Quick Meal: Tex-Mex Burritos

A burrito is a quick dinner or lunch, great for take-away meals and since you can modify the ingredients to what you happen to have in the kitchen, pretty darn helpful when your cupboard is almost bare.

I think your first burrito experience shapes your expectations of a tasty burrito. I had my first burrito in Texas, so it was served up without rice inside. This certainly is advantageous in London, as I can only find the smaller-sized flour tortillas (dinner-plate size). You can buy the Old El Paso or Discovery brand, or you can probably find some in your local corner shop (my Turkish corner shop sells Turkish tortillas). The slightly weird fact about tortillas here is that they are shelf-stable for months, and I am not going to think too hard about what is enabling that. So pick up a pack and keep it in your cupboard for dinner emergencies. (Once open use them in several days)

Frankly, I guess the only real requirement for a burrito is the tortilla. But my absolutely comfort food favorite is: beans, cheese and maybe some salsa. Wrap it up, then put it in a frying pan on med-low until it's brown on both sides and the cheese has melted (10 minutes tops).

The key to making an easy-to-eat burrito is to be careful on your filling of the burrito. It doesn't take that much before your burrito is full. You want your filling to be about the size of a Picnic chocolate bar. Fold up the ends of the tortilla over the filling, then wrap the right side over the filling, finally fold the left-side over. Place in the frying pan with the folded side down. It won't unfold once it's browned and toasty.

Try to mange the wetness of your burrito ingredients, so either drain your beans very well or use refried beans (one tin of beans makes 3-4 burritos). Cream cheese would be fine, but it gets rather runny when heated. A cheddar usually works well (see, in Tex-Mex we use cheddar). If you have a really runny salsa, use a fork to scoop it up, so that the juices can run out first. Or I guess, if you have runny ingredients, you could, possibly, use a bit of cooked rice (but just a bit) to soak up the juices.

A cheat for salsa that I often use is fresh or tinned tomatoes, sprinkled with some chili flakes or hot sauce. Sprinkle some fresh coriander on if you like it. Some ingredients that do not hold up well if you grill your burrito: sour cream, lettuce, guacamole.

Edited: Now with photos of my own stellar burrito creation.

Why the title

I feel I should clear up the title of this blog. So "beans", we won't really be talking about where to find coffee in London, unless I drag ol' Firefly into this as a guest reviewer. He's a coffee drinker and can help you coffee drinkers out. I hear Monmouth is good for coffee, there is one on Monmouth Street and one in Borough market.

Just so you know, despite being mostly from the US, I do not actually enjoy coffee all that much. I'm a tea fanatic though, drink it all day long. I'm not all that particular about my tea, I like black tea with milk, turkish tea with sugar no milk, green tea plain, oolong plain and I guess those are my favorites. I'm not a huge fan of the fruit-flavored teas or herbal teas, but if I'm sick I'll drink a lot of ginger and lemon with honey that I make from scratch. I've tried rooibos, but would probably only develop a taste for it if I lived somewhere where I was offered it often. I cannot turn down an offer of tea. I love the ritual of offering a cuppa to a visitor and taking the time to chat over a cup.

If all you have is coffee I will say yes, because that's part of the ritual. I'll just have a hard come-down 4 hours later. And yeah, a good cup of coffee is preferable to a wretched cup of tea. I've had some awful teas served to me in England, mostly in train stations, but it has only happened a couple of times.

But really, in addition to tea, I love beans. The photo for the header has 8 different cans of beans that I found in my cupboard the day I decided to start this blog. So this is my general bean-stash. I'm not a vegetarian, I just like beans.

But I also don't know beans about London, since I'm so new here. So this blog will also be exploring my ideas for fun things to do around town. Plus some recipes, which may include beans. Wow, I bet you're really excited now!