Hobby Farm Tails: Frugal Fajitas

Fajitas are a frugal way to use up leftovers, but have a fresh, interesting, and satisfying meal all at the same time!

Last night I had some leftover pot roast. Now, in a family our size (which comprises six men or near-men), leftover meat of any kind is rare. But I found a great sale on pot roast, and slow-cooked two of them all afternoon for dinner. There was about half a roast left, and so I thought I would try it out in fajitas. It turned out to be a winner.

Fajitas are frugal because you literally can use up any meat you've got on hand - chicken, beef, pork, even fish. And when sweet peppers are on sale, or you grow your own, it makes for a super-cheap meal that most everyone loves!

Let's make up a batch of fajitas...pot roast-style!

First, thinly slice up several different sweet peppers - I used reds, yellows, and orange ones. Also slice up some onions. Toss these in a heavy-bottom fry pan (I always use cast iron for fajitas!) with some oil and toss some salt on them to help them get juicy.

Mix all of the pretty veggies together and saute about 5 minutes. I only cook my peppers and onions half-way. I find that they are sweeter, crisper, and more wonderful in a stir-fry or fajita this way. Sometimes we do what I call semi-raw fajitas, in which I cook the meat but not the veggies at all - it's super delicious! But this night I cooked the peppers/onions...in fact, I cooked them a bit too much for my liking. But that's all a matter of opinion, so you just do what your family will like!

Now we're going to toss in some seasonings. What? You don't have fajita seasoning on hand? No problem! You probably have all of the ingredients (and none of the bad ones they so like to include in the packages!) right in your cupboard. And the good thing is, it's not a mystery - you can add this and that and still come up with a great fajita mix. So let's see what we've got here:

Looking clockwise from the bottom center, we have minced onions, granulated garlic, salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, Italian seasoning, and chipotle seasoning. What I didn't picture was the tablespoon or so of cornstarch I usually add, because I also use this as my taco seasoning, and that helps it to all gel nicely together. I also, after it was mixed together, added more chili powder - fajitas are good if they're heavy on the chili! :-) Here you can see the proportions of the ingredients - you can make any size batch based on this! You can also remove things, add others. For instance, maybe you don't have chipotle seasoning. You could add some red pepper flakes or add a dash or two of Tabasco to the finished fajitas! Or maybe you have onion powder, and not dried minced onions. Or no dry onions at all. No problem. You won't miss it a bit. This recipe is flexible!

Stir all of the spices together in a bowl...

...and then add several heaping spoonfuls to the veggies. Toss them lightly, and then remove them from the pan.

Next I sliced the roast up thinly and added it to the pan. I didn't clean it out between the seasoned veggies, just added a bit more canola oil. I sprinkled some salt and a touch of the fajita mix on top of the pieces and tossed them until they were juicy and hot. If I was using raw meat, I would at this point cook the meat up, and add a bit of seasoning. But in this case, it just needed to be warmed through.