Cafe Rio Knock-offs

They served the following recipes at our R.S. Meeting last week & it was delicious. Almost as delicious as Lisa's...

Café Rio Dressing

1 buttermilk ranch dressing packet
1 cup mayo
1 cup buttermilk
2 tomatillos (tomato like vegetable with a husk around them)
½ bunch of cilantro
3 cloves garlic
Juice of 1 lime
1 jalapeño (Use the seeds too if you like it spicy. You could substitute a few drops of green tobasco for the jalapeno.)

Use a food processor to blend all the ingredients well. Refrigerate.


Cafe Rio Chicken

1 small bottle Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing
1 T chili powder
1 T cumin
3 cloves garlic—minced
5 lbs chicken breast

Cook all together in a crock pot for 4 hours, shred meat and cook 1 additional hour.

(Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing has 2 grams of sugar per serving. I try to avoid dressings with sugar, but this is a very small amount. You're only using 8 ounces of the dressing per 5 pounds of chicken if you follow this recipe, so it should be fine, even for South Beach Dieters.)


Café Rio Rice

3 cups rice - Follow directions on your package of rice for the amount of liquid to use to cook your rice. (I used brown rice and it turned out fine. I did back off on the amount of liquid I added because the other ingredients added have alot of moisture and the first batch I made had too much liquid so my rice was mushy and over cooked.)


Liquid for rice- you can use just water or I used chicken broth

4 t chicken bouillon
4-5 cloves garlic

½ bunch cilantro
1 can green chilies—or equivalent fresh
¾ t salt
1 T butter
1 small onion

Blend cilantro, green chilies, garlic and onion together in food processor. Bring water to a boil and add all ingredients, simmer covered 30 minutes or until the rice absorbs the liquid.



Cafe Rio Pork

Pork Loin or Pork Roast -

Sauce: 18 oz Coca-Cola Classic or Dr. Pepper (do not use diet or generic)
1 Cup sugar
1 7 oz can Chipotle Chilies in ADOBO Sauce (since you use the sauce and not the chilies, it is important that you get exactly that.)
1 tsp dry ground mustard - heaping

1 tsp ground cumin - heaping
1 Tbsp. minced garlic - heaping


Rub Pork Roast with olive oil then salt and pepper outside. Sear Pork Roast in pan on high heat on all sides until brown crust forms. Place Roast in pre-heated crockpot and pour sauce over and cook in crock pot on low for 7-9 hours or on high for 5-6 hours in sauce or until it pulls apart.


For the sauce remove chilies from the can of adobo sauce. Rinse chilies with the coke to get all the sauce off. Discard whole chilies and only use the sauce. Also rinse can with coke to get all remaining sauce. (I left the chilies in once, and it was so potent I cried when I lifted the lid of the crock pot. If you like super-spicy foods, leave one or two chilies in. If you want to clean the system, go ahead and use them all . . .)
Put all ingredients in blender. Blend, pour over pork in crock pot. After cooking, pull apart with forks into bite size pieces. Leave in sauce while you serve it.