I was so hoping yesterday to post about an amazing orange chicken in the crock pot from scratch.... only it was a flop. Well, the chicken cooked perfectly, but the sauce... well, if you ever attempt to make your own orange sauce, PLEASE make sure your oranges aren't overripe... it doesn't make for good sauce. Either way, I was very disappointed, but I really didn't want to throw away the other half of the chicken which had been cooked in the sauce but was not eaten. So, I used a colander and rinsed the sauce off the chicken and saved it for tonight's meal. It still had much of the flowery orange taste, but none of the overripe taste, thank heavens. SO, I knew that to use it I would have to find a recipe that would do well with the orange taste. I then remembered a delicious Brazilian Black Bean Soup recipe which I tried a few years ago and forgot about. But, i didn't want soup today. SO I decided to adapt the recipe for use in tacos (which also let me use the rice leftover from last night). So, here goes.
Brazilian Tacos
heat a pan over med heat. With 2 T olive oil
Add 1-2 onions, chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 carrot, sliced thin
Cook till carrots are crunchy-tender, then add
1 chopped red or green bell pepper
1 can black beans (1 1/2cups) rinsed and drained
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1 1/2-2 cups cooked rice, according to how you like
1 1/2 cups cooked chicken pieces
1/4 tsp grated orange zest
If rice isn't adhering much to the other ingredients, add a little water and oil to the pan and stir around till rice adheres.
Warm soft taco shells a little to make them more pliable, fill with about 1/2 cup of rice mix, grate a little monterey jack cheese over the top and enjoy! We had ours with a nice green salad (btw, next time you have a green salad, try adding a little napa cabbage to it. It's crunchy and so very juicy with a little sweetness. You won't regret it!)
yum!! Im definitely trying this soon! We will sub the chicken with tofu but I dont think anyone will notice the difference, this sounds amazing!! just like the late great Bob Ross said, "happy accidents" sometimes make the most beautiful things
ReplyDeleteThe soup recipe is sans meat, so I'm sure you could even leave it out entirely and it would still work just fine. I would recommend using some nice avocado on it tho, that would have put this totally over the top for me, but then, I LOVE avocado!
ReplyDeleteyum, sounds good. Should I add some kind of orange something to my chicken before I mix it with the taco stuff? Just wondering since you already had the orange flavor on your chicken from the night before.
ReplyDeleteI added in some grated orange zest just in case to my sauce. You could either bump that up, or not worry about it at all.
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