Add two ingredients:

Cafe Society
1

I am just beginning to actually cook stuff. But I want to add a little more interest to what I’m cooking. I’m not looking to try out 10 step, 15 ingredient recipes, but I want to add a little change, so add one or two ingredients/spices/something to what I’m already making:

Right now my Cottage Pie recipe is:

peas
carrots
corn
1 lb. beef, browned
worschestershire sauce
packaged garlic mashed potatoes
whatever cheese I have around grated on top

pretty much layered in the pan, in that order.
Ribs

Boil ribs, add “Hickory and Brown Sugar BBQ Sauce”, bake.

White Chicken Enchiladas (of Death)

1 lb shredded chicken breasts
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup butter
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup green chiles
8 oz. cream cheese
1 pint whipping cream
1 1/2 cups shredded Monterey Jack Cheese
1 cup cheddar cheese, Shredded
1 Tbs cumin
1 tsp white pepper
2 tsp paprika
Tortillas

Melt butter in pan, saute onions and green chiles
Add broth, cream cheese, cumin and white pepper, and chicken
Roll in warmed tortillas, place in greased pan, pour whipping cream over enchiladas and layer jack/cheddar cheese on top. Sprinkle with paprika, bake for 45 minutes at 350.

Help me with these, please :slight_smile:

2

I’d add mushrooms and onions to the cottage pie and maybe mix some chives with the mashed potatoes.

The sauce for the enchiladas looks a bit bland. How about mixing some green enchilada sauce with the cream? I might also put a pinch of oregano into the filling.

3

Enchiladas…Don’t grease the pan, it won’t work (for me), just put a layer of enchilada sauce on the bottom, it works much better. If you like spicey I would suggest some jalapenos OR replacing the veggie jack with pepper jack.
And as my FIL says, everything is better with corn.

4

Cottage pie (first of all, bonus points to you for not calling it “shepherd’s”!) I’d add allspice, ground, and just a splash of red wine vinegar. If I get another two adds, it’d be garlic and diced onions browned with the meat.

The enchilada recipe looks great as is, and I’m going to steal it, with a few changes to make it lower cal/fat. My two additions there will be some canned black beans, rinsed and drained, and some frozen corn or frozen roasted corn, both of those mixed in with the chicken.

5

PS. If the ribs in your middle recipe is pork, my mother would add vinegar to the water. I take it that you drain your ribs first. :stuck_out_tongue:

6

We had a good thread on ribs not too long ago. In short, don’t boil them. Boil water with a lot of salt and brown sugar (as much as it will hold without precipitating), and spices to taste (pepper corns and rosemary, if you ask me). Let cool, then add the ribs to this brine and let’em swim in there for 24 hours (in the fridge). Drain and bake with your bbq sauce of choice.

7

I’m a vegetarian, but will add a Helpful Handy Hint for enchiladas of any sort, learned from the wonderful Juana who took care of me as a kid:

Heat up a a bit of whatever enchilada sauce you are using in a frying pan. Instead of just warming the tortillas plain, dip the tortillas in the sauce for a bit to warm that way, and then roll up with filling. Messier, but so muy mo’ betta rico!

8

WhyNot, thanks for the suggestion, and I’d love ideas as to how to make it lower cal/fat. That way I can remove the “of Death” from their title!

I’ll have to print this out for the next time I make these recipes. I have another rack of ribs in the freezer, so I’m excited about that.

9

Re the cottage pie:

Ditch the packaged garlic mashed potatoes. Replace with real potatoes (preferably a decent variety) mashed with a lot of cultured butter; pepper; and salt to taste (you’ll need more than you expected).

If you must have garlic, mix it in with the meat.

Ditch the corn. If it’s canned, it’s crap anyway; if it’s fresh, you’re wasting it.

Add onions browned with the beef. Consider adding celery too.

What kind of beef are you using? I hope it’s something like shank that you need to braise forever. (My take on cottage pie is that it’s essentially reheated pot roast & mashed potatoes.) If you do decide to go the braise-n-reheat route, do it properly with stock, garlic, herbs, and red wine, then reduce the sauce or make a roux and do gravy. If you’re just doing the brown-some-hamburger thing, I hope you’re at least deglazing the pan. Consider making gravy with the brown bits and adding it to the beef.

Consider adding a glorp of tomato paste.

Salt & pepper, of course.

In addition to worchestershire sauce, you could add steak sauce if you have some on hand. Consider adding a few dashes of angostura bitters.

Consider ditching the cheese; it’s not really necessary.
Re the enchiladas: Consider replacing the chicken breasts with dark meat; it’s more flavorful.

10

Hunter Hawk, thanks for taking the time to think about the kind of responses I was looking for…

11

Well, you must understand first that changing a recipe…well, it changes a recipe. It will not be the same lovely rich dish that you’re used to. It’s actually easier to make drastic fat reducing changes if you’ve **not **made the recipe before - that means you won’t miss your old version so much! Still, I think I can make a much healthier version that will be very good, if not phenomenally orgasmic like yours.

The first way I’d get rid of a whole bunch of calories is to drastically reduce the butter. As far as I can tell, it’s just there to give the onions and chilis something to soften in. We don’t need all of it. We do need a tiny bit, to carry the fat soluble flavors of the chili peppers, but as little as 1 teaspoon will do nicely. That’s around 30 calories and not quite 4 grams of fat, instead of 814 calories and 92 grams of fat.

Chicken broth: use fat free broth sold in one of those aseptic containers. Looks like a box; it’s better tasting than canned: regular broth: 19.2 calories and 1 gram of fat; fat free broth 2.4 calories and 0 fat.

Next, I’d replace the cream cheese with neufchatel cheese, also sold in US supermarkets as “fat free cream cheese”. This isn’t a chemically achieved fat free food, it’s just the same general cheesemaking process that uses milk instead of cream. And it really does taste just like cream cheese, even when spread on crackers and topped with a dollop of jam - one of my favorite snacks. I’m also going to drop it from 8 ounces to 4 - with more flavorful meat, corn and beans, you won’t miss it. Anyway, 4 ounces of neufchatel has 295 calories and 27 grams of fat to 8 ounces of cream cheese’s 792 calories and 79 grams of fat.

Next to go is the whipping cream. I’d use skim milk and nonfat sour cream instead. You don’t specify heavy or light whipping cream in your original recipe, so I’ll run some numbers for both. One pint of heavy whipping cream has 1642 calories and 176 grams of fat. One pint of light whipping cream has 1396 calories and 148 grams of fat. One pint of skim milk is 166 calories and almost 1 gram of fat, and 1 cup of nonfat sour cream has 233 calories and 3 grams of fat.

The cheddar cheese is getting the low-fat treatment as well. Low-fat cheddar shreds are available in the supermarket alongside the other bagged shredded cheeses. Again, no funny chemistry experiments, just cheese made with 2% milk instead of whole milk. I’m also reducing the amount of cheese used - there’s a point at which more of an ingredient doesn’t really add more to the experience, and I think there you can get away with less. 1 cup whole milk cheddar: 455 cal, 37.4 fat; 1/2 cup 2% cheddar: 98/4. Same deal with the Monterey jack: 1.5 cups regular jack = 631.5/51.3; 1/2 cup reduced fat jack = 98/4.

Adding beans and corn will up your fiber content and reduce your calories per serving, because you can use less meat in each enchilada and still have a satisfying serving. To keep our recipes on equal footing regarding number of servings, this means we can reduce the chicken to 1/2 pound and use 1 cup of canned black beans (rinsed and drained) and 1 cup frozen corn kernels and end up with about the same volume.

To increase taste without adding fat, poach the chicken in broth with 1/2 cup or so of spicy salsa in it before shredding it. The meat will take on some of the flavor of the liquid it’s cooked in.

This makes 8 servings, I’m guessing?

So let’s see how we did:

White Chicken Enchiladas of Death:
Total calories: 7,021 Calories per serving: 878
Total fat: 524g Fat per serving: 66g
Total fiber: 24g Fiber per serving: 3g
White Chicken Enchiladas of Life:
Total calories: 3,610 Calories per serving:451
Total fat:112g Fat per serving: 14g
Total fiber: 44g Fiber per serving: 5.5g
1/2 lb shredded chicken breasts
1 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup frozen corn kernels
1/2 cup fat free chicken broth
1 teaspoon butter
1 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup green chilies
4 ounces neufchatel cheese
2 cups (1 pint) skim milk
1 cup nonfat sour cream
1/2 cup shredded reduced-fat monterey jack cheese
1/2 cup shredded reduced-fat cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon white pepper
2 teaspoons paprika
8 tortillas

  1. Melt butter in pan, saute onions and green chiles.
  2. Add broth, cream cheese, cumin and white pepper, beans, corn and chicken.
  3. Roll in warmed tortillas, place in greased pan,.
  4. Whisk together milk and sour cream and pour over enchiladas.
  5. Layer jack/cheddar cheese on top. Sprinkle with paprika, bake for 45 minutes at 350.

Almost 1/2 the calories and way, way, way less fat. Not too shabby!

12

Sweet! Somehow (I haven’t looked at the program), my mom’s computer cookbook had the nutritional information at 524 calories per enchilada and 39 grams of fat - for the originals! Your calculations sound much more likely. And it is very easy to eat two- at least in my family. And I’m excited to try the new ones, since the guilt has been getting in the way of the pleasure every since I actually knew what has gone into them.

13

I like to make different Cottage (I call it Shepard’s) Pie. The best I made was ground turkey with sliced zucchini instead of corn, and then instead of mashed potatoes on top I put smashed butternut squash. It was really good

14

Cottage pie = beef
Shepherd’s pie = lamb ('cause, y’know, it was made by shepherds. Out of their flock.)

I often use ground turkey instead of ground beef, but you lost me at zucchini! :stuck_out_tongue:

15

Two words:

Bacon Salt
SDMB Bacon Salt thread
HSM