One thing about loving to cook is that when friends visit, making dinner at home becomes its own attraction.
Two of my friends visited this past weekend and I knew to save space for dinner at home in our itinerary. While I’ve known Corey and Baylee for 18 and 11 years respectively, it’s been over 5 years since I last cooked something for them. So dinner at home was our whole plan for Friday night!
When it comes to menu planning, I’ve learned to stick with the things I know really well. Cooking for a group introduces complexities with timing, plating, serving sizes etc so I usually try to test out new recipes or methods when it’s just me who has to suffer the consequences of a flop.
Have you ever tried something new when you have friends coming over and even though you researched and planned and followed the recipe, something still goes awry? It’s a very stressful. It feels awful. Everyone is nice about it but you reach for your phone to order a pity pizza.
Still I always get an itch to try something new and impressive. This time, I scratched. Corey and Baylee were around when I first started @honeyibaked (aka the steepest part of my learning curve) so I’m sure they tasted a few questionable things back in the day. And luckily everything worked out beautifully!
This beef barbacoa was so good that I immediately made it again (three days later). It’s all I’ve been eating for several days now and I’m not sick of it.
The reactions I’ve gotten have been the best part:
“Holy smokes!! This looks AMAZING”
“DID YOU TRY THIS??? Oh my god!!”
“It could be a controlled substance”
“This is so good. I’m mad. Should have had a baby so long ago”
Center Stage: Beef Barbacoa
Braising meat in the oven is so simple and yet I’ve always had a weird mental block stopping me from trying. I love braised short ribs and I’ve watched so many videos, I just assumed because it’s such a special dish that there must be something difficult about it. But the beauty of cooking is that it’s an art not a science and sometimes that doesn’t translate well in videos and written recipes. This barbacoa is forgiving, you can cook it a little longer or use extra onion and it’s still beautiful.
So far we’ve used it for tacos, rice bowls, breakfast tacos, and grilled cheese. Maybe enchiladas next? Or a topping for a bowl of queso, OMG.
Side Characters
These are my favorite side dishes for taco night. Also great for burritos, fajitas, rice bowls, a plate of nachos, etc. I worked on these while the barbacoa was in the oven. There’s a lot that can be done ahead of time - from prepping ingredients to making all of it a day in advance.
They also make fantastic leftovers.
Toppings
I’ve gotten in a habit of using ranch dressing seasoning packets to make a quick sauce with mayo, sour cream, milk, and a few other easy ingredients. Here are two tried and true and yummy versions I’ve made in the past! This time I made one with hot sauce, green chiles, and cilantro - should I post that one too?
A few more for good measure
Pickled Red Onion: I am working on updating my recipe because I’m about to make a new batch!
Onion + Cilantro Stems: finely dice 1/2 of a white onion and about 15-20 cilantro stems. Add in a squeeze of lime juice. You can also add finely diced jalapeno.
More cotija… sprinkled on everything!
Last week I wrote about the art of trying and learning new things and challenged myself to try/ learn/ do a few new things. Other than the barbacoa we just yapped about, here are a few things that were new to me!
I went to Mount Vernon for the first time and love learning more about our first (my favorite) President, George Washington. If you’re in DC I highly recommend taking the time to visit and sign up for one of their tours!
I dropped off chicken noodle soup last week as part of a meal train for our friends who just had their first baby. This is something I’ve always wanted to do but my friends with babies live in other cities. I loved knowing that whatever I was dropping off was easing some sort of burden, even just a little bit. I loved it so much I dropped off this whole taco night menu on Monday.
Dirty martini… hear me out! I’ve tried sips of my friends’ martinis before but this time I actually really enjoyed it and ordered my own. Baylee even let me eat her olives which was a selling point.
I still need to try the Fishwife basil mussels in my pantry… maybe for lunch tomorrow? We’ve had so many leftovers in our fridge I haven’t needed to pull them out! My dear friend Mackenzie said they’re great and I should eat them out of the tin with crackers but I’m still thinking a quick pasta.
And here are a couple of things I want to learn or try over the next week:
Something on the grill: I’m thinking either pizza or scallops. I ordered scallop shells last week and am looking for a good pizza stone online right now.
More about Salt: I’m ‘reading’ the Salt book that went viral on social media but I haven’t picked it up in a couple of weeks. It’s time to put down my phone and pick up the pages (something I say to myself every week). Kris is probably laughing reading this, he knows that as much as I love talking about Salt, the book is on my nightstand waiting for attention.
VIKINGS. They come up in the Salt book and my lack of knowledge made me want to go down a rabbit hole. I’ve found a couple documentaries to watch and I’ll report back if they’re worth watching.
As always, thank you for reading. I hope you got something out of it.
xoxo,
Anna