Hey guys, welcome back to Basics with Babish. For this week, I've partnered with Blue Apron to help transform taco night.
Blue Apron is a meal kit delivery service that makes it easy to cook healthy meals at home and the first
hundred people to sign up using the link in this video's description will get $50 off their first two weeks of deliveries.
We're going to use this kit to make some Asian-Inspired Hoisin Chicken Tacos later.
But for now, let's get all our new toys in the fridge and get down to Basics
{Basics with Babish Intro Music}
Okay, so first thing's first. I'm in the mood for corn tortillas.
If you want to make flour tortillas check out the Fish Tacos episode of Binging with Babish
Otherwise follow along with me as we combine 2 cups of Masa Harina with one and a quarter cups water.
Mix gently by hand and pat into a ball.
That's it. Mic Drop
Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes before pressing into tortillas using a tortilla press,
and a plastic food storage bag that you have cut open like a book. This prevents the tortilla dough from
sticking to the tortilla press. So now, just roll out golf ball sized balls of dough, close the tortilla press and let it do what it does best.
"But Babish," You might be asking, "What if I didn't spend $30 on a 10 pound cast-iron unitasker that I'll probably only use once a year?"
Well, the answer lies in the heavy bottom of a good ol' fashioned skillet.
Simply press down firmly on our plastic bag contraption, oop...little bit more firmly than that.
Put you whole body into it and...Presto! You'll be greeted with the same high-quality homemade tortilla.
Once you've got your tortillas out of whatever press you're using, you'll want to bring it over to a waiting, preheated, non-stick or cast-iron skillet.
Make sure it's ripping hot and flip after 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until you've got a few brown spots.
Let it go for maybe another 20 seconds on the other side before removing from the heat and keeping warm in a
tortilla warmer or in a low oven, wrapped in foil.
Alright, so now that we've got our tortillas finished, it's time to address the matter of what to put inside them.
I'm gonna make 3 different kinds of tacos. I'm gonna start off by making a chimichurri for steak.
Into a food processor, I'm placing one Fresno pepper, a few cloves of garlic, a handful of parsley (or cilantro,
if that's your thing), a quarter cup of olive oil and a few tablespoons of red wine vinegar.
I'm also going to lightly season it with salt and freshly ground pepper, and then it's time to take it for a spin
until it is lightly chopped but not fully pureed. This is going to act as both the sauce and the marinade for
our skirt steak. Oops, do not forget to fold down the top of your bag so you don't get any meat juice on the
outside of the bag, and add about half of our chimichurri, reserving the other half for later application.
Squeeze all the air out and give it a nice deep tissue massage, making sure the marinade is evely distributed.
Place in a glass bowl and fridge for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight. Now, let's do some chicken.
We didn't have much time to shoot this episode, so I'm going to make 3 different kinds of tacos, all at once. I hope you don't mind.
We're starting by butterflying the chicken, placing it into a similarly outfitted bag, and preparing a simple marinade,
courtesy of America's Test Kitchen. A few cloves of roughly chopped garlic, the juice of two limes,
a good shake each of white pepper, cumin, smoked paprika, oregano, and for a little bit of heat, cayenne pepper.
You can omit this, if you're a wuss.
We're also gonna add a good drizzle of olive oil, a healthy sprinkling of salt, and a few twists of freshly ground black pepper.
We're also gonna add a little bit of a sugar. This is gonna help with the browning of the chicken later on.
Whisk together, and toss that bad boy into the marinade bag, give it a massage, put it in a bowl, and fridge it for
1 to 4 hours. Last up, I'm going to make some tacos with chorizo and potato. For this we're gonna start by simply
peeling and chopping our potato into nice little bite-sized cubes. And then we're going to put them into a pot and
cover them with cold water, which we're going to slowly bring up to a boil. We're gonna salt the water a little bit
for flavor and expedited boiling, which takes a long time when you use a blowtorch. Just kidding.
We're also gonna add a little bit of white vinegar. This is gonna help the potatoes retain their structure.
After parboiling these for about 10 minutes, drain and place them on a rimmed baking sheet to cool completely.
Next up, the accoutrements for our chicken. We're going to make Rajas Con Crema, which are poblano peppers
that have been roasted and cooked in a zesty sort of Mexican sour cream.
You can tell I'm excited to roast some peppers, because it means I get to burn things over an open flame,
and that's just what we're doing. Putting these guys right on the stove grate until they turn black on the outside.
We're then wrapping them in foil to soften them up, letting them rest for 10 minutes, unwrapping them,
and peeling off all the black stuff. I often like to leave this stuff on, but apparently it's bad for you,
so I can't really recommend it. Anyway, now that we've got them nice and peeled and safe for consumption,
we're gonna slice them into strips. And these ones look a little bit too long so I'm also going to cut them
crosswise so that they're nice and bite-sized. Now, also for the chicken tacos, we're gonna make some
quick-pickled radishes aka one of the few beautiful comforts in an otherwise cold, indifferent universe.
Simply scrub, wash and thinly slice your radishes, put them in a heatproof bowl, and pour some boiling
apple cider vinegar over top. If you're just making these for snacking, like I do, you can also add things like
mustard seeds, and whole peppercorns, and fresh dill, but these will do nicely for our purposes. We're gonna let
these quick-pickle for about an hour, or until they've cooled off. Last piece of accoutrements, some simply
diced onions, combined with a little bit of chopped, fresh parsley (or cilantro), and the juice of one lime.
Mix it up and let it sit for 15 minutes. Now, at long last, it's time to head over to the stove.
This is kind of an interesting episode of Basics, because it's the workload that you'd have if you were making
all 3 of these tacos for like a dinner party or something. Anyway, we're starting by browning some chorizo that
we've squeezed out of its skin, and in another nonstick pan we're getting some onion started with a little bit of
olive oil. These will be for the Rajas Con Crema. Once they've softened up a little bit, it's time to add the Rajas,
otherwise known as the roast poblano peppers from earlier. We're gonna season those will a little bit of dried
oregano, and let them get to know each other just a little bit. During which time, we can throw our steak on a
preheated cast-iron skillet. This is skirt steak, so you'll remember that we want this ripping hot, so we can cook
it as fast as possible. Same goes for our nice, thin butterflied chicken. Next up, we're adding about a
quarter cup of heavy cream and the juice of half a lime to our poblano-pepper-onion mixture and simmering that
for about 5 minutes or until thickened. We're also gonna season it with a little bit of salt and pepper.
The lime helps emulate the sort of "zing" that we would've gotten from real Mexican Crema.
Now that the chorizo is nice and brown, we're gonna put it on a plate, set it aside.
Reserve a little bit of that sausage fat, adding to it a little bit of vegetable oil. While that's heating up, check the
browning on our steaks, give them a flip if they're ready to go, and once the fat in the chorizo pan is nice and
sizzling hot, we're gonna add our parboiled potatoes, leaving them untouched over high heat for about
2 minutes, so we get some nice, crispy brown spots. Achieve some steak flame, that it totally going on
Instagram, and remove once the interior of our steak reaches 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Cover with foil and set
aside to rest. Give the potatoes a flip now that they've browned and crisped up a little bit.
Give the chicken a flip, make sure it's not overcooking. We don't want those going over 165(F). Try to keep
sampling and tasting as you go, so you know how you want adjust the seasoning of each element of a dish.
I'm gonna add some salt, and a little splash of olive oil to help these guys finish up. Once the potatoes have some
nice brown stuff on them, add back the sausage, and boom, those are done. Just heat the mixture the whole
way through while chicken stubbornly comes up to temperature. The steak and the chicken have rested so
it's time to carve. We're cutting across the grain, on the steak and then cutting it into bite-sized pieces.
The chicken, cut it up however you like, just make sure it'll fit in a taco.
And at long last, it's time to plate up. One taco with a healthy helping of our chorizo-potato mixture, one with
a few strips of our steak, and one with a few strips of chicken. You can obviously top these up however you
like, but I like to put the Rajas Con Crema on the chicken, with a few of the pickled radishes, a little bit of the
reserved chimichurri sauce on the steak, our onion and "fake cilantro" (parsley) mixture on the chorizo-potato,
and all 3 with a generous helping of Cotija cheese. If you can't find Cotija, Feta is an acceptable substitute, sort of.
And there you have it: 3 delicious, if a bit labor-intensive, tacos, sure to spice things up at your next dinner party.
But what about something a little bit more weeknight? Little bit healthier, little bit easier, Blue Apron's got oop,
shoot, Blue Apron's got us covered with some Asian-Inspired Hoisin Chicken Tacos.
Start by cutting the 4 included sweet potatoes into wedges, and then we're gonna prepare a mixture in
which to toss them. We're gonna start by placing into a large bowl a little dab of white miso paste, a tablespoon
of water and two tablespoons of olive oil. We're also gonna season this with salt, and freshly ground pepper.
Then we wanna whisk the whole thing together until it is a homogenous slurry, I'm sorry I didn't use tiny whisk, into
which we are going to toss our sweet potato wedges. Give them a little toss until they are evenly coated in the mixture.
We are then arranging these guys on a parchment or aluminum foil lined baking sheet, and placing in a 425F oven for 25-30 minutes.
During which time we are going to get the fillings for the tacos ready. We are stemming and seeding 4oz of sweet,
adorable little peppers that we are then halving and thinly slicing. We're gonna put those in a bowl with 2
smashed and roughly chopped garlic cloves, then we're going to bust out our woefully inadequate backup
vegetable peeler, and peel the skin off a little 1-inch knob of fresh ginger, that we're then going to finely mince,
you can also run this through a microplane if you like. That's the cool thing about Blue Apron; if you follow the
directions to a tee, you're gonna end up with a great meal, but you can also put your own spin on it,
or employ your own techniques. Next up, I am following the directions and thinly slicing 2 small, halved
cucumbers, along with the white parts of two scallions, I'm gonna give those a rough chop so they're a little bit
less intrusive, and add those to the cucumbers along with the cutest little bottle of rice vinegar that you ever did see.
We're also gonna add a little splash of olive oil and season this with salt and freshly ground pepper and let it marinate for the 20 minutes or so until the tacos are done.
Little bit more accoutrement to take care of, we're going to thinly slice the green parts of the scallions, and season a tiny little serving of creme fraiche with a little bit of salt and freshly ground pepper.
And now it's time move over to the stove top. We gotta start by heating up our flour tortillas in a preheated, nonstick skillet.
You could also microwave them between two damp paper towels, but either way as soon as the skillet frees
up, we're gonna hit it with some vegetable oil and drop in our two pounds of ground chicken, which we're gonna
break up a little bit, season with salt and pepper and let it sit for about 3 or 4 minutes until it turns a bit brown.
Optionally practice your tossing skills. Either way, make sure the chicken is cooked through before adding
our sweet-pepper-garlic-ginger mixture. Toss those together, and cook for an additional 2 to 3 more minutes
until those flavors have gotten to know each other, then add the two packets of Hoisin sauce, and the little cup of black bean sauce.
Toss together and let simmer for an additional minute, and we got ourselves some taco filling. Turn off the heat, keep it warm, whilst we assemble our tacos.
Oh, and by the way, our sweet potato wedges turned out pretty awesome. Now we can plate those up along with the main course,
Now this whole thing only took about 35 minutes to make, it was the perfect little dinner for me, and me again when I have the leftovers tomorrow.
Blue Apron is an awesome way to get cooking at home, pick up new cooking skills, and help your family eat healthy.
They use farm-fresh ingredients, all their meals are between 500-800 calories per serving,
they've even teamed up with Bob's Burgers and Alvin Cailan to bring some of Bob's punny burgers to life in your kitchen.
And like I mentioned earlier, the first hundred people to sign up using the link in this video's description will get
$50 off their first two weeks. Hope you guys give it a try yourselves, now if you'll excuse me,
It's Taco Time.