I have loved cooking for most of my adult life. Notice I said “most.”

For the past few years I have struggled in the kitchen and fallen away from that first love. You know how it is. Life gets in the way. Working and writing and studying, keeping up with the housework, laundry and all those inevitable home repairs that you’re sure will only take a few hours but end up sucking-up your entire weekend. When cooking becomes an item on my daily list of chores, I can’t help but feel some resentment. My least favorite question: “What’s for dinner?”

Lucky for me and my poor (not literally) starving family, I recently finished my Master’s program! While I wait for that expensive piece of paper to hit my mail box, I can use the extra time to reignite the flame… well the burners.

For me, when I want to cook, I almost always have something specific in mind. Usually what I’m craving. Lately, my cravings have been for authentic Mexican food, like my mother in-law (MIL) makes. For years, whenever I have tried to duplicate her recipes, I end up with something that tastes okay, but it’s nowhere near her culinary perfection. See, she is an expert. A veteran who has never used proper measurements. She gives the methods and spices but the amounts that are fuzzy. She eyeballs everything.

I require the precision of a recipe when learning something new. This is where my favorite new cooking channel comes in. Now, there are millions of wonderful cooks out there that make wonderful Mexican food, but very few of the accounts or channels I found use recipes that bring that specific, regional flavor profile that is Michoacan, Mexico meets California, which is the essence of every recipe my MIL creates.

Have you all ever heard of Cooking Con Claudia? She’s been making cooking videos for years and earned over a million subscribers so far. Her videos are short but informative. She has her own cookbook out, too, but YouTube is where she lives. My love for her channel began when I came across her easy recipe for Chile Colorado, one of my husband’s all-time favorite foods:

The only difference between her recipe and my mother in-laws? My MIL says, when using a sauce made with dried chiles, you should always, ALWAYS, push the sauce through a strainer to get out the teeny, tiny pieces of chile skin. They bother some people. Oh, and I use fewer jalapeno’s. Claudia likes her food spicy! Now, I have made the Chile Colorado Claudia’s way three times (it is that popular with my family) and not once did my husband (who grew up eating only strained sauces) detect that I neglected to strain out the chile skin. Maybe he was too happy enjoying the first amazing Mexican food I ever made? I like to think so.

If you are like me, and you love authentic Mexican food made easy, then I suggest you give Claudia’s channel a try. She usually lists all of her measurements in the description box so you can screenshot them, and she moves quickly from one step to the next so your mind can’t wander. I have watched so many videos, and so far only one (the Taco-Bell-style Enchirito recipe) had a few missing items, but she mentioned the correct steps and amounts in the video. Cooking con Claudia‘s channel offers hundreds of amazing videos with clear recipes and instructions to for making snacks, main courses, drinks and even desserts. One of my favorites is her simple recipe for the Ultimate Bean Dip:

I honestly hope to see her on Food Network one day because her recipes are that good.

Happy Eats!