When Miss Frugal and I visited New York in April we were on a bit of a budget when it came to food – mainly because the less we spent on food, the more we could spend on shopping! So although there were thousands of places we could have eaten, we decided before we left that we weren’t going to eat in a lot of the more expensive places that people said we really ‘had to try’ and to eat cheaply where we could with just a few stand out treats.
The first night we got there it was pouring down so we ate at Pret and had delicious tomato and feta soup with chicken and avocado sandwiches which was amazing and just what we needed after a long days travelling. The second day we were there we discovered Chipotle which Miss Frugal likes to describe as ‘Mexican McDonalds’ because it’s fast food but not as we know it here in the UK.
You basically choose whether you want a burrito, tacos, wraps or just a bowl and then you choose your meat 0r tofu equivalent, add some beans, rice and fajita veggies and top it all off with guacamole, salsa, sour cream and cheese. I’m probably not describing it too well but this is what it looked like….
I had mine with chicken but Miss Frugal too a liking to the tofu too.
After that first time we had a couple of different meals in various Chipotles around New York and they never disappointed – either in taste or in budget!
One of the first things we did when we got home was look up how to make our own Fakeaway Chipotle but it seemed like a lot of faffing about considering how many different components make up the perfect Chipotle. We’ve managed to get as close as we can though without (a) spending a fortune and (b) spending a whole day in the kitchen cooking so I thought I’d share with you our version which tastes amazing and also, looks pretty close too if you ask me!
We started by master the perfect guacamole recipe which we you can find here….
And then we started experimenting with different versions of the rice we’d tried but after several attempts we decided that simple was best. We found that the best way to make their lime and cilantro (coriander to us here in the UK) was simply to cook our rice as normal and then stir through the juice of a lime as soon as it was finished cooking. We ended up leaving out the coriander as we prefer it without but you could include it easily – just finely chop a tablespoon or two of fresh coriander and stir though just before serving.
The actual fakeaway chipotle chicken was the hardest to recreate because we struggled to find anything that would give the chicken the chipotle flavour without lots of sauce. We ended up finding a sachet of chipotle sauce in Tesco which was perfect but sine then we’ve found a few other versions – just look in the Mexican aisle of the supermarket and you’ll be all good. Whatever you use, cook your chicken according to the instructions and that’s your guacamole, rice and chicken sorted. 😉
Here’s where you can start to cut corners! You can make Mexican style cheese wrap with homemade salsa….homemade salsa or you can just buy a cheapish salsa dip – totally up to you but I went for the easy option at this point and bought ready made. Add to that the tin of refried beans, the sour cream and the mozzarella cheese I bought and we’re ready to start piling up our bowls.
The last thing I make is quick and easy fajita veggies which I make with some peppers and red onion chopped into strips and fried gently together with a teaspoon of fajita seasoning while I’m setting the table with everything I’ve mentioned above.
Miss Frugal googled the right order to add things and this is what she got:
- Rice
- Beans
- Fajita veggies
- Meat
- Salsa
- Guacamole
- Grated cheese
- Sour cream
We just pile on what we want and dig in and our version of fakeaway chipotle is now genuinely one of our favourite meals!
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