Remember when I used to cook all the time and then post recipes for you guys?
Yeah. Well, there’s not a whole lot of time for cooking these days, considering that I’m either working, sweating or studying. Unfortunately, cooking is a great stress relief for me. For that reason, I do my best to cook at least one delicious meal every weekend.
Thanks to an unexpected offer from Ryan at POM Wonderful, I received a case of delicious, nutritious POM Pomegranate juice. I had tried POM in the past (after I received some freebie coupons last year), but I never attempted cooking with it. Considering the fact that I had an entire case, I knew that I needed to cook with it.
I didn’t want to try the normal things that immediately came to mind (pancake syrup, glazes, etc.), so I decided to make Chicken PACOS.
Chicken POM Tacos.
Yes, I made that up. Isn’t the name just brilliant?
(I kid.)
Tacos are My Gazelle’s favorite meal of all time. If I ask him what he wants to eat for dinner (provided that he’s home), approximately 90% of the time, he’ll tell me that he wants tacos. The other 10% of the time, he doesn’t want to tell me that he wants tacos because he likes to seem mysterious and unpredictable. So, I make him tacos. Then he says “woo hoo! Tacos!” I basically never cook anything besides tacos for him. I don’t mind, but tacos get kind of old.
Since I’ve been partaking in the occasional bout with organic, locally farm-raised chicken, I decided that I wanted tacos tonight as well. So, we were having fancy tacos. POM tacos.
I chopped up the chicken breasts into tiny cubes, added Adobo seasoning, pepper, and garlic powder, then cooked it in a little bit of olive oil over medium heat.
(please excuse the sub-par photos…my camera apparently does not respond well on manual focus in low light! Lesson learned.)
When the chicken appeared to be cooked all the way through, I added approximately 1 cup of POM Wonderful.
Then, I added a packet of my favorite taco seasoning.
Then I drank the rest of the POM (with my hawt post-12 mile bike ride hair).
As soon as I stirred everything together to combine, I noticed a marked difference in the texture from my normal taco meat. I would guess that something having to do with the fruit sugar in the POM caused the mixture to be much more thick, and the seasoning seemed to adhere to the meat better. I hate watery taco meat, so this was a good thing.
I was nervous about the whole thing, because I was afraid that the POM would make the meat way too sweet. I crossed my fingers and layered up the tacos…
Spinach, Amy’s refried beans, chicken, salsa, daiya cheese (yum!), and sour cream.
PERFECTION!
These tacos were so freaking good. By cooking the chicken in POM, it made it incredibly tender. It also added an interesting edge to the standard taco meat flavor, and made things sort of sweet without being too sweet. Even My Gazelle loved it.
So, I’ll probably make this again tomorrow. Since he’ll probably want tacos again.
