite barbecue sauce, one tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, and two teaspoons of chili powder. One teaspoon each of garlic powder, onion powder, and kosher salt. Then half a teaspoon of smoked paprika. That’s one of my very favorite spices in my spice cabinet. I love smoked paprika. Make sure you have the smoked, not just regular. So give that all a stir. Then we’re going to add in that beef and pork.

You need one pound of ground beef and one pound of ground pork. Give that a little mix together, either with clean hands or a fork, and then you’re going to roll your meatballs into about the size of a golf ball. How I like to do this, to keep things really efficient in my kitchen, I like to use one of those medium-sized cookie scoops. Scoop it all out, and pop it on the baking sheet. Then after I’ve scooped it all out, then I take my hands, wet them just a little bit, and roll all the meatballs so that they’re nice actual meatballs, not just little lumps. It’s not necessary to have uniform-sized meatballs, but you want them to be somewhat similar in size, and that is for the baking time. You want them to be able to bake and finish at the same time. So you don’t have one tiny meatball in the corner and one huge meatball over in this corner, and they’re not cooking at the same time. 

So at this point, you want to brush all of the meatballs really generously with your favorite barbecue sauce. Pop them in the oven and bake ’em for about 15 minutes. Then you’re going to pull them out and baste them again with your favorite barbecue sauce and pop them back in for about another 15 minutes. You want your meatballs to have an internal temperature of around 165 degrees, and that means they are cooked through. Now when they’re done cooking, you’re going to let them cool for about 10 minutes and then it’s time to enjoy your dinner. So delicious. I do like to serve a little extra barbecue sauce on the side in case people want to have a little dip dunk for their meatballs. 

Now, as we said at the very beginning of the episode, we love to serve these with a garlic or buttery mashed potato. You could also do a crispy oven potato would be delicious. Then whatever your family’s favorite vegetable is; corn on the cob, green beans, peas, asparagus, broccoli, whatever you have, whatever your family likes to eat. 

Now, this is a really fun part of this recipe. I also have an Instant Pot Barbecue Baked meatball recipe that I will link in the show notes for you. So if you love to use your Instant Pot, you could do that route instead of baking them in the oven. 

So I think that covers this full recipe for barbecue baked meatballs. If you are loving these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love to have you subscribe or follow in your preferred podcast player. That just makes it easier for you to find all of our future episodes right in your podcast feed. 

The other option is to subscribe to our newsletter. It goes out twice a week on Thursday and Sunday. Actually, all of my recipes and my newsletter and everything is under the title, Mom’s Dinner. So the website where you can find all of the recipes is momsdinner.net. If you want to subscribe to our newsletter, you can find that at momsdinner.net/subscribe. Just send in your email address. I don’t sell emails or anything like that, and you will start to receive all of the podcast emails as well as our weekly mom’s dinner email on Sunday. 

Outro: Thank you so much for listening and as always, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.

Double Dip: Ooh. Thank you so much for sticking around guys. I love this double dip portion of the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast. So the double dip, you can always listen to the end of the episode for this week to figure out what we are making next week. That way if you like to cook along and have these dinner ideas for every Thursday, you’ll know what groceries to have for next week.

So, next week we are making a new recipe for Mom’s Dinner and I am super excited about this one. We actually just had it for dinner last night, and it is knockout delicious. They are Grilled Chicken Burgers with a dill pickle slaw. Woo, and a garlic Aioli. Really, really delicious. Okay, so let’s go through what you need to make these chicken burgers. I will tell you this recipe is not on Mom’s Dinner quite yet. It will be coming out within the next week. So when the episode airs next week, this recipe should be live. At the time of this recording, the recipe is not live yet. 

But here’s what you’re going to need. One tablespoon of flat-leaf parsley, you’re going to need some tomato paste, fresh garlic, milk, and two tablespoons of mayonnaise. Kosher salt and pepper, onion powder, half a cup of shredded asiago cheese, one slice of white or wheat sandwich bread, and then one pound of ground chicken. You want to make sure that you’re not buying the all-lean breast meat. You just want the regular ground chicken. Then you’re obviously going to need buns for your chicken burger.

Then for the garlic aioli, you need another half cup of mayonnaise, a lemon, and more garlic, and that’s it for the garlic aioli. Then for the dill pickle slaw, you need two cups of angel hair coleslaw. It’s the really thinly sliced coleslaw, a third cup of thinly sliced red onion, a half a cup of chopped dill pickles. We like to get the really good ones that are in the fridge, so any brand that is refrigerated that you like will work here. One tablespoon of chopped jalapeno, two tablespoons of that pickle juice, and then some olive oil and kosher salt, and that’s it. 

So I hope that you’ll join me next week for the Grilled Chicken Burger with garlic aioli and dill pickle slaw. It’s going to be perfect for your summer. All right, until then, I hope you guys have a great week.

Intro: Hey. Hey everybody. Welcome 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: Happy Thursday everybody. Okay. We’re here for another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, and I’m super excited this week because I just figured out that we are on episode 90.

I cannot believe that I have 90 podcast episodes behind me. When I first started this thing, I thought, this is crazy. We’ll see if this works. If this is what I want to be doing. It absolutely is. Obviously, here I am. I’m at episode 90 and I have absolutely loved doing this podcast and connecting with an audience in a totally different way.

So here we are, episode 90. We are making Cream Cheese Chicken Enchiladas, and it just couldn’t be a better recipe for my 90th episode. I feel like I’m treating 90 like it’s a hundred, but I’m super excited about the round number. Enchiladas are one of my very favorite foods to eat just in general. You know, people say, if you were stuck on a deserted island, what’s one food you would eat the whole time? Enchiladas, a hundred percent, no question. I hope you love enchiladas too. 

Tips and Tricks: I hope that you have the ingredients to make these cream cheese chicken enchiladas for dinner tonight. So let’s get into some tips and tricks for your enchiladas. First of all, let’s talk about your tortillas. You can absolutely go with a flour tortilla when you make enchiladas. It’s not traditional, but it will work. Flour tortillas are so much easier to work with than corn tortillas. But on the flip side, corn tortillas are traditional. They’re way more flavorful than flour tortillas, and they’re just a little bit more delicate. They make a better enchilada. If you choose to use corn tortillas, here’s what I’m going to tell you. Number one, buy a quality corn tortilla. If your grocery store has ones that are refrigerated, that are maybe made locally, buy those. Those are going to be your best bet. Second of all, buy the yellow corn tortillas, not the white corn tortillas. Yellow corn tortillas are going to have way more flavor than the white version.

Second tip. If you are making any type of chicken enchilada, this is an excellent time to take advantage of that rotisserie chicken at Costco or at your local grocery store. Take off both breasts and some thigh meat. Whizz it up in your stand mixer, shred it up, and use that. It just cuts an entire step out of making these enchiladas.

Third tip. Either make your own enchilada sauce or find one in the store that you really, really love. For a long time, we loved the Target brand market pantry enchilada sauce because it was really tangy, it had a lot of vinegar in it. But now I tend to make my own enchilada sauce. So I actually have a recipe on Mom’s Dinner that I will link for you in the show notes and you can check out that recipe. It is so simple. Let me just tell you, to make your own enchilada sauce, you literally just need vegetable oil, flour, a bunch of spices from your spice cabinet, and some chicken broth. You could also throw some tomato paste in there if you want, but that’s it. It is so simple. Oh, and I will say you do need vinegar and some lime juice as well. But it literally comes together in five minutes.

The next tip is about your cream cheese. This recipe obviously is Cream Cheese Chicken Enchiladas. The filling is going to be a mixture of cream cheese and sour cream, so you want to make sure that your cream cheese is at room temperature. I will tell you that cream cheese comes to room temperature pretty quickly, and if you need it to happen a little bit faster, what you can do is cut your cream cheese into little one-inch cubes, leave it out at room temperature, and it will soften in less than 30 minutes. It happens very, very quickly. 

So I think those are all of my tips for the ingredients and making the Cream Cheese Chicken Enchiladas. So let’s go ahead and get into the full recipe.

Cream Cheese Enchiladas Recipe: All right. When you’re making these enchiladas, there are going to be basically three separate steps or portions to this recipe. You’re going to make your enchilada filling, then you’re going to assemble the enchiladas, and then you’re going to bake. 

We’re going to start with the enchilada filling. Dial it back a few. You need to preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Now let’s get to the enchilada filling. So you need a big skillet because we’re going to saute some veggies to add to the chicken and the cream cheese. In a really large skillet, over about medium heat, you’re going to add a little bit of vegetable oil or olive oil, and you’re going to saute half a cup of chopped onion, three fresh garlic cloves, and some chopped jalapeno. Use as much jalapeno as you like. So if you like a lot, if you want a lot of spice, get up in there, use a couple of jalapenos. If you like, no spice at all, you could actually sub in poblano peppers for the jalapeno peppers. So you’re going to saute that for about five minutes just to get it to start to soften.

Now, while that is sauteeing, in a large bowl, you’ll want to combine the shredded chicken, which actually you need two and a half cups of cooked shredded chicken. Eight ounces of cream cheese at room temperature, four ounces of sour cream, a four-ounce can of chopped green chilies, and half a teaspoon of kosher salt. So stir that all together and then once that jalapeno and onion mixture is ready, you can stir that in there as well. So that’s it. That’s the filling for the Cream Cheese Chicken Enchiladas. 

Now for assembly, anytime I’m making enchiladas, I like to do kind of an assembly line to make my enchiladas. I like to have my prepared baking dish, which actually I just use a 9×13 casserole dish. I spray it lightly with a little bit of non-stick spray, and then I put about half a cup to three-quarters of a cup of enchilada sauce across the bottom, just to coat the bottom so your enchiladas don’t stick to the pan. Then have your tortillas, the chicken filling, some cheese, and the red enchilada sauce.

Let’s pause the recipe for just a minute. If you are using corn tortillas, you absolutely have to prep them first. You can’t just use them straight out of the package. They’re super delicate and they will rip and tear and be a hot mess. What you have to do is heat them in some way. So if you have your own way to heat corn tortillas, go for it. What I like to do is take my cast iron skillet, and put it over medium heat. I usually will put a little bit of oil in the bottom and then wipe it out with a paper towel. Just get that pan-hot. Then I put a corn tortilla in for about one minute per side, and then use that tortilla. While I’m using that tortilla, I put another tortilla in the pan to warm up while I’m rolling that first enchilada, and so on and so forth. Warm up your tortilla. You’re going to put about three tablespoons of that chicken mixture down the center of the tortilla, sprinkle with a little extra cheese, and then roll the tortilla up and you’re going to place it in that prepared baking pan seam side down. Now, you’ll repeat this until all of your tortillas are used, all of your fillings are used and your pan is full.

I think this recipe is going to make somewhere around 12 enchiladas. So once you have them all rolled up, you’re going to pour the remaining enchilada sauce over all of the rolled enchiladas, sprinkle all of the remaining cheese over top, and then cover your pan with foil and bake it for 20 minutes. At the end of that 20 minutes, you’ll pull the foil off and bake it for another 15 minutes so that the cheese on the top gets nice and melty and gooey. You’re going to let the enchiladas cool for about 15 minutes. So just like any type of casserole or lasagna, you want them to cool for a little bit because all of the filling and the cheese and all of that is going to set up just a little bit, just enough so that you can dish it out without everything falling apart.

When we serve these enchiladas, we love to do just two enchiladas per person. Then I love to have some little topping garnishes. For these enchiladas, we’ll either do fresh, diced avocado, a little bit of chopped cilantro, or maybe some green onions. You could do shredded lettuce or pico de gallo. Then of course your traditional Mexican side dishes, so like Mexican rice, refried beans. I just published a great recipe for corn salsa that would be a great garnish for these enchiladas. I also have an excellent pineapple side dish that’s pretty much for Mexican food. It’s fresh-cut pineapple with this honey orange cilantro lime glaze that goes over it. It’s an excellent side dish that I don’t think a lot of people expect when they’re having enchiladas. You expect rice and beans, but pineapple is a wonderful fresh side dish you can add to the mix. Then one more side dish that we love is a cilantro lime slaw, which actually would be a great garnish to the top of these enchiladas as well. So of course I will link all of those recipes, all of those side dishes, and I’ll link my favorite margarita recipe in there too, if you want to have a little margarita. You can check all of those recipes out. Just so you know, you can find all of these recipes that are on this podcast on my website, momsdinner.net. That’s where I share all of my recipes. You can print them, or cook them from the website. You can actually even text yourself the ingredient list and a link to the recipe. You can pin it, print it, or do whatever you need to do when you’re ready to make any of these recipes.

If you are enjoying these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love to have you subscribe or follow or rate and review our show in your preferred podcast player. 

Outro: 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. Thank you so much for sticking around. So in the double dip, if you’ve never been here before, it’s where we talk about the recipe that’s coming up next week so that maybe you can get prepared and get the ingredients you need to cook along with me next week, next Thursday.

So what are we making next Thursday? We are making Baked Barbecue Meatballs. I love a meatball. This barbecue meatball is no exception. It has great flavor for this time of year. You know, we all start thinking about a little bit of barbecue here and there, but this one you don’t have to have a grill. You don’t have to be outside. You can just make your barbecue meatballs and enjoy. 

Okay, so here’s what you need to grab for next week’s episode on Thursday. One pound of ground beef, one pound of ground pork, and two cups of bread. So this could be French bread, white bread, ciabatta, any kind of bread will work as long as it’s not super seedy Bread, half a cup of milk, one large egg, one and a half tablespoons of your very favorite barbecue sauce. One tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, two teaspoons of chili powder, one teaspoon each of garlic powder and onion powder, a little sprinkle of smoked paprika, kosher salt, and then, of course, some more of your very favorite barbecue sauce to glaze the outside. So I hope you’ll join me next week and make these. Let me tell you what goes really, really well with these are my garlic mashed potatoes. You can do them on the stove or you can do them in the instant pot. They are perfect. My mouth is watering. They go perfectly with this Barbecue Meatball and then maybe some green beans on the side is mwah! Perfect. I hope you’ll join me then, and until next week, 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: What’s up everybody? Hello. Happy Thursday. I’m so glad you’re here. I have to tell you, I am on Cloud nine lately because Spring has sprung here in Kansas City. The flowers are blooming. All of the trees have sprung forth all of their green leaves. It’s just beautiful. I feel like when you go outside, it just looks like it looks like a park everywhere you go. It’s gorgeous. So in light of that, I feel like it is time to start transitioning to some more spring dinner recipes. Some things that are a little bit lighter, maybe cooked on the grill. Things that you can prep ahead of time so that you have more time to play outside and be out in the sun. So today, this Thursday, we are making a delicious baked Caesar Chicken. I have to tell you that this recipe is actually based on an Ina Garten recipe. You know, Barefoot Contessa, the Queen mother. She has a recipe for a Caesar Swordfish that looked absolutely delicious. I don’t eat a ton of seafood. I’ll eat some, but I don’t eat a ton. So I thought, how can I take this recipe and kind of tweak it for chicken? So that’s what we’ve done here. It’s basically a baked chicken with this delicious lemony Caesar cream sauce with capers over top, and then it’s baked in the oven. It is wonderful. You can pair it with some real springtime vegetables like roasted asparagus and maybe some garlic couscous. There’s a brand of couscous called Near East. They have a roasted garlic couscous that is amazing. And if you’ve never made couscous, it takes five minutes to make. It’s crazy. It’s a perfect side dish. 

Tips and Tricks: So let’s get into a couple of tips and tricks for this recipe for a Baked Caesar Chicken. First of all, the chicken. Every time we have chicken and a recipe, I talk about this, and I like to buy Air Chilled chicken. It is a process they use to chill the chicken down for packaging. The traditional method is that the chicken is actually dunked in cold chlorinated water to bring it to temperature for packaging. With Air Chilled chicken, it’s actually hung and processed through cold air rooms, so it’s coming to temperature slower, and you’re not adding extra water to the chicken. So anytime you’re in cooking and talking about cooking methods, water equals less flavor, in dehydration, less water is more flavor.

So with that air-chilled chicken, you’re getting super flavorful chicken that has the perfect texture every time. Have you ever bought chicken, baked it, and then you’re like, why does this chicken chew like rubber? Super bizarre. I don’t know what that is, but when I buy Air Chilled chicken, never had that happen. I will say air-chilled chicken is more expensive, but it is absolutely worth it.

They have Air Chilled chicken now at Costco, so you can get it there in those big packages. In the Midwest here, there’s a brand called Smart Chicken that I prefer to purchase. You can get your organic free range. All of those things, those are great. But the biggest difference between flavor and texture is buying Air Chilled.

Okay, the next tip and trick, for this recipe, you need lemon zest and you need lemon juice. Anytime a recipe calls for both of those, you want to make sure that you zest the lemon first. That’s taking that bright, delicious peel off of the lemon. You use a zester, a rasp, and a Microplane. Then cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice out. It will be way easier to do it that way than the reverse. 

All right, two more ingredients I want to talk about. The Greek yogurt in this recipe is part of that Caesar cream sauce. With baking and Greek yogurt, I love to buy whole-milk Greek yogurt instead of fat-free Greek yogurt. You also want to make sure that you’re buying plain Greek yogurt, not vanilla or flavored. The other option here is to use sour cream. So if you don’t want to use Greek yogurt, not your thing, just buy sour cream and use it in its place. 

The other ingredient is mayonnaise. We’re using mayonnaise, not Miracle Whip. They are not the same thing, so make sure you use mayonnaise. I’ll tell you some brands that we love to use. Hellmanns of course, is king of mayonnaise. Dukes are actually coming right up on Hellmanns. I’ve never used Dukes, but people love it. The other one I gotta tell you, I buy Aldi mayonnaise and it is a great DUP for Hellmans. 

Baked Caesar Chicken Recipe: Let’s go on to making the full recipe for this Baked Caesar Chicken. This recipe will actually make four chicken breasts. You could make up to six, but what I usually like to do here is buy two larger boneless skinless chicken breasts and then cut them in half lengthwise so you end up with four thinner chicken breasts. Now if your chicken breasts are already not those crazy, huge chicken breasts, then go ahead and just buy four chicken breasts. Then you’re going to take those salt and pepper them on both sides. So of course, use kosher salt here and get them nice and seasoned. 

Set those aside. Then you’re going to make your Caesar cream sauce. So in a bowl, you’re just going to whisk together half a cup of mayonnaise, a quarter cup of that whole milk Greek yogurt, one tablespoon of dijon mustard, and one teaspoon of lemon zest. Two teaspoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, two minced garlic cloves, a quarter cup of capers that have been drained, half a teaspoon of kosher salt, and then black pepper to taste. Whisk that all together. Then what you want to do is reserve about a third of that sauce that you will actually serve on the side at the table.

Then with the remaining sauce, you want to take about three tablespoons and spread that down into the bottom of a glass baking dish. Pop the seasoned chicken right on top of that sauce and then take the rest of the sauce and pour it over top. You’re going to bake this uncovered for 25 to 30 minutes until your chicken reaches 165 degrees at its thickest point. That’s the most important part. This cook time, is 25 to 30 minutes, it could go all the way up to 40 minutes if you have really thick chicken breasts. 

Now at the very end of this recipe, I like to turn the broiler on and cook that chicken for an additional two minutes. That Caesar sauce will start to brown on top. Really delicious. Another option here is to grate some fresh Parmesan cheese over top and let that melt under the broiler. Really delicious. So that’s the full recipe. I mean, so easy. So what I will say, in that time, you can absolutely make some couscous. I’ve got a great recipe for a Parmesan risotto that you make in your instant pot that would be excellent on the side. Then either roasted asparagus, roasted broccoli, or some green beans as a side vegetable would be perfect. 

So this was kind of a quick little episode today. That’s all I’ve got for this recipe. If you are loving this content here on Let’s Make Dinner, then I would love to have you subscribe to the newsletter that goes out every Thursday and Sunday. I send out a newsletter on Thursday for this podcast, and then on Sunday I send out a newsletter for Mom’s Dinner, the website where I share all of these recipes, where I go over any new recipes, any appearances or things that I have coming up and dinner ideas for the week. You can go to momsdinner.net/subscribe and you will find a little page where you can subscribe to the newsletter there, or I will put a link in the show notes for you. 

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. Thank you so much for sticking around. So if you’re loving these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, then always stick around for the double dip at the end of the episode because I’m going to go over what we’re going to be making next week. Then you can add it to your meal plan for next week and have the ingredients all ready when the episode comes out and you can cook right along with me.

So next week on Thursday, we’re making Cream Cheese Chicken Enchiladas. So if you listen to these in real-time, then you know that Cinco de Mayo is coming up. So we got to try all of our yummy Mexican recipes. This one is absolutely delicious. Cream Cheese Chicken Enchiladas. Here’s what you’re going to need to make these: olive oil, yellow or white onions, fresh garlic, jalapeno, and two and a half cups of cooked shredded chicken. This is a great time to use that rotisserie chicken from Costco. Eight ounces of cream cheese, four ounces of sour cream, a four-ounce can of chopped green chilies, kosher salt, 10 to 12 flour tortillas or yellow corn tortillas, 20 ounces of red enchilada sauce, and then an eight-ounce block of cheese. You can use Monterey jack, Kobe jack, pepper, jack, cheddar, or whatever you like on top of your enchiladas.

Then for serving, I love to do some fresh avocado, cilantro, green onions, and maybe some shredded lettuce or pico de gallo. Then on the side, think about like refried beans and Mexican rice. 

So I will also put a link to this recipe in the show notes so you can go and check out the ingredients and the full recipe if you’re going to make it with me next Thursday. 

So until then, I hope you guys have a great week and we’ll see you later.

Intro: Hey, hey everybody. Welcome 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: What’s up everybody? Welcome to the show. Happy Thursday. I hope you guys are all having a wonderful week. I have had a great week here in Kansas City. The weather has been top-notch, absolutely perfect. If you’ve been following along with the Mom’s Dinner newsletter or even on this podcast, you know that we’re finishing our basement and the progress is coming along so nicely. I think they’re like two weeks ahead of schedule, which is absolutely crazy, but we’ll take it. It’s beautiful. It’s coming together. So if you want to see pictures of the basement and know more about the whole project, you can sign up for my newsletter. You go to momsdinner.net/subscribe and sign up for the newsletter there. I will also put a link in the show notes to the subscribe page, so you could just check it out there.

But let’s get to making some dinner. It’s Thursday. What in the hell are you going to make for dinner? Well, what we are making is Instant Pot Carnitas for dinner tonight. So if you make these carnitas, you’re going to have dinner for a while. You’ll not only have dinner tonight, but you can also recreate it into something else tomorrow night, the next night. You can even pop these carnitas in the freezer and then use them at a later date. I’ve got a ton in my freezer right now, and actually, instead of making them, I might just pull them right out of the freezer and use that and make carnitas enchiladas for dinner. 

So if you’ve ever been to Chipotle or a Mexican restaurant, you’ve probably seen or heard of or had carnitas. Basically what it is, is seasoned Mexican pork, a Mexican shredded pork. Sometimes it’s really juicy and tender, and then sometimes it gets caramelized, so it has little crispy edges on it that are so delicious. We like the crispy edges here. It’s made with a very inexpensive cut of pork. It’s made with a pork shoulder, sometimes also known as a Boston butt or a pork butt, and it’s the same cut that is used for smoked, pulled pork. So if you go to a barbecue joint and you have pulled pork, it’s probably made from a pork butt. Now it’s not the butt of a pig. The pork butt, pork shoulder, Boston butt, it’s all the same thing. It is a cut of pork from the shoulder area. It is not the butt. I’m not sure why they call it the butt, actually. Maybe we’ll do that at the end of the episode, I will look up why a Boston butt is called a butt. 

So a few tips and tricks for making your Instant Pot Carnitas. First of all, let’s talk again about that pork shoulder. When you buy pork shoulder, you’ll probably have a couple of different options. It will be called all of those different names, Boston butt. Pork butt, pork shoulder, pork roast, any of those things will work. Now, it’s also going to probably give you an option of bone-in or boneless, or your grocery store may only have one of those options.

My grocery store usually carries the bone-in option, which is great. Totally works. You can cook it with the bone in the instant pot, and then after it cooks, the bone literally just slips right out and all the meat falls off of it. Another tip about using that Boston butt pork shoulder. It’s going to probably have a large fat cap on the top or the bottom, whatever, however, you flip it, and some really big chunks of fat throughout. Now, when you’re cooking low and slow, like on a barbecue or a smoker, that fat renders down and creates really juicy, yummy pulled pork. When you’re cooking in the Instant Pot, it doesn’t have that long slow cooking time for the fat to render down. So you do want to trim a lot of that fat away and discard it, or you could save it and render it down for pork fat if you wanted to. I usually cut most of it down and then discard it because when it cooks down in the Instant Pot, it just becomes jiggly fat. It doesn’t become juicy juicy juice for your pork. 

When we make this carnitas recipe, we’re going to cut the pork into large two to three-inch pieces, and then we’re going to sear it and brown it on a couple of sides. You have a couple of options for this. You can do it in the Instant Pot, but what I have found is that it can take a really long time for the Instant Pot to get hot enough on that saute mode to actually caramelize the outside edges of the pork. So what I usually do, and this is counterintuitive to cooking in the Instant Pot, but usually take my large cast iron skillet and put it over medium-high heat on the stovetop, and then I can cook that pork in two batches and it’s much faster and is way more efficient at getting that really caramelized outside edge that just lends a ton of flavor to your carnitas.

So we’ll talk more about that when we go through the full recipe. All right. A couple more ingredients that I want to talk about before we step into the recipe itself. There is an ingredient called Mexican Oregano that is in the spices and seasonings for this carnitas recipe. Mexican oregano and oregano are not really the same thing. The oregano that you get in the spice aisle is more like a Mediterranean oregano. Mexican oregano is going to have a little bit of a different flavor profile. Where I find my Mexican oregano is usually in the produce section. There’ll be a wall that has dried chilies and a lot of traditional Mexican spices. That’s where I find my Mexican oregano. It’s usually really inexpensive and it’s really delicious. It adds a great flavor to this carnitas recipe. 

Now also you’re going to be using a lemon-lime soda. So for that, you can use Sprite, 7-Up, Starry, any of those lemon-lime sodas will work perfectly. 

Instant Pot Carnitas Recipe: So I think those are all of my tips and tricks for this recipe. So let’s go ahead and get into making the Instant Pot carnitas for dinner tonight. You’re going to want to take about a four to five-pound pork shoulder, pork butt, Boston butt, whatever it’s called, and cut it into about two to three-inch large pieces. As I said, you do want to cut away any large fat cap or any large fat pieces and discard those before moving on. Then you want to take about one and a half tablespoons of kosher salt and one tablespoon of black pepper and season all the sides of the pork so that everything is coated in that seasoning. Then, like I talked about in the tips and tricks section, you can either brown the pork in the instant pot on saute mode, but what I like to do is use my large 12-inch cast iron skillet and do it on the stovetop. It’s so much faster. So I add about three tablespoons of canola oil to my cast iron pan, and then I brown a couple of sides and actually caramelize a couple of sides of the pork pieces. I usually do this in two batches, because like I say, with any recipe, when you want to roast or caramelize or brown, you don’t want to overcrowd the pan because then it will steam instead of brown.

While those pieces are caramelizing and browning, either in the skillet or in the instant pot, next, you’re going to make your deglazing cooking liquid. So what I like to do is take a large four-cup glass measuring cup, or you can just grab a bowl. You’re going to add in one cup of lemon-lime soda, that’s the Sprite, 7-up, whatever you want to use. Six chopped garlic cloves, half a cup of fresh squeezed orange juice. A quarter cup of fresh squeezed lime juice. One teaspoon of either ancho chili powder or chili powder, will work. One and a half teaspoons of Mexican oregano. Half a teaspoon, each of garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, and smoked paprika. Whisk or stir all that together. Then wherever you browned and caramelized the pork pieces, you’re going to deglaze it. So if it was that cast iron skillet, you’re going to pour that liquid into the cast iron skillet and scrape up any of the brown bits. If it was in the Instant Pot, do it in the Instant Pot. You’re just grabbing all of that flavor that you created when you caramelized the pork pieces.

A little warning here. Every single time I have done this though, I set off my smoke alarm. So be careful. If you have a really sensitive smoke alarm as I do, it may set your smoke alarm off when you pour the liquid into the cast iron skillet and it just billows steam. 

All right, now it’s time to set everything up in the Instant Pot. So if you did your browning and deglazing in a cast iron skillet, then pour that liquid into the instant pot. Then you’re going to nestle all those caramelized pork pieces down into the Instant Pot. You’ll take one large white onion, cut it up into large chunks, nestle that down in with the pork, and then put one bay leaf down in there.

You’re going to close the Instant pot and set it to cook for 30 minutes, normal heat and high pressure. Just let it do its thing. Then at the end of that, you’re going to do a 15-minute natural release, and then at the end of the 15 minutes, you’re going to finish by releasing all of the pressure by turning that little valve to vent. Then you’re going to take that lid off, remove the meat from the Instant Pot, and just shred up that meat. You can do it with two forks. You can do it with clean hands, or I actually like to put mine in my stand mixer and run it with the paddle for about 30 seconds and it shreds it up perfectly. 

Now at this point, you can take some of that liquid from the Instant Pot and drizzle it over the meat. You can use it just as it is right now. You can make tacos and enchiladas. You can make nachos, or burrito bowls, or put some shredded carnitas on top of a baked potato. The options are endless here. This is a good one too. You could make carnitas grilled cheese sandwiches. Woo. So good.

But the other option here is to turn your broiler on in your oven and crisp up the edges of the carnitas. So if you want to do that, you’ll get a really large-rimmed baking sheet. Turn on that broiler in your oven, and then take the carnitas, put it on that rim baking sheet, and sprinkle it with some of that juice from the Instant Pot. Pop it under the broiler for about three minutes. Then you’re going to pull it, and flip the meat over as best you can. Sprinkle a little more juice on it and broil it for another three to five minutes. At this point, you want to watch it and make sure that it’s not burning, that it’s just caramelizing. All right, so if you do it that way, your little caramelized carnitas are so good in a taco. You can warm up a little yellow corn tortilla. Put some carnitas down in there, some diced white onion, some pico de gallo, maybe a little guacamole, a squeeze of lime juice. Woo. So good. Such a delicious dinner. So, like I said, you can use it right away. You can store it in the fridge in an airtight container for up to five days. Or you can freeze it for up to three months. 

When I freeze my carnitas, I like to freeze them in two cup portions so that you don’t have to thaw out five pounds of carnitas to use two cups. That way you have easier little portions in your freezer. So of course, no matter how you serve these, if you’re serving them taco, Burrito, enchilada, or burrito bowl, I’ve got some great side dishes on momsdinner.net, the site where I share all of these recipes. You could do a bowl of Mexican rice, you could do Instant Pot Mexican rice, refried beans, salsa, guacamole, or pico de gallo. I have an excellent recipe for this pineapple side dish. It’s fresh pineapple with this honey orange cilantro glaze that goes over the top. Delicious. I also have a really great cilantro lime slaw that makes a wonderful side dish to any Mexican dinner.

So that is the full recipe for your Instant Pot carnitas. That does it for this episode of Let’s Make Dinner. If you’re enjoying these episodes, as I said before, I would love to have you subscribe to our newsletter. You can find a link to subscribe right in the show notes. 

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. If you are enjoying these episodes and they’re really helping you get dinner on the table, then always stick around every week for the double dip. That is where I tell you what we’re making next week, on Thursday, when you are out of dinner ideas, you will have somewhere to come and be like, oh yeah, that’s what I’m making for dinner.

So next week on Thursday, we’re making a Baked Caesar Chicken. This one is so delicious and I feel like I almost forgot about this recipe, that I had this delicious recipe sitting on my website. It’s a little bit older, but it is scrumptious. So this recipe is based on a really great Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa, the Queen, one of her recipes. She has a Caesar Swordfish, and I don’t eat a ton of seafood, so I’ve kind of adapted it for chicken. Delish people. 

All right. Are you ready for the ingredients that you’re going to need to make your Caesar chicken for dinner next week? All right. Obviously, you’re going to need boneless skinless chicken breasts. You can buy two large boneless skinless chicken breasts and cut them in half lengthwise, so you have four thinner ones, or you can just buy four chicken breasts. You’ll need kosher salt and black pepper. Mayonnaise, Greek yogurt, Dijon mustard, lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic, cloves, and capers and that does it. Then you’ll just need something for a side dish. Right now asparagus is hot people. It is inexpensive and delicious. Highly recommend maybe some couscous and some roasted asparagus. We will make this next week on Let’s Make Dinner. Until then, I hope you guys have an awesome week. See ya.