The Ultimate Creamy Rajas Tacos | Rick Bayless Taco Manual

You may have seen my first Creamy Rajas or Rajas con Crema Taco recipe, but I decided that it was time to take it up a notch. With chicken and/or greens, this dish is, without a doubt, a must-have in your weeknight repertoire.

If you’ve never tasted what happens when the herbaceousness of roasted poblanos meets the sweetness of golden onions and then gets wrapped in the richness of thick cream—well, you haven’t experienced one of life’s great joys. Though it’s rarely done in Mexico, I’ve written this recipe to optionally include greens and/or chicken—variations that seem to appeal widely in the United States.

Try the recipe yourself! 👇

Roasted Poblano Rajas (+/- greens and/or chicken)

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00:00 Rick’s Intro to Rajas con Crema
01:03 Preparing the Poblanos and Onions
5:36 Peeling Poblanos at the Sink
06:52 Putting it all in the Pan!
07:43 Adding Mexican Crema
08:10 Final Seasoning
09:49 Making it DELUXE with Chicken and Kale

Traditional creamy poblano rajas deluxe [music] Welcome back to my kitchen. The next page in our taco manual is going to take us to a place that we’ve sort of touched on  several times in other videos It’s rajas con crema. But in this version I want to show you

What rajas con crema can be, built from the bottom up because they’re so incredibly popular in taquerias all over Mexico. So what is rajas con crema They’re always made from the roasted poblano chile with onions, caramelized onions, cream, garlic. I mean all the good stuff and this is something that you’re going

To want to build on in your own kitchen. So I’ll show you the classic, but then I’m going to show you some add-ins I think are going to be really popular in your home. So the first thing that we have to do is to roast

The poblanos and if you have a gas range I suggest that you put the burner on high. I just sort of set these poblanos up here and let them roast directly over the flame. Obviously they’re kind of teetering up here because I didn’t put any kind of a wire rack

Here but if you’ve got one that will take this high heat then you could use that. If you have only an electric range then you will do it under a broiler and you will put the shelf at the highest position as close to that broiler as possible. Get the broiler

Hot and then put the poblanos in there but it will take a little bit longer and actually the flesh of the poblanos turns out a little softer when you roast under a broiler than when you are working with gas like I am here. Also a lot of people

That I know that have gas grills will just turn on the gas grill get it as hot as they can and roast there. Now while those are roasting over there I’m going to slice up an onion here and I’m going to slice it at about quarter inch. We’re going to brown

Them. Now when I say caramelized onions I’m actually not meaning exactly what they do say in the European kitchen or the French kitchen especially where they do that very slow. The kind that you would use for French onion soup say over medium high heat and I’m going to brown them on the

Outside which will add a lot of sweetness to them but they’re still going to have some crunch. Okay so let’s look at these guys. So they’re getting blackened here. I want to completely blacken the skin. That was almost there. This one’s almost there. Let’s take a look at this one. It’s lacking a

Little bit more than the others there. I’ve got a pan here. I’m going to put that pan over kind of medium high as I said and I’m going to film it with oil. I’m using olive oil here because I think it’s really delicious with poblanos but you could use vegetable

Oil for this. Slide these onions into that pan. We will look now at the poblanos because they’re probably ready to turn. Before I do that though I’m going to just toss the onions around a little bit to make sure that they’re nicely coated with the oil and yeah we got a completely blackened

Surface there so I will turn them over. Now why do you roast poblanos? It’s because they have really tough skin number one and because their flavor comes out much more when they’re roasted. You’re going to add some flavor to it because you’re going to get a little smokiness from this

Dark roasting on the outside but also the flavor, the natural flavor of the poblanos begins to emerge during the roasting process. Now I’m going to cut up this garlic. When I am chopping garlic I will either do it through a microplane grater because it grates it really fine and

That’s easy to work with. I often do that when I’m making Chinese food because I’m usually grating a bunch of ginger at the same time. If I’m going to do the regular chopping here I will slice it first and then I’ll do rock and chop across it until I

Get it as small as I am looking for. Let’s take a look at these onions now because I think that they’re starting to brown just a little bit because I’m working over a fairly high heat here. So toss those guys around. Let’s look at these poblanos. They’re almost ready. I got a little

Bit more because they’re really getting beautifully roasted. These two are ready. I’m going to set them to the side here so that they start to cool down a little bit. I’ve got a couple more rocks and chops to go here with the garlic. The onions lack another couple

Of minutes to get that nice golden color and when they get that golden color I’ll toss this garlic in there for about a minute. That’s all it takes to cook the garlic. Okay the poblanos are cool enough for me to handle now. I always do this at a sink because I’m

Going to just rub off all of that charred skin and then once I’ve rubbed off what I can get off easily here I’m going to tear open this poblano and like that. I’m exposing the seed pod. I’m going to tear around the top of it so that the seed pod now is

Released here. That’s going to go to the compost pile but this is not completely clean yet so I always turn on a little bit of water and just splash it on there. I know some people are just gasping right now saying no you should never do that but I’m not really

Soaking the poblanos here. I am more like just using the water to kind of rinse them off very lightly and there I’ve got a cleaned poblano. I don’t worry about little tiny bits and pieces of the charred skin because those are going to add some flavor

To the finished product and now I’ve got a couple more to go and then I’m going to meet you back on the other side to slice these guys up. I am cutting the roasted poblano into about one quarter inch strips. I took the onions off the fire when I was waiting for

These to cool down so now I’ve put it back over the fire because these roasted poblanos strips are going to go into the nicely caramelized onions and garlic mixture that we’ve got there and then I’m going to add the luscious cream. So we got to talk about the cream.

You can work with regular heavy whipping cream. You can buy Mexican crema for this. If you want to get close to what they use in Mexico you could buy the French creme fraiche. That’s actually the closest thing to what that great crema that I

Buy in Mexico is so you can feel free to use any of those. I am going to toss this with the crema here. I’m putting in not all of this crema. I’ll tell you why in just a second but I’m going to put about three quarters of a cup of

Crema. I’m going to add Mexican oregano. If you buy your Mexican oregano at a Mexican grocery store you will find it in the whole leaf form with some of the flower buds in there as well. I need about a half a teaspoon of it for this. So I’m going to

Start with a teaspoon in my hand because I have to crush it and it’ll crush down to about a half a teaspoon. So I’m rubbing it between my palms as is sort of tradition in Mexico which is really lovely because then your palms smell like that beautiful Mexican oregano. Very very different

Than the oregano that you find in the Mediterranean. Mexican oregano is part of the verbena family, not the oregano family at all. You can see how beautiful this is starting to look now. The cream has really started to get kind of watery looking because it’s melting in here. So we have to cook

It down and we’ll start to beautifully coat all of our vegetables here. Then we’ll season it. I’ll meet you back in just a few minutes. Okay this is looking really beautiful. The cream has reduced now to like what I would call a sort of gravy consistency. We’ve got to season it. It’ll take

About a teaspoon or so of salt to get this seasoned appropriately. There you go. You’ve got the classic rajas con crema that you could find in so many taquerias, especially the ones that are called tacos de casuelos or tacos de gisado. You would find that there. They would scoop it out of

One of those beautiful earthenware pots if that’s what the people are working with. They would put a little bit of cheese on the top of it, the queso fresco or queso anjeko. You’ve got something really beautiful. Now my personal favorite is to take this to another level of add-ins. Okay, classic,

Classic, classic. But I like to add greens to mine. So I have kale here. This is about an eight-ounce bunch. You cut it into squares that are about an inch or so and then I always cook it or blanch it using the microwave. I will just toss a

Little bit of water in on top of it, cover it well, and then cook it for a couple of minutes, two to three minutes, depending on how sturdy the greens are that you have chosen. If you’re working with something like spinach, just 30 seconds will probably be enough to just wilt it and

Then you would add that too. Or maybe you want to go full bore and have some shredded chicken in there. I’m going to show you what this is like if you add both of these because this makes such an incredible meal. So we’re going to put this

Back on the heat here and I’m going to take our microwave blanched kale and add that to the skillet. I’m going to add this pulled chicken. So kind of coarse shreds of chicken. Now the cream won’t be enough for that so I’m going to scrape in the rest of this cream. Of

Course we’ll have to come back and season it with a little bit more salt because we’ve added so much more to it here. I’m going to let this cook together until that new addition of cream has reduced some and the greens and the chicken are hot. Well I know my

Mouth is watering now. The smell of roasted poblanos is one of my favorite things and you add that sweetness of browned onions and now we’ve got lots of other stuff, delicious stuff here in the pot. I really do think that this is one of the most attractive

Of the fillings that you’ll find in the places that do tacos de casuela. Now typically this will just get a little bit of queso añejo or queso fresco over the top of it. I think it’s the perfect perfect garnish because this will give you a real punch of flavor

Which I think is just great. And now simply because my mouth is watering so much I’m going to just go in here and have a bite. I mean these are tacos de rajas but deluxe.