.grilled chicken tostadas.

This was a new recipe I found in an old magazine of mine. We had been purging like mad a couple weeks ago and there was a magazine stash in our closet upstairs that had almost a dozen old Bon Appetit on the shelf! What a surprise!

I was really interested in making these because they're grilled, which means not as fattening ladies AND it meant I didn't have to turn my stove or oven on for anything. Even better! Very fast and easy to make. I know it's fast because we were starving and I had them done within a half hour.


Let's start with our prep.


Start with some shredded chicken. I had cut up a fryer the other night to make Jerk Chicken Salad w/ Grilled Pineapple Salsa. I only used the breasts for the salad, then cut the other pieces for fried chicken. There was still quite a bit of meat left on the carcass so I tossed the rest of the bird into a pot with celery, onion, bay leaf, and carrot and then filled it up with water. Left on a stovetop to simmer and I have some chicken stock now and all of this wonderful cooked chicken. I pulled it off the cooked meat and then seasoned with chili powder (about 1 tsp) and some salt.



Grate some Cotija cheese. This is a mexican cheese made from cow's milk. It's a harder cheese and when you go to grate it, you'll find it more or less just crumbles on contact. It also has wonderful flavor. I found this at Walmart. If you have a Mexican grocery store, you can also find it there.


Cotija doesn't melt like normal cheese, so for added measure I grated some cheddar. Mix the two cheeses together.

Seed and dice some tomato.


Finely shred some lettuce.


Dice a little onion.


Chop a little cilantro.

Now comes the fun part! Grilling!


Place three fajita size flour tortillas on a hot BBQ grill. I didn't put any kind of oil on these. They don't need it.


When they start browning nicely, flip them over. Let them grill for just a minute before putting the toppings on.


Pull all of the tortillas close to the edge away from the heat. Top with some pinto beans (drained and rinsed), a little onion, tomato, chicken, cilantro, and cheese.

Push them back a little, turn the heat down to low and put the lid down and let the cheese melt.


This is what they'll look like when done. As you can see the cotija cheese holds it's shape. Remove from the grill and bring inside.

Top with shredded lettuce, sour cream, and guacamole. We also put some salsa on top. Enjoy!