Crispy Crunchy Beef and Bean Burritos

It’s amazing what a difference a short stay in the oven can make.  Feed your family regular beef and bean burritos and you’ll get, “Meh.”  But make the burritos crispy on the outside and, “OMG these are good!  Can I have another?”  You’ll definitely want to add this to your easy dinner repertoire.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• ½ lb. ground beef
• ½ onion, minced
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon pepper
• 1 Tablespoon chili powder
• 1 can (16 oz.) refried beans
• ¼ cup taco sauce
• 1 cup grated cheese
• Tortillas
• Canola oil 

In a pan over medium heat, combine the beef, onion, salt, pepper, and chili powder.  I actually substituted dried minced onion for the fresh because I was feeling lazy. Either will work fine. 

When the meat is chopped up and mixed with the spices and onion, put a lid on for 10 minutes, stirring once or twice.  While it’s cooking, put the beans into a bowl and add the taco sauce.  I like La Victoria, but use whatever brand and heat level is your favorite. 

Stir those together. 

After 10 minutes, return to the meat.  Make sure it’s in fairly small pieces. 

Add the beef to the bean mixture. 

Stir that in.  (I know, this isn’t the most photogenic food ever.)

Add the cheese.

Stir. 

And now for the fun part.  Wait, first you need to preheat your oven to 375°.  Then, line a sheet pan with parchment and lay out a tortilla.  Mine were quite pliable, but if you’re worried yours might crack, just heat them for a few seconds in the microwave. 

Spoon on a bit of the meat/bean mixture.  It depends on the size of your tortillas, but I used probably about ⅓ cup in each one.  Don’t get too carried away or you’ll have oozing burritos before you’re done. 

Wrap the edge around and fold it under itself. 

Fold in the ends.

Then just roll it over and gently flatten.  Voilá! Err… ¡Ahí está! Beautifully rolled burrito.

This is easily enough filling for 8 burritos.  I only made 4 and saved the rest of the filling to use in a day or two.  This is also a small sheet pan, so you should be able to fill 8 burritos and fit them all on one regular sized sheet pan. 

Now here's the secret for making them crispy.  Drizzle on a tiny bit of canola oil.  Think ¼ teaspoon or less per burrito. 

Rub it around with your fingers to cover the entire surface of the burrito.  I prefer using my fingers over a pastry brush for this because it’s easier to get a very light coating, which is what we’re shooting for. 

See?  Nice and shiny, but just barely coated. 

Bake at 375° for 20 minutes.  They’ll be just starting to brown on top. 

Flip them over. 

Then back into the oven for another 10 minutes.  They should be nice and brown now. 

Crispy burrito goodness.  I’m pretty sure ovens are magic. 

What easy weeknight meal would you like to see have a facelift? 

Meat and Potatoes with a Kick!

So apparently, Seeley and I were both thinking about Mexican meat this week.  The truth is, I had a flank steak in the freezer that I pulled out to thaw, and really had no clue what I was going to do with it.  Basically with flank, you have two options.  You can cook it hot and fast or low and slow.  Anything in the middle is going to be stringy shoe leather.  Well, as it happens, Elise and I recently went on a bit of a shopping spree at Penzeys. 

If you have a store near you and you’ve never been in.  Go.  Seriously.  You can smell every spice in the store, and it’s an amazing experience.  If you don’t have one nearby, you can order from their website, which is great, but not quite the same.  So obviously I won’t be using all of those spices for this one meal.  These are the ones I decided on. 

So here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 Tablespoon oil
• ½ teaspoon salt
• Flank steak (mine was probably .75 lb.)
• 1 Tablespoon oil (yes this makes two, but they’re used separately)
• 1 Tablespoon chili powder 
• ⅛ teaspoon cayenne
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• ½ teaspoon onion powder
• 2 Tablespoons dried minced onion
• Juice of a lime
• ½ cup water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 medium russet potatoes
• 1 medium tomato

The first step is to sear the meat.  Salt both sides well.  Then put it into a very hot pan with 1 Tablespoon of oil.  Ideally, you’d like it to be a bit darker than this, but I had a bit of a brain fart and used a nonstick pan rather than a stainless one.  Why is this a problem?  Well, Teflon gives off toxic stuff if it gets too hot, so I didn’t want to put it on high.  Just use stainless and you won’t have to worry about it. 

Once you’ve seared both sides, remove it from the pan and put it into your crock pot. 

See those tasty bits left in the pan?  That’s one of the reasons for searing the meat, so we can’t waste them.  Also, a bit of heat will really wake up your spices. 

Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan (I had already added it in that picture) and stir in your chili powder, cumin, and cayenne. 

Spices can burn really easily in this process, so give them only about 30 seconds or so, then quickly add your minced onion, oregano, garlic and onion powder, and pour in the lime juice and water. 

Add 1 teaspoon of salt.  Stir and simmer that for about a minute, then just turn off the heat.  It should look something like this:

Peel and dice your potatoes.

Stir them into the spice mixture as you go so that they don’t oxidize. 

Then pour the whole thing over the top of your waiting flank steak. 

This was about the time I looked over and saw the beautiful tomatoes that I had picked up at the farmers’ market.

So I diced one of them up and threw it in.  If you want to make it easier, just stir it in with the potatoes before adding them to the pot.  Otherwise, you can just stir them in afterward, like I did. 

I like to start my slow cooker on high for the first hour, just to get things going a bit, then turn it down to low for the duration.  This went for a total of about 5 hours.  Look at those potatoes.  Can you just imagine how much flavor they must have?

You’ll know it’s done when the potatoes are nice and soft, and the meat is fall apart tender.  No, I didn’t just put the meat on my countertop.  It just looks like that because it’s on a glass plate.

Now the tricky part, cutting the tender meat into chunks.  Sure, you could just shred it, but I think chunks are better for this particular dish.  Cut across the grain first. (see, glass plate)

Then it will be easy to cut the strips into small pieces.

Put the meat chunks back into the crock pot and stir so that everything is nicely coated. 

Spoon the mixture into tortillas, top with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of green onion, and you have serious taco goodness. 

You might not find carne y papas tacos at your local restaurante mexicano, but meat and potatoes cooked in a similar fashion to this are actually very traditional Mexican cuisine.

What’s on your list of spices to buy and/or use?