How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Taco

To the inexperienced home cook, most recipes look something like this:

Step 1: Become competent at cooking.
Step 2: Produce delicious meal, using sorcery.
Step 3: Make out with Giada DiLaurentis.

One thing you will notice is that all three of these are very hard to do, and may inspire a would-be chef to order a pizza and cry his or herself to sleep.

This does NOT have to be your fate! You CAN create delicious, original, healthy meals without any prior experience! All this is possible through the magic of tacos, and I am about to prove it.

For instance, can you dump things into a pot? Can you safely operate a fork and knife? How are you at sitting down and watching television? If you answered "Yes," "Yes," and "I double-majored in Sitting Down and Watching Television," then you are well on your way to a spectacular taco experience. Here we go.

Hungarian-Style Pulled Chicken Taco with Cool & Spicy Slaw

Ingredients:

• 3-ish pounds boneless chicken breasts, no skin
• 1 can (roughly 8 oz.) tomato sauce (for the extra-health-conscious, use reduced sodium)
• 3 tbsp. Paprika (preferably sweet)
• 1 clove of garlic, finely grated or chopped
• 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce (pronounced "WUSS-ter-sher")
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• roughly 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• Whole-grain tortilla (or if you like a crunch, standard taco shells will do)

Equipment:

• 1 big ol' slow cooker/crock pot
• 1 cutting board
• fork and knife
• Season one of BBC's "Being Human" or sweet-ass TV series of choice

Process:

1. Combine tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, garlic, salt, and onions in your slow cooker. Stir until well integrated and smooth.
2. Put whole chicken breasts into the slow cooker. Cover with the sauce.
3. Set slow cooker to "Low" and put the lid on securely.
4. Put DVD's into your DVD player. Sit down and watch them for about five hours.
5. Once five hours have elapsed, transfer chicken breasts to cutting board. Pull apart and shred the meat with a fork and knife. The meat should be super DUPER tender at this point and will shred nicely.
6. Put shredded chicken meat back in slow cooker and mix with the sauce.
7. Put one large ladelful of saucy, chickeny goodness onto tortilla or taco shell.

NOTE: This recipe makes quite a bit of taco filling. If you're not serving, say, four or more people at a time, you can portion out the leftovers and put them in AIRTIGHT freezer bags for use later. And because there's very little fat and the meat has already been super-cooked, the texture won't be appreciably altered when you thaw it out.

Now, you could go right ahead and eat this as-is. The rich, rustic flavors of the paprika and tomato sauce with that slow-cooked, tender chicken stands quite nicely on its own. But I like a little bit of crunch to go with that soft deliciousness, and I enjoy contrasting-but-complimentary flavors. If you are of a like mind, then follow the recipe below for my cool and spicy slaw, which you can put right in the taco (or on the side, if you prefer).

Ingredients:

• 1 English cucumber, fresh as you can find
• 1 medium-sized carrot, fresh
• fresh cilantro (to taste)
• fresh Napa cabbage
• 1 Jalapeno pepper
• pinch of turmeric
• 3 tbsp. cider vinegar

Process:

1. Using a SHARP* 8-10" chef's knife, finely jullienne the cucumber, carrot, jalapeno, and about one large-ish leaf of cabbage. For culinary neophytes, "jullienne" means to cut VERY thin strips. TIP: If you're squeamish about spicy food, remove some or all of the seeds from the pepper, as this is what gives it most of its heat.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, combine jullienned veggies with cider vinegar and turmeric until well coated.
3. Rough-chop the cilantro and combine to the mixture.
4. Add a pinch or two of sea salt, to taste. TIP: Add salt slowly and taste often, so that you don't overdo it. It's easy to add more salt, but pretty much impossible to take it away.

That's it. Seriously. And it's AWESOME.

By the way, this dish goes very well with a crisp summer ale, a chilly glass of un-oaked chardonnay, or a nice unsweetened iced tea.

One of the best things about slow-cookers and recipes like this is that you can play around with it. You could substitute shin beef for the chicken. You could make a barbecue sauce, or add different spices. You can do... well, pretty much anything. So have fun with it! Experiment! My only advice is that you should TASTE OFTEN when you're making whatever you're making. Otherwise, you could end up being very unpleasantly surprised.

NOTE: Pictures and nutritional information forthcoming.

*A sharp knife is the safest kind of knife, as it will slide much more easily through the food you are cutting. Dull knives make you press much harder on the blade, which could cause it to slip and cut you.