Making fajitas - session #1

I've made fajitas twice. I used the same recipe both times. I was not satisfied in both cases. Something seemed wrong and I didn't know what. After reflecting on it, I think I figured it out. I misunderstood the recipe. The recipe was unclear about getting rid of the marinade after the marinating step. So I was cooking the chicken in a huge amount of liquid and I think I wasn't supposed to do that.

The thing that seemed wrong was that the chicken and veggies were not seared. 

Another thing that seemed wrong was that there was so much liquid while cooking the chicken. I think I noticed this the first time I cooked the recipe but forgot it and didn't document it. So when it was time for the second recipe, I didn't have any of that info available to me.

I checked another fajitas recipe and noticed the explicit step of getting rid of the marinade. 

Maybe I should have known to get rid of marinade before cooking meat. But I've seen recipes that explicitly say not to remove the marinade. You cook it with the meat. It was chicken tikka masala.

In the future I'll be thinking about whether or not to get rid of marinade. If the recipe doesn't clarify, then I'll look up other similar recipes to see what they say about it.

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There's another problem with my fajitas recipe. I made a mistake of cutting up the chicken before marinating/cooking it. I've made this mistake before where I assume that cutting up the meat is something I do before marinating and cooking it. But this recipe says to marinate/cook and then cut it up, which I've seen before but didn't remember. I wonder how much this affected the result. Next time I'm going to follow this part of the recipe. I've edited the recipe directions so that it's more clear about not cutting up the meat before marinating/cooking.

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Another thing. The recipe says to use a skillet. Instead I used a wok. I think a wok is better for cooking this kind of stuff. It's easier to move the food around while cooking. Like there's more space to manipulate the food, and the surface allows for continuous movements from edge to edge of the wok. I learned about the benefits of using a wok when I was doing some Chinese recipes.