Home made Burritos up to Mexican Restaurant standard?

Harasrailltub

Howdy ,

I am a big fan of burritos . Love all the chains , Boojum , Tolteca etc .

I have had a few stabs at making my own at home. (I'm vegetarian so its only veg ones I go for). I season the rice, same with the beans , make my own salsa , try to find nice wraps , try to make good guac and good stir fried peppers onions etc .

But they only ever turn out just okayish . They are nice and all but they are missing that something that those Burritos bars have that make you keep on coming back and I cant put a finger on it .

Does anyone know the secret to making Burritos that are as amazing as Boojums etc?

Johnnyhpipe

I don’t know the answer...but can I ask if you’ve found anywhere that sells the proper stretchy burrito wraps?

rubadub

I imagine they might add lots of salt, and many people making stuff at home tend to hold back.

Have you looked for any copycat recipes? I have followed a few, like for KFC and the amount of salt you add is shocking, but does not end up tasting too salty (yet most certainly has a salty taste).

Harasrailltub

Johnnyhpipe wrote: »

I don’t know the answer...but can I ask if you’ve found anywhere that sells the proper stretchy burrito wraps?

I haven't , I have benn making do with what I can find in dunnes / lidl etc . Some are better than others though , which ones exactly I cant remember

Igotadose

Harasrailltub wrote: »

Howdy ,

I am a big fan of burritos . Love all the chains , Boojum , Tolteca etc .

I have had a few stabs at making my own at home. (I'm vegetarian so its only veg ones I go for). I season the rice, same with the beans , make my own salsa , try to find nice wraps , try to make good guac and good stir fried peppers onions etc .

But they only ever turn out just okayish . They are nice and all but they are missing that something that those Burritos bars have that make you keep on coming back and I cant put a finger on it .

Does anyone know the secret to making Burritos that are as amazing as Boojums etc?

O.K. so I'm married to a woman who lived on the border between California and Mexico for years and learned to make burritos from various local experts. We have lived in Ireland now, and have adopted to the lack of suitable ingredients here.

Oh, when it comes to Mexican food in restaurants, in our opinion its pretty much nearly inedible garbage and not authentic. Burritos don't have rice in them, or sour cream, or chopped onions or whatever other excretia these companies come up with. Full disclosure, we've not eaten in any of the restaurants in Ireland that claim to serve Mexican food, looking at their menus it really looks like they don't get it. Nor did we eat in most Mexican restaurants in the US, a few taco trucks when we lived on the West coast and a few local places when we visited SoCal. And those are worlds better than what's commercially available.

As I'm starting a new batch of burritos, I'll share my recipe and how I go about it:

We don't put any meat in our burritos, and what little fat is used, comes from olive oil and it's a tiny amount. Fresh chilis are key; we grow quite a few in windows in our house. We took a trip to Glasgow this winter for a concert, and amazingly I found an excellent "Mexican Deli" there that does mail order. Lupe Pinto's deli: http://www.lupepintos.com/. All the ingredients you need can be mail-ordered from them. I'd suggest getting everything powdered/packaged since none of the chilis are fresh anyway. Their grower is somewhere in England (where it's warm )

Ingredients:Sorry, US measurements.
6.5 cups dried pinto beans (local health food store or wherever, even Tesco).
2 medium onions
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp. cumin
2 tbsp. mexican oregano
1/2 tsp. Epazote
1 tsp. Chipotle
2 tsp. chili flakes
1 tsp. Pasilla flakes
1 tsp. Ancho
1-2 tsp salt

Soak the beans overnight in a large pot. Drain and rinse the beans and set aside.
Dice 1 onion and 1 clove garlic. Brown the onion in the pot in oil till it is translucent. Add 1 tbsp. cumin, brown for about a minute, add 1 minced garlic clove, brown the lot for another minute or so. Turn off the heat. Add beans, cover with about 1 inch of water. Add oregano, epazote, pasilla flakes, ancho.
When you add various chilis matters, some are for overall flavor, some just for 'heat' without a big flavor contribution.

Bring to a boil.

Now, I 'residual heat cook' my beans. What this means is, I let them come to a boil, then turn off the pot and let it sit till cool, usually overnight. You don't have to do it this way, but it turns out to be super convenient as you can go about your daily life rather than watching beans boil.

For the 3rd boil, I add the chili flakes and chipotle - these really are for 'heat' (spiciness) not so much for imparting flavor. Continue the residual heat cooking process, usually 5 or 6 boil/wait cycles, till the beans are really soft. I mean, falling apart soft. You want to cook the water out, not 100%, but close. You'll need a bit of the liquid.


Now comes the laborious part. You need to mash the beans really well so that there's no visible 'bean shapes' in the mash. We use a potato masher we got in a kitchen store, like this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Potato-Masher-Stainless-Designed-Delicate/dp/B01ER46RTM/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1531663989&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=potato+masher&psc=1


You basically mash, mash, mash till you have a pot full of mashed beans. Once mashed, in a small pan brown 2d onion, and add the cumin to it to brown for a minute. This is the 'refrying' part (which is why sometimes these are called 'refried' beans, really, it's refried spices.) Sometimes referred to as 'refritos.'

Mix the onion/cumin with the mashed beans. Add salt.

In a large fry pan, you now need to dry out the mashed beans completely. On a low heat, put in a few scoops of mash. Repeatedly turning with a spatula until its dry, I typically scoop it out with the spatula (a metal one) and turn the spatula sideways. If the mash takes a good while to fall off, it's dry enough. You really can't get it too dry. Do this a few scoops at a time till its all dried out. I don't put any oil or fat into the fry pan, the goal is to dry things. You scoop/scrape/scoop/scrape, it gets tedious.

Once the dried mash is available and cooled (usually finish this part in the evening and stick it in the fridge overnight), divide it into equal portions, we use roughly 1/3 of a cup each but you simply want the portions to be all the same size. We found the Old El Paso flour tortillas good enough, get them at the SuperValu locally. The large ones, 6 to a packet. This recipe makes 18 of them (3 packets worth)

Put your portion of mash in the lower half of the burrito. Fold the top down, then fold the sides over. We've found that you can then simply stick the burrito in a plastic bag and freeze them. Then, when you want one to eat, just take it out and stick in a 8" pan in the oven with a bit of oil on both sides. Let it bake around 20 minutes is plenty.

I know you asked for vegan, we enjoy a bit of cheese with our burritos. So, we stick 1.5 slices of cheddar in the burritos when they're being folded. Makes them even tastier.

We also like salsa with the burritos, here's the salsa recipe, we make it fresh before eating:

1 medium tomato diced
1/2 small onion, diced - I love onion in salsa, my spouse doesn't, this is always a bit contentious
Juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp chili flakes

Mix all of the above together, obviously more or less flakes depending on how hot you like it. We like it pretty hot.

Enjoy!

Shenshen

Harasrailltub wrote: »

Howdy ,

I am a big fan of burritos . Love all the chains , Boojum , Tolteca etc .

I have had a few stabs at making my own at home. (I'm vegetarian so its only veg ones I go for). I season the rice, same with the beans , make my own salsa , try to find nice wraps , try to make good guac and good stir fried peppers onions etc .

But they only ever turn out just okayish . They are nice and all but they are missing that something that those Burritos bars have that make you keep on coming back and I cant put a finger on it .

Does anyone know the secret to making Burritos that are as amazing as Boojums etc?

I've never been to Boojum's, so can't say how good or bad their burritos might be. When I make them, I usually use black beans and a recipe I got from a Venezuelan friend a few years back. I would usually make them in the slow cooker, but you could make them on the hob as well, you'd just have to remember to stir them more frequently.
I use :

1 copped onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 sticks of celery
1 green pepper - all thrown in the food processor and blitzed into a paste

ca 1 cup of black beans
vegetable stock
2 tsp of paprika
1 tsp of smoked paprika
1 tsp of cumin
2 bay leaves
any kind of chilis I can get my hands on, usually home-grown jalapenos

Get a wide frying pan and fry up the vegetable paste with a little oil, until it goes dry and starts browning just slightly. Add the spices and stir them through to warm them up a bit. Add the beans, and cover with vegetable stock.
At this point I move it to the slow cooker, for maybe 3 - 4 hours. As I said, you could also put it into a regular pot and cook it on the hob, which should take a lot less, maybe 1 hour or so.
You can add a little more stock if it goes too dry, but really you want to end up with a very thick mixture, so don't add too much.

I find that this with some rice gives a really good basis for any burrito. Not Mexican, but Venezuelan, so it's a bit "fusion", but it works.

Harasrailltub

Thanks to you both for sharing these insights and recipes

Shenshen

If you don't have the time to do the bean stew, this here works really nice as a filling, too.

Or there's always the Quinoa Taco filling from Thug Kitchen.

Igotadose

Igotadose wrote: »

O.K. so I'm married to a woman who lived on the border between California and Mexico for years and learned to make burritos from various local experts.....

That site doesn't seem to have the mail order system working properly, for now anyway. There is a Mexican pantry called Picado on South Richmond St in Dublin that is run by a Mexican/Irish couple and they do online ordering: https://www.picadomexican.com/collections/all

Their products are top drawer in terms of quality. They do cookery classes as well, which are great craic, and a great insight into Mexican cuisine.

barrymanilow

Johnnyhpipe wrote: »

I don’t know the answer...but can I ask if you’ve found anywhere that sells the proper stretchy burrito wraps?

Fitzgerald family bakers plain wraps in light blue packaging in Dunne's , closest I have found to proper stretchy burrito wraps

Muahahaha

OP perhaps try making your own maida or tortilla bread, I would imagine that would help elevate the taste over store bought wraps.

Jellybaby1

I thought Burritos were more Texan than Mexan! Probably hovering on the border somewhere.

dartboardio

The key for me is to heat/cook the wrap properly. If it’s not heated properly it ruins it for me and tastes fake.

Another would be the rice, I like orange rice so cooked with onion, tomato purée. I find the homemade ones are just as nice as long as there is plenty of seasoning and all the trimmings like sour cream cheese lettuce guac. Worked in a burrito bar for a couple of years so when we have homemade burritos it’s a great day!