A Cinco de Mayo feast without your favorite Mexican dishes and beverages is like Thanksgiving dinner without a turkey. Yes, you can pardon a turkey but the celebration is not quite the same. Leaving the burritos, tacos and Dos Equis off your list will be a disservice to you and your guests hoping to have a sumptuous Cinco de Mayo feast.
Appetizers
Tacos
Let your guests have fun DIY-ing their food. Arrange a taco bar where everyone can build their own tacos. Serve corn tortillas and taco shells so your guests can choose between chewy and crunchy.
For the meat, serve shredded chicken and ground beef. You can even make your Cinco de Mayo feast a little more American by serving some hotdogs and other cold cuts. Remember, you want your guests to have fun experimenting so a variety of ingredients would be great.
No taco is complete without any kind of vegetable. Shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, chopped and sautéed onion, cilantro, sliced avocados, pickled jalapenos, and even pan-roasted mushrooms and zucchini will be a welcome sight for your vegetarian friends.
Of course your taco bar should have pinto beans, canned beans, salsa, and different kinds of cheese shredded at that.
Taco Cups
If you read the mess a build-your-own taco bar will make, then you can just serve your guests tacos. You can still make your classic tacos a tad more exciting by churning out these easy-to-make taco cups courtesy of Taste of Home.
What makes taco cups different from the tacos you love is that it uses dough instead of hard shells or tortillas. The dough is shaped into cups, as the name implies, and baked to golden brown. Of course, you have to put the ingredients in the cups first before baking them in the oven. Check out the link above to get the list of ingredients for this potentially new Cinco de Mayo feast favorite.
Main Course
Chiles Rellenos
Impress your guests with a Michelin restaurant-like main course for your Cinco de Mayo feast. The Washington Post included the My Mexico Kitchen’s chiles rellenos as one of its five recommended Cinco de Mayo feast recipes. A word of caution, however, this chiles rellenos recipe is no easy task. There are quite a number of steps to make before you can serve your main course. It also requires quality ingredients (if you really want to make the best for your guests), and takes a lot of time to prepare.
To give you an idea, this recipe makes use of poblano peppers, unsalted black beans, canned tomatoes, white onion, garlic, eggs, whole milk mozzarella cheese, extra virgin olive oil and safflower oil, among others.
You will also need an oven with a broiler, baking sheet, a heatproof bowl, blender, a handheld electric mixer or a stand mixer, a deep skillet, an instant-read thermometer, spatula, and a partridge on a pear tree. As you can see, chiles rellenos is a complicated yet worthwhile part of your Cinco de Mayo feast.
Beef Burrito Skillet
If you’re a fan of Mexican food, you should already know how to make a burrito. For this year’s Cinco de Mayo feast, you may want to try something new yet pretty familiar. The beef burrito skillet by Betty Crocker is basically a burrito that someone forgot to wrap.
The chiles rellenos will make mincemeat out of the beef burrito skillet when it comes to complicatedness and probably taste but a classic will always be a classic even if you make a few twists and turns.
The beef burrito skillet is made with ground beef, salsa, black beans shredded cheese, grand flour tortillas cut into strips. The difference from a normal burrito is that you cook everything in a skillet including the tortilla strips. Once done, you can top the dish with chopped green onions and sour cream.
Dessert
Mexican Chocolate Ice
The Washington Post also named the Mexican Chocolate Ice as its desert of choice if they were to pick the five most flavorful dishes worthy of any Cinco de Mayo feast.
Mexican Chocolate Ice, as they described it, is an interesting take on the Abuelita or Ibarra, a traditional Mexican chocolate drink. Instead of turning them into a hot chocolate drink, you’ll be adding ice, preferably the kind you use in granitas. Check this out for the complete ingredients and instructions.
Drinks
It’s a fantastic Cinco de Mayo feast when the host does not hold back on alcohol. A margarita bar is definitely a good idea and will be pretty much appreciated, especially by your lady guests. First you need to prepare your margarita. Mix tequila, fresh lime juice, triple sec, sweetened lime juice and lots of ice in a pitcher. Your margarita bar should include at least two of these pitchers.
Arrange glasses beside the pitchers. Next to them should be bar glass rimmers or platters of lime wedges and salt. The guests can grab their glass and rub the edges with lime juice before dipping in salt. They can then grab a wedge of fresh lime and stick it on the edge of their glass to complete the look.
Aside from your margarita bar, you can also setup a table for other cocktails and fill you coolers with Mexican beer. If you’re having a younger audience to your Cinco de Mayo feast, you should have children-appropriate drinks as well.
Many people are likely anticipating May 5 so they can enjoy a Cinco de Mayo feast filled with yummy Mexican food and lots of drinks. Check out The Gentleman Pirate for more recipes that you may want to try out for any occasion.
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