Kid Friendly Beef Burritos for Busy Nights

Beef Burritos are an excellent comfort foood and a kid friendly, easy go to dinner choice for busy moms for those all too often chaotic weeknight meals. The ingredients are flexible and easily adaptable to your family’s likes and dislikes.

Someone in your family vegan or vegetarian? Substitute tofu for the beef or just amp up your beans and vegetables.

Not a fan of beef? Chicken or shrimp are a great replacement.

Family so hungry that you’ve no time to wrap burritos? No problem. Serve these burritos in a bowl along with your favorite fixings and you have created a quick Burrito Buddah Bowl.

If these weren’t reason enough to try these burritos, perhaps the fact that they can be made in a single skillet, making clean up a breeze will be all the convincing you need.

What Are Burritos?

A burrito is a northern Mexican dish commonly comprised of a flour tortilla stuffed with ground or shredded beef and beans. Americans have extended these basic ingredients to include corn, lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, guacamole, salsa and sour cream. Real renegades also include rice, but this is very controversial. A Balaboosta often pushes the food envelope so we have included it in the recipe below. Feel free to omit it if that is more appealing to you.

Fun fact: According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, burrito is a Spanish word meaning “little donkey”. No one really knows how the beloved burrito  got this unusual name, but as with many words, there is a legend behind this little beast of burden tasty delight.

The story goes like this. During the Mexican Revolution, a man named Juan Mendez sold food from his donkey pushcart. In order to keep the food warm, he would wrap it in flour tortillas. When people were in search of his food, they would ask where was the burrito! Cute story. No evidence that it’s true, but who’s to say it isn’t!

Burrito vs. Taco

Are burritos and tacos the same thing? Kind of like a rose by any other name smelling just as sweet? No they are not. While both are easy and delicious Mexican dinners, they are more like kindred spirits.

In a sense, a burrito is a type of taco, if you adopt a very broad definition of a taco. Their seasonings may be similar, their fixings and fillings maybe also similar. The key difference is in their packaging. Unlike books, however, you can tell a burrito or a taco by its cover.

Traditionally burritos are folded and wrapped in large flour tortillas and a meant to be a hearty meals. In contrasts, tacos are in smaller hard or soft corn shells and were originally meant to be a light meal or snack.

Common Fillings and Substitions

Unlike baking, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to making burritos. The fillings and fixings can be adjusted to reflect your family’s food preferences, your pantry staples and even which vegetables you hav that need to be eaten before they turn into science experiments! Here are some ideas. It is by no means an exhaustive list.

• Instead of beef, substitute chicken, pork, shrimp tofu or tempeh
• If you are using rice it can be yellow rice, short grain, brown, white or red rice, even black forbidden black rice
• Beans can be black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
• Fixings can be corn, onions, scallions, tomatoes, lettuce, baby kale, spinach, arugula, sliced carrots, avocado, guacamole, cotija cheese, cheddar cheese, sour cream and sprouts

How to Wrap a Burrito

There are many different ways to wrap a burrito. Here’s one way with some slight variations. Don’t worry if your first few attempts aren’t the beauty you had hoped for. Like most things in life, practice makes perfect. Don’t be hard on yourself. Dinner will still be delicious even if it’s messy.

Steps to Wrapping a Burrito

1. Slightly warm your flour tortilla either in the microwave, an oven or pan. A warm torilla will be more flexible. Just warm it. Do not toast or cook it.
2. Place a small strip of rice slightly below the center of the tortilla making sure to leave room on the left and right sides of the tortilla.  The rice will help absorb the juice of your meat and prevent your tortilla from getting soggy.
3. Add a small strip of your beef or warm protein on top of the rice. Then add your vegetables, cheeses and remaining fixings. Do not add too much of each ingredient. Too much will make your burrito overstuffed and too diffucult to wrap and roll.
4. Fold the right and left sides of the wrap towards the center and slightly over your filling.
5. Gently lift up bottom of the torilla and fold it over the filling.  Use your fingers to pull the  fixings towards you and tuck the end of the wrap under the fillings. Continue to roll toward you until the entire tortilla is wrapped.
6. Some people reverse the order of the wrapping – starting with lifting the bottom half of the tortilla up, over and slightly tucked under the filling first. Then they fold in the sides and continue with the rolling until the burrito is tight.
7. The burritos can be wrapped in parchment paper or aluminum foil at this point. This helps keep the burrito together if your wrapping is less than ideal!

FAQs

Q. Can you freeze burritos?

A. Yes. You can wrap your burritos in aluminum foil, freeze  them and reheat them on those nights that are too crazy for cooking fro scratch.

Q. Do I need any special equipment to make beef burritos?

A. No. You’ll need a sharp knife, a cutting board, tongs or a wooden spoon or spatula, a pot if you are cooking rice, measuring spoons and cups, a strainer (optional- but great for rinsing canned beans), a can opener and a large skillet.

Q. Are burritos spicy?

A. You can control the heat by adding more or less jalepenos. Removing the seeds will also decrease the heat.

Now let’s get cooking!

Don’t let the long list of ingredients scare you. Once you get the hang of making burritos you’ll be amazed how quickly this meal comes together, often with enough leftover burritos for lunch or with enough to freeze and save for a grab and reheat dinner in a pinch.

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