Isabel Eats
Conversations on Culinary Culture with Isabel Orozco-Moore
Words by Chelsey Simpson / Photos by Rachel Maucieri
Ten years ago, a homesick Oklahoma City native who was trying to reproduce and chronicle her mother’s Mexican cooking created a website that is now one of the most popular Mexican recipe websites in the country, with 2 million monthly visitors and over 400,000 followers across her combined social channels. “Isabel Eats” is now a full time job for both Isabel Orozco-Moore and her husband, and in addition to running her website, Isabel is hard at work on her first cookbook. The couple also have two small daughters. We spoke to Isabel about food, family, and the origins of her cooking career.
How did Isabel Eats come about? Did you set out to become a food writer?
I’m the youngest of six children. My husband likes to call my family the Mexican Brady Bunch, because my parents had three girls and three boys. My older three siblings were born in Mexico and the three youngest were born in the United States, and I grew up on the southside of Oklahoma City.
I went to Pittsburgh for college and grad school, and I was really missing home. There wasn’t a ton of Mexican food in Pittsburgh. I would call my mom all the time asking her how to make certain dishes. She didn’t really have recipes, so like any mom, she would say, “Just do this and add this and then taste it.” But I didn’t have her palate, I needed her help. I decided I should write everything down and document it, so I decided to make a website. It just kind of took off from there. I started the website in 2015. Every month I would see more people coming to the website; I was able to take it full-time in 2017. It’s kind of nuts. I still don’t believe it.
What are some of the meals your family enjoys the most?
Tacos for sure. Nothing that requires a recipe—flour tortillas (my 4-year-old daughter loves flour tortillas and even almond flour tortillas) and then any sort of meat. Last night it was sauteed chicken. Usually we also have refried beans, veggies, and homemade salsa. To please my 4-year-old, we often don’t make things as spicy as we might want them, but we don’t avoid spicy. We put all the salsas out and have them on the table so she sees us eating them.
My husband and I love any type of braised meat dish, like chili verde. It’s pork simmered in spicy tomatillo sauce, and we serve that with Mexican rice. Or we will serve chili Colorado, and that’s beef braised in a homemade red chili sauce made from dried chilies, onions, garlic, and other spices. We love any sort of braised meat that’s fall-apart tender. It’s easy because you just throw it on the stove or in the slow cooker. And it keeps really well in the fridge.
I know your mom’s cooking inspired you to start developing recipes—what was food like in your family when you were growing up?
Both of my parents cooked every day when I was growing up. Pretty much everything we ate was amazing. My mom and dad were always in the kitchen, they always made beans from scratch. Beans and rice were always there, always a staple. My mom worked full-time. My dad had a work injury and stayed at home, so he cooked a lot as well. The braised dishes I love, he made those all the time. He loved making flour tortillas. We always ate dinner together, at the table.
With a big family like that, the holidays must be fun. What are your biggest holiday food traditions?
For holidays, the big thing is tamales—we really only make them once a year, sometimes twice if something extra-special is going on. So when we do make tamales, we make a lot, like two or three hundred. We make a version that’s stuffed with chili Colorado. There’s usually a version we call rajas, it’s roasted poblanos or serranos and cheese. And there’s usually a kid-friendly one, which is just cheese inside.
We usually start making them on the 23rd [of December]. My mom usually makes the filling, the chili Colorado. The 24th is the big day that we celebrate. My mom, sister, niece—whoever wants to make the tamales—comes over to help assemble and fold them. When they’re done, we eat them for the whole week, Christmas through New Year’s.