This week was a double doozey. We’ve been talking all along about how we should be drinking along while we whip up these recipes. It was Gina’s pick, so she had us make carnitas pizza and mango margaritas. Yet again, we all had issues in one way or another.

I’ll start with the good… the pizza.

A bit of disclosure: I hate tomatoes, which means I hate salsa. Salsa is a requirement for this recipe SO, I didn’t eat the entire pizza or even an entire slice. I did nibble on the edges where no salsa was present, pushing toppings over to the edge so I could get a nice taste. Even fun pizzas won’t get me to eat tomatoes. Sorry. I have my limits. I’m pretty sure you do too. Don’t judge.

This seems to be a running trend, adjusting recipes just a bit to work for me but you do what you gotta do… I didn’t use the dough the recipe called for. Instead, I used this recipe. It’s thin and delicious. The trick is planning ahead because it needs to sit for at least 24 hours before you can use it. The longer it sits, the more flavorful it becomes. I’ve let it sit for several days before using, a time or two, and it was so good.

Another large adjustment I made was to use my slow cooker instead of the oven for roasting the meat. I had errands to do and needed this meat cooked. I couldn’t be bothered to sit around waiting for it to cook and didn’t want to leave the oven unattended while it did so. A few adjustments (I know… again, but it was necessary – promise!) and I was on my way to delicious meat. It was easy and let me go about my business. Double, maybe even triple bonus.

After shredding my meat…I waited for the perfect time to continue. It was an off day. Stop and go in every sense of the way. Okay, not every but it was just one of those days. Lots going on. So a timeout and I was back to business.

I didn’t pull out my dough ahead of time like I should have. Typically you should let chilled dough come to room temperature before using, I’m sorta glad I didn’t! It sure limited the amount I could spread the dough but I was able to get a super thin crust that didn’t rip even one bit. Crusty and thin = awesome.

Dough prepped, meat shredded and off we went. Layer by layer a glorious pizza was being created. I also cheated and didn’t sauté my onions and peppers. I’ve made pizza before with raw onions and peppers… it works perfectly.

Glorious and tasty it was. The shredded beef gave a nice spicy kick. In my tomato hating opinion, it’d have been perfectly good without the salsa. The Mr pretty much devoured it. I had no chance of getting any shots later when the margaritas were made.

Oh and speaking of the margaritas. I was so psyched to make these. An excuse to drink something yummy and full of tequila?! I love a good fruity margarita, but this sadly wasn’t it. I truly blame the recipe on this one. Blenders have a huge range when it comes to sizes. I’m positive Ree’s is massive in comparison to mine, which is fairly standard when it comes to box store variety blenders. I even reduced the quantities and still couldn’t fit it all in. Biggest fail was probably the part where I’m told to top it off with ice. But if your blender is different than mine, that’s going to give completely different results. I need quantities. Due to the ice issue, that may be why we had a strange consistency to ours. It was thick like a shake but not in a good way. Margaritas shouldn’t be thick like that unless truly frozen.

The fact that I wasted the last of my triple sec saddens me. Time to stock back up before the weekend… it’s Cinco de Mayo after all, perfect excuse to have a good fruity margarita and tacos. I’m seriously considering making fried tacos again for the occasion because they were that good.

My notes:
-Use your favorite thin crust dough. Even store bought is fine if that’s your favorite!

-The original recipe calls for quadruple the amount of meat necessary for a single pizza. We all had leftovers and didn’t even use the full amount of meat. I used less than half the amount called for and could still have easily made two pizzas… so sandwiches for leftovers it was! 1lb is more than enough for a single pizza if you don’t want leftovers.

-If you don’t want to use fresh mozzarella, shredded store bought is fine!

-Don’t be scared to go the easy route and slow cook your meat. You’ll still have delicious results. I used just under 2lb of meat with 24oz beef broth (instead of the juice that was called for) plus the regular seasonings… with maybe a dash more of each AND a few cloves of garlic minced. Garlic (and bacon) makes everything better. Cook on high for 4 hours, remove and shred. Remove 4 cups of liquid, returning shredded meat to the remaining liquid until ready to make pizza or eat sandwiches.

-Bake pizza at 500 degrees for 12-14 minutes. I find that temp and time range always gives perfect results for thin crust pizza.

Check out the other PW Wednesday posts:
Table For Two Blog
Wanna Be A Country Cleaver
My Life As A Mrs

Stop by Gina’s for the complete recipe(s):
Running To The Kitchen

And in case you missed the previous PW Wednesday posts:
Week 1: Fried Tacos
Week 2: Mushroom Sliders with Spicy Fry Sauce