Fiesta Fajita Bowls

These fiesta fajita bowls are a fun dish to serve for Cinco de Mayo.  Instead of going the taco route, you can opt for a slightly healthier main dish with all your favorite Mexican flavors.  Homemade tortilla bowls are made by baking them in the oven instead of plunging them in the deep fryer (and they are whole wheat!).  Each bowl is filled with nutty brown rice, avocado, black beans, chicken, and plenty of lettuce.  The recipe calls for a fajita marinade but you can easily mix up a couple of spices (cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder) with some cilantro and lime to make your own impromptu marinade as well.  Fiesta fajita bowls will cause a party in your mouth.

Fiesta Fajita Bowls

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts
2 romaine hearts, chopped
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 small jalapeno, chopped
1 avocado, sliced
2 whole wheat tortillas
1 cup brown rice
1 cup black beans
1 cup Fajita marinade (I use World Harbors)
Cooking spray

Preparation:

Marinade your two chicken breasts in the cup of marinade prior to cooking. I like to marinate overnight if possible, or at least for an hour or two.

Heat up the grill (or a skillet, if you prefer to stay indoors) to medium heat.

While grill/skillet is heating up, prepare your brown rice. I use Minute rice because it only takes 10 minutes from start to finish.

Begin to cook the marinated chicken on your preferred cooking method of choice. I use the grill, and it takes about 10 minutes for the chicken to cook through. It is also possible to do this on a skillet (coat w/ 1 tsp vegetable oil or cooking spray first).

While chicken is cooking, prepare the fajita bowl. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Turn two oven safe bowls upside down (opening down) on a cookie sheet — preferably one with edges so it doesn’t slide off — and coat with cooking spray. The size of the bowl isn’t an exact measurement. It should be small enough that the tortilla can fit over the top and partially around the sides, but not so small that you don’t have enough of a “bowl” when you remove the tortilla.

Take the two tortillas and press them gently over the bowls. The idea here is to bake the tortilla over the bowl to create a crispy shell that can hold your salad. Place cookie sheet in the oven and bake tortillas until golden and crispy (approx 7 minutes).

Continue prepping the vegetable toppings if they are not already chopped/sliced, etc. This is also a good time to rinse and drain the black beans.

Remove chicken from grill and slice into strips. Remove tortilla bowls from the oven.

Layer all of your ingredients into the tortilla bowl as desired, and top off with a little extra marinade as a dressing. A drizzle of taco sauce also works well here if you have it sitting around.