Pumpkin Empanadas: Easy Baked Mini Hand Pies

These mini pumpkin empanadas are brushed with a buttery, warming aromatic coating are fun and super easy to bake (not fried) using pre-made sheets of pie dough and a spiced pumpkin filling.

Jovie’s Unforgettable Christmas Eve Ramen

In the movie Elf, Jovie forgets her plain bowl of ramen to find Buddy the Elf. Here are simple add-ins to make packaged ramen unforgettable.

Sardine Tacos on Homemade Blue Corn Tortillas

Sardine tacos with cabbage, red onion and mustard salsa on homemade blue corn tortillas by Sonoran cookbook author Jackie Alpers.

SouthWestern-style Cast Iron Roasted Mushrooms

Recipe for oven roasted mushrooms cooked in a cast iron skillet from The Unofficial Yellowstone Cookbook by Jackie Alpers.

Deli Counter Tacos with Scallion-Ranch Cream Cheese

Lunchbox recipe for street tacos made with deli counter turkey and provolone cheese rolled in tortillas and topped with lettuce, tomato, olives and pepperoncini. Includes recipe for Scallion Ranch Cream Cheese Spread. 

Southwestern-Style Chipotle Deviled Eggs With Caviar

These spicy, chipotle deviled eggs topped with caviar and capers are fancy yet simple. The perfect party food or indulgent yet healthy snack.

Mushroom White Pizza with Lion’s Mane, Ricotta, and a Crispy Tortilla Crust

Recipe for a tortilla crust mushroom pizza. This thin-and-crispy pizza is topped with lemon infused ricotta, garlic & parmesan, lion’s mane and blue oyster mushrooms. White Sonoran Wheat helps give large Sonoran-style flour tortillas their elasticity which makes a perfect pizza crust.

Cadillac Margarita Recipe with a Sonoran Chile Rim

Cadillac margarita recipe that’s handcrafted using less sugar, freshly squeezed juice, high-end tequila and Grand Marnier. Add a slice of jalapeno to make it spicy.

Baguette Breakfast Casserole with Canadian Bacon, Eggs, and Gruyere

Canadian bacon, eggs, herbs, and cheese baked inside slices of crusty baguettes. A visually stunning breakfast casserole that is elegant, yet quick and easy to prepare.

Sonoran Cowboy (Charro) Caviar

Super-lucky flavorful Sonoran Charro Caviar made with black-eyed peas, bell peppers, serrano chiles, and onions, served on tortilla chips.

Crispy Tortilla Star Bites with Guacamole and Pomegranate Seeds

Topped with chunky guacamole and jewel-like pomegranate seeds, these crispy tortilla bites from The Unofficial Elf Cookbook by Jackie Alpers exude holiday joy. Use Jackie Alpers’ Sonoran-Style Chunky Guacamole Recipe or your favorite store-bought version.

Homemade Chile Powder from Fresh Chiles Recipe

How to dehydrate and grind chile peppers, with recipes for chili powder and custom spice blends using fresh homegrown and/or exotic store bought chiles. Preserve expensive and/or hard to find chiles.

Lentil Charro Caviar

Sonoran Lentil Cowboy Caviar made with is made with lentils, chile peppers and red onion in a spicy citrus vinaigrette. It’s similar to Texas Caviar made with black eyed peas and the lentils do resemble fish eggs.

Spicy Sonoran Coleslaw Recipe

This crunchy, salty, and spicy no-mayo Thai/Mexican coleslaw is an excellent companion to Sonoran style dishes. It’s inspired by Som Tum (green papaya salad).

Salsa Chicken Lettuce Taco Wraps

Chicken slow-simmered in salsa, then shredded for serving in as a filling for tacos, tostadas, enchiladas, and is keto when served in lettuce cups. 

Salsa Verde Recipe: Spicy Sonoran Tomatillo Salsa from Penca

Recipe for Sonoran Style hot green tomatillo salsa developed by Patricia Schwabe for her restaurant Penca. From the Taste of Tucson Cookbook by Jackie Alpers.

Spicy Chicken Salad Lettuce Tacos

Mexican chicken salad tacos recipe served in lettuce wraps made with rotisserie chicken. Featured in the Glamour.com article, A Week of Delicious Chicken Recipes.

Beth Dutton’s Breakfast Smoothie Recipe from Yellowstone

How to make Beth Dutton’s famous “2 scoops of ice-cream, 3 shots of vodka” smoothie from the Yellowstone TV series from The Unofficial Yellowstone Cookbook by Jackie Alpers.

Chile Colorado Recipe: Easy Sonoran Style Beef in Red Chile Sauce

Cubed beef simmered in red chile sauce for enchiladas, tacos, tostadas, salads or burritos. From the Taste of Tucson Cookbook by Jackie Alpers.

Tate’s Rattlesnake Sausage Chowder

This spicy rattlesnake sausage chowder has a bite, but at least it won’t take a bite out of you. Inspired by Tate Dutton’s brave move in a key episode of Yellowstone. This recipe is reprinted from The Unofficial Yellowstone Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by the Dutton Family Ranch, by Jackie Alpers.

Berry Tinted Irish Soda Bread Inspired by Yellowstone

Recipe for Irish soda bread with blueberries and currants inspired by 1923 from The Unofficial Yellowstone Cookbook author Jackie Alpers. 

Sheet Pan Garlic-Butter Green Beans

After a hard day’s work at the 6666 Ranch in Texas, Jimmy devoured a plate of Country Fried Steak smothered with gravy and a side of green beans. I’m sharing my recipe for Sheet Pan Roasted Green Beans to whet your appetite… you’ll have to wait for The Unofficial Yellowstone Cookbook for the main course.

Dry-Fried Asparagus

Dry-fried asparagus is charred and crispy on the outside, and tender on the inside. It has direct contact to the pan without oil or butter. Asparagus grows wild in Montana where the Yellowstone TV series is filmed.

Sonoran Carne Asada Quesadillas

Sonoran carne asada, scallions, cheese and crunchy tortilla chips stuffed in quesadillas and re-grilled for more crunch. Many years ago, Ben Galaz owner of BK Tacos taught me how to make Sonoran carne and cebollas asada.

Tortilla Snowflakes

Sweet and sparkly tortilla snowflakes – an edible version of the popular Mexican folk art, papel picado which will brighten any winter holiday table.

Mexican Street Corn Cups (Elote en Vaso)

Recipe for Elote en Vaso, Mexican street corn in cups. Pan fried corn kernels tossed  in a creamy sauce seasoned with chile and lime. From the Taste of Tucson Cookbook by Jackie Alpers.

Coctel de Camaron: Sonoran Mexican Shrimp Cocktail Recipe

This easy Sonoran style Mexican shrimp cocktail with crisp cucumber, creamy avocado, red onion and hot sauce is ready in about 5 minutes.

Roasted Whole Baby Cauliflower with Herbs & Parmesan

I’m fascinated by the idea of roasting an entire head of cauliflower, so when I came across these adorable baby cauliflower at the market the wheels started turning. They make a visually stunning side dish, perfect on cold winter nights. You can substitute one large cauliflower if you can’t find the little ones.

BLT Lettuce Wraps | The Perfect Summer Meal

Tomatoes are at their best, and something about the heat and humidity of the Arizona monsoon season makes me almost totally inert and immobile. This is about all I can muster dinner-wise, so I’m lucky that it’s fairly healthy… It turns out that mayo and bacon are better for us than expected, and my versions is also low-carb.

Parmesan and Pepperoni Crustless Pizza

If you bake a layer of Parmesan cheese in the oven it will crackle and pop after a while, turning into a crispy, cheese cracker that’s much tastier than any pizza crust I’ve encountered. I topped this baked cheese crisp with pizza spices and toppings before sliding it into the oven. The results: crustless pizza!

Pepperoni Parmesan Pizza Crisps

Bake a little sunshine into your life with these bright and happy two-ingredient pizza flavored cheese crisps.

Easy Chicken Tortilla Soup Recipe: Sonoran Style

Flavorful Sonoran-style tortilla soup with rotisserie chicken, diced tomatoes, green chiles, crushed tortilla chips, diced avocado and crumbled Mexican cheese in a clear broth.

Parmesan Crisps with Caviar and Crème Fraîche

Festive enough for New Year’s Eve, this pretty appetizer only takes about 5 minutes to make. Bacon infused caviar adds a unique smokiness that will intrigue your guests and is fairly inexpensive, but any decent quality caviar will do. The one-ingredient parmesan crisps are a savory, no-carb alternative to blini.

Molletes Recipe: Open Faced Mexican Breakfast Sandwiches

Molletes are open-faced breakfast sandwiches made by slathering refried beans onto toasted bolillo rolls and then heaping avocado slices, a fried egg, hot sauce, and lots of cheese on top.

Stuffed Bell Peppers Recipe: Nachos Supreme Style

Roasted bell peppers stuffed with creamy nacho cheese, avocado, pickled jalapeños, black beans and crunchy tortilla chips.

Strawberry Habanero Infused Tequila

This infused Strawberry-Habanero tequila makes a mean margarita or straight-up sipper.

Chiltepin Hot Salsa Recipe

Chiltepin salsa is an all-purpose salsa that can be used for dipping, for seasoning, and as a taco sauce. A little goes a long way, so if you prefer a milder salsa, cut the amount of chiles down by a half or a third. This recipe is from the Taste of Tucson cookbook by Jackie Alpers.

Easy Chorizo, Egg & Cheese Breakfast Taco Recipe

Sonoran-style breakfast taco with a crispy egg fried in chorizo and folded with cheese into a tortilla.

Matzoh Molletes Rancheros

This crispy matzoh based breakfast is a cross between molletes and huevos rancheros. I used beans from a can and my homemade chiltepin salsa.

Hibiscus Agua Fresca Recipe

This hibiscus agua fresca isn’t too sweet, so you can drink it all day long and even into the night (perhaps with vodka!) It’s healthy too.

Skillet Stuffing Shakshuka With Thanksgiving Leftovers

Recipe for Shakshuka made with leftover Thanksgiving stuffing. Be sure to make extra-extra stuffing for Thanksgiving so that you can make my Skillet Stuffing Shakshuka the next morning with the “leftovers”

Tuna Noodle Casserole: A Flavor-Packed Healthy Recipe

A modern, flavor-packed, one-pot tuna noodle casserole recipe made with healthy ingredients.

Sonoran Marinated Flank Steak

I marinated myself a flank steak using my mom’s recipe from the 80s, adding in some Mexican oregano and extra citrus to #sonoranize it a bit so now it’s an Ohio meets Tucson recipe.

Sonoran Street Corn Hot Dogs (Elote Hot Dogs)

I’m pretty sure I invented the Elote Dog when I first developed this recipe for The Food Network in 2018. Since then Elote Hot Dogs, inspired by Sonoran-Mexican Street Corn have become a sensation with hot dog enthusiasts all over the word coming up with their own version. Here’s my recipe for hot dogs topped with elote, mayo, lime and spices and served in a bolillo roll.

Spicy French Onion Ranch Dip

Spicy Ranch French Onion Dip. Two Dips That Live As One, Together At Last! 

Arizona Cheese Crisp: No Tortilla Recipe

Keto recipe for Arizona cheese crisp that’s the perfect comfort food. A cross between a Mexican pizza an an open-faced quesadilla, Southern Arizona restaurants started selling the dish more than 50 years ago and it’s become a staple of our local Sonoran style cuisine. 

Masa Crust Pizza Recipe Featuring the Three Sisters

Corn, beans and squash are three of the earliest domesticated crops grown by Native Americans in the Sonoran region. For this recipe, prepared corn masa, which is usually used to make tortillas or gorditas, is pressed into a cast iron skillet for the crust. If you’ve never tried tepary beans, this recipe is an excellent way to experiment with them, but you can substitute black beans instead if you want.

Sriracha Lime Vinaigrette Salad Dressing

This super easy salad dressing recipe is especially good on a Greek salad, cucumber salad or Asian Chicken salad and you can make it right in the bottle if you only have a little bit of Sriracha left.

Wheat Berry Breakfast Bowl with Butternut Squash, Ricotta, and Egg

Sweet and creamy butternut squash hash, hearty wheat berries and protein rich eggs merge into the perfect breakfast bowl.

Sweet Pepper Poppers

MIni Sweet Mini Pepper Poppers stuffed with jalapeno cream cheese and topped with panko bread crumbs. Recipe development and food photography for the Food Network.