Turn Up the Heat with a Mexican Feast
Trying different cuisines provides a new opportunity to hone your culinary skills and experiment with new flavours, with Cinco de Mayo the perfect chance to get better acquainted with Mexican cooking.
Stock up on jalapenos, cheese, limes and sour cream, and get a bottle of tequila in…happy Cinco de Mayo!
Make Tortilla Wraps from Scratch
As they’re the basis of burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, fajitas and even nachos if you tear them into smaller pieces and toast or fry them, making tortilla wraps from scratch is a good skill to master for future Mexican dinner recipes.
Tortilla wraps are made from a simple mixture of self-raising flour, water, olive oil, a pinch of salt and any other herbs and spices you’d like to use.
Mix the ingredients together to form a dough, kneading it for a few minutes before dividing it into even pieces. Roll each one into a circle - you could use a plate as a template to make sure they’re evenly sized.
Cook your wraps for a few moments on each side in a frying pan in a little olive oil. You will need to flip your wraps over to ensure even cooking, so you’ll want scratch-proof pans that won’t show marks from your utensils - even if you’ve only got a metal spatula to hand.
Thanks to the innovative cookware technology that Circulon pans are equipped with, heat will be distributed evenly as you cook, providing you with beautifully even wraps.
Our pans also feature our Total® Non-Stick System for easy food release, so you don’t have to worry about losing half of your dough to the bottom of your pan. The innovative grooves you’ll find on all of our pans are part of this, and they also protect our cookware from abrasions, meaning you can flip your tortillas as many times as you like, without worrying about scratching your pan.
Perfect Your Spice Level
Mexican food is known for its heat and spice, but it’s important to get this right to ensure flavours come through properly and you aren’t just masking your taste buds with tonnes of chillies.
Something like refried beans or our chunky steak chilli would actually benefit from a more subtle spice content and a smokier flavour instead, which could be achieved by adding chilli powder and smoked paprika.
These dishes would then make delicious fillings for burritos, enchiladas or quesadillas using your homemade tortillas, or could be served on their own with rice or salad. Keep the meal mild by adding grated cheese and sour cream or turn up the heat level further with chopped jalapenos and chilli cheese.
If you’re playing around with Mexican-inspired chicken recipe ideas, bear in mind that this meat is great at absorbing flavour, so you can be quite generous with your spices. For a tasty, balanced dish, marinade chicken in natural yoghurt and crushed chillies before cooking and squeeze fresh lime juice over the top when serving.
Whatever your preferred spice level, using non-stick cookware will make sure you don’t lose any of that gorgeous flavour during cooking. Check out our full range here.
Non-Stick Bakeware: A Mexican Cooking Essential
It’s not just non-stick pans that are a must-have for cooking Mexican cuisine, but also good quality bakeware. If you’re loading your homemade tortilla wraps with refried beans and cheese before grilling, you don’t want to have to spend hours scrubbing bits of stuck-on cheese from your baking trays.
However, you could even take your griddle pan with your quesadillas in and pop it straight under the grill, as our cookware is oven-safe up to variable temperatures.
Other items from our bakeware collection would come in handy for different Mexican dinner recipes though; a non-stick roasting tray would be just the thing for making enchiladas in, for example.
The Stickiest Dessert of All
Churros may be the obvious choice to finish your meal with on Cinco de Mayo, but there’s another Latin American dessert that’s arguably even more delicious - dulce de leche.
This sticky sweet treat is made from milk, sugar and vanilla, which needs to be simmered for several hours before coming together to form a caramel-like sauce.
The finished result would be absolutely delicious served with churros, pancakes, pannacotta, plain shortbread biscuits or even just some Greek yoghurt and fruit.
Don’t let yourself be put off making dulce de leche by the thought of having to tackle a pan coated in toffee. All of our cookware is non-stick and dishwasher-safe, so you can wash your Cinco de Mayo meal down with a few tequilas rather than the washing up.
Whether it’s a Mexican fiesta, Sunday lunch or you’re just cooking a quick meal for yourself on a weekday evening, Circulon cookware will help to guarantee you the very best results. Shop our full collection here.