Five Mexican Weeknight Dinners Worth Cooking

It's Tuesday, there's half a bag of potatoes in the cupboard and a tin of tomatoes behind them, and the evening is drifting towards takeaway. Mexican weeknight dinners suit that evening, because the everyday classics were built for it: one hot pan, a chile doing the work, something starchy alongside. Here are five, written for two, landing between thirty and forty minutes by the recipes' own breakdowns, and none of them a taco.

What these Mexican weeknight dinners actually cost in time

Tostadas de Tinga, Enfrijoladas and Rajas con Crema are thirty-minute dishes. Pescado a la Veracruzana is thirty-five, Picadillo forty. Those numbers include the chopping, and they assume the Enfrijoladas start from a tin of cooked beans and that any rice is already going.

Pans matter as much as minutes, and only two cook in a single skillet.

• Veracruzana and Picadillo: one skillet each for the dish itself.
• Tostadas de Tinga: two pans, one for the chicken, one for the tortillas.
• Enfrijoladas: a saucepan, a blender, and a comal.
• Rajas con Crema: a flame, broiler or dry heavy pan for the poblanos, then a skillet.

Two dishes that start with a stack of corn tortillas

Tostadas de Tinga cooks a 250 g chicken breast to 74°C, four to five minutes a side depending on thickness, rests it three minutes, then shreds it into a sauce of white onion, tomato, minced chipotles in adobo, oregano and cumin. Four to five minutes more and it mounds on a tortilla instead of running off. Corn tortillas fry crisp in a second pan meanwhile, then take avocado, crema, Cotija and lime. Around 643 calories and 42 g of protein a serving, two servings, by Gourmate's per-serving estimates.

Assemble at the table and eat straight away, since crisp tortillas soften under a wet topping within minutes. I'd skip this one for six people: nobody wins that race.

Enfrijoladas is the vegan one, and the cheapest to shop for. Black beans, onion, garlic and 15 g of chipotle in adobo simmer five minutes, then get blended smooth and reduced until the sauce coats a spoon like thin cream. Blend with the lid's centre cap out and a folded towel over the hole, or with a stick blender in the pan, because a sealed jug of near-boiling liquid builds enough pressure to throw the lid. Eight corn tortillas warm twenty to thirty seconds a side, get dipped in the sauce with tongs, folded two to a plate, then avocado, cilantro and raw onion. About 522 calories and 18 g of fibre a serving.

Nixtamalization, the lime-and-water cook that turns dried maize into masa, raises the bioavailability of niacin and iron, adds calcium and cuts mycotoxins in the grain (CIMMYT). Corn tortillas are usually gluten-free too, though some brands blend in wheat.

The one built on a blistered pepper

Rajas con Crema starts with 300 g of poblanos charred until the skin blackens, roughly eight to ten minutes over a gas flame with long tongs, longer under a broiler or in a dry heavy pan, then covered five minutes so steam lifts the skin. Rub the blackened skin off without rinsing, because rinsing takes the smoke with it. The strips join onion and garlic softened in butter and oil, with 120 g of sweet corn and epazote, or cilantro instead.

Then 120 g of crema and 80 ml of cream go in over medium-low heat and stay below a boil, or the sauce splits. Shredded queso Oaxaca melts in over about a minute. Lightest dish here at roughly 387 calories a serving.

Fish from Veracruz, in one skillet

Pescado a la Veracruzana carries the Spanish influence on that coast in its olives and capers. Onion and garlic soften in olive oil, then a 400 g tin of plum tomatoes crushed by hand goes in with green olives, rinsed capers, pickled jalapeños and a spoon of their brine, bay and oregano. Six to eight minutes uncovered to thicken, then two 200 g white fish fillets, thawed and evenly thick, nestle in under a lid. Another six to eight minutes is the estimate; 63°C at the thickest part is the endpoint, and cold thick fillets want longer. Rest two minutes in the pan. About 406 calories and 36 g of protein a serving.

Salt at the end, not the start: the olives and capers are salt-cured and the sauce reduces around them, the sequencing problem in how to salt food so it tastes right. They're also most of the savoury depth here, for the reasons in what umami is.

Picadillo, and why its calorie number looks big

Picadillo is the one that turns into lunch. Four hundred grams of 80/20 beef browns six to eight minutes in a wide skillet, broken up with a spatula so it browns instead of steaming, and spoon off the fat if it pools. Then onion, garlic, 250 g of potato in 1 cm dice and carrot cut to match, followed by tomatoes, broth, cumin, oregano and a minced chipotle. Partially covered, twelve to fifteen minutes, until the potato gives and the sauce clings. Lime juice at the end, and take the temperature in a thick clump of meat rather than the sauce, looking for 71°C.

Its 1,044 calories a serving is the highest here, and what's counted explains it: the figure includes the 300 g of cooked rice and six tortillas alongside, not just the skillet. All five are written for two, so read how to scale a recipe before cooking for four.

Temperatures, leftovers and allergens

Three have a number to measure rather than guess. Chicken goes to 74°C (165°F), ground beef to 71°C (160°F), fish to 63°C (145°F), taken in the thickest part away from bone (USDA). Colour is not a reliable test, and a browned crust says nothing about the middle of a pan of mince.

Leftovers go into the fridge within two hours, or one hour if the kitchen is above 32°C, in shallow containers so they chill fast rather than standing out to cool. Keep the fridge at or below 4°C (40°F) and eat them within three to four days (USDA FSIS). Picadillo and the tinga reheat well, gently, with a splash of water, taken to 74°C (165°F) right through rather than merely warm. Cooked rice needs more care than the meat, because the spores that survive boiling multiply in rice left standing: spread it thin to chill it fast, and reheat it once. Tostadas don't reheat at all, so keep the tinga and crisp fresh tortillas.

On allergens, read your own labels rather than trusting a category. The tinga carries dairy in the crema and Cotija. Rajas con Crema carries it four times over, in butter, crema, cream and cheese, though lactose-free crema and a plant cream give a workable version. Veracruzana contains fish. Picadillo has no major allergen in the recipe itself, but the stock and tortillas vary by brand. Enfrijoladas is the cleanest of the five, with the tortilla packet and the chipotle tin to check.

Cross-contact is what a tag can't cover, so give it actions, not awareness. Wash the blender before the bean sauce if it last held an allergen, don't crisp the tostadas in oil that has cooked one, and wash the board, knife and your hands after the raw chicken and fish before they touch avocado, cheese or anything else served uncooked.

Two dishes deserve a second look if you're pregnant. Cotija and Mexican crema are sometimes made from unpasteurised milk, so buy pasteurised or leave them off the tostadas. The fish is fine cooked to 63°C provided the species is low-mercury, and your national food safety agency publishes a current list worth checking rather than guessing. If you're managing a diagnosed allergy or a medical diet, your clinician's list beats any recipe tag, including ours.

Five dinners, one shopping list with a lot of overlap: onion, garlic, tomatoes, chipotles, limes, tortillas. Buy once and cook across the week.

Gourmate scales any of these recipes to the number of people actually eating and lists the allergens it has detected in each one, which is a starting point for your own label check rather than a replacement for it. Try it here.