Meats, Limes, & Rice
I spent a long weekend in Tucson this past winter and feel in love with the city, but even more in love with Sonoran hot dogs. Honestly, if I had only eaten Sonoran hot dogs all weekend, I would have been happy, and knew they were something I was going to have to try out for myself during the 2026 Meatwave season. So that formed the backbone of the menu for Meats, Limes, & Rice, whose name I also used an excuse to form an entire playlist of songs that feature Q-Tip (not Tribe or solo tracks, only ones where he guests).
Of course, first up is the entire inspo for the menu, the Sonoran hot dog. This dog is so loaded with toppings, it requires a special hearty bun that can hold up, which I had to make myself. Those buns were toasted on the grill and then lined with pinto beans with a bacon-wrapped hot dog placed on top. Then on went onions, tomato, mayo, mustard, and salsa. I feel like a grilled guero chile is required, but couldn't find them in the days leading up to this Meatwave, so subbed in banana peppers to complete the dish. This wasn't as good as the best Sonoran hot dogs I had in Tucson, but it was certainly good enough to fulfill a craving.
The sea of great Mexican and Southwestern food we had in Tucson was always accompanied by really excellent salsas, and one that stood out for me was a pineapple salsa at The Quesadillas. So that served as an inspiration point for this new pineapple salsa recipe I developed that brought together grilled pineapple, onions, garlic, and habanero to form a great sweet, spicy, and fruity salsa that I really loved.
I made that salsa primarily to adorn these shrimp nachos. The home-fried tortilla chips here were topped with the pineapple salsa, green chile queso, pico de gallo, and scallions. Then they were dotted with shrimp that had a chile heavy rub applied and were finished with a garlic-lime glaze, which made them meld really well in the final dish.
I had the idea to do some grilled chile rellenos, but wasn't exactly sure how to execute them. Digging into existing recipes on the internet, I found first a Rick Bayless one that achieved this by wrapping the chiles in corn husks, which seemed perfect. Then I found recipes for chile relleno tamals, which intrigued me even more and I almost change course, but decided to save that idea for another day. Glad I did because these turned out even better than I was envisioning, with the grilled poblanos being stuffed with a flavorful mixture of Oaxacan cheese, grilled corn, onion, tomato, and cilantro, then finished with caldillo sauce after being grilled in the corn husks.
The last new recipe I prepared was cauliflower tacos. For these, I gave large cauliflower florets a chile-based seasoning before grilling them and chopping them up into small pieces. I then piled the cauliflower into warmed tortillas and finished them with pickled red onions, avocado salsa, and radish slices. They looked a bit unassuming, but had a lot of flavor thanks to heavy seasoning on the cauliflower combined with the tangy onions along with the tart and slightly spicy salsa.
I was bad at getting photos beyond of the new recipes I was working on. So there's no shot of giant bowl of Mexican rice I made, all the great contributions folks added to the menu, or a lot of the 30-plus people that showed up. It was only as people began leaving that I got a few snaps of the crowd, starting with Anna, Steve, Chris, and Lindsay here.
We have Courtney, Christina, and Kris up next.
Got a lot of people in one shot here with Evan, Meredith, Lindsey, Cody, Ryan, and Juliana.
A rarity, a photo of me, which I asked Kris to take because I was so excited about having a Sonoran hot dog while wearing an awesome shirt I got while in Tucson.
And my favorite part of the guest list, the canine constituency. I forgot to get a photo of Ravioli before she left, but luckily Dotty stuck around a bit longer and I did a little photo shoot with her, which closed out this really excellent second Meatwave of the year.
