I’ll quickly rhyme off this week’s menu so we can get onto the burritos!

This Week! (Oct 15 – 21)

*I didn’t list desserts because I’m making Halloweeny treats I will be blogging about later

This week’s Menu Monday recipe is called Throwback Burritos because until I made them for these photographs I hadn’t had one in about 13 years. Yes really, and it’s not that I’m all that old really. These were the burritos I lived on with my now husband/then boyfriend and our hilarious roommate Ken. The background on that is that my husband and his roommate go waaaay back, and then I moved in as well years after the fact. No one but Ken ever made these either! I was always strictly on cheese grating duty while he worked his magic in the kitchen.

Now that we are living in Los Angeles, my husband and I have a horrible addiction to Chipotle and while eating a massive Chipotle burrito recently my husband reminisced about all the burritos we used to eat back in the day so I fired off a Facebook message to Ken and we were eating this throwback dinner a few days later.

Most of the instructions here I am pulling straight from the message I got from Ken because his descriptions are pretty bang on, especially when he opened with ‘those burritos were dirt simple’, and I’m all ‘is that why you kept us out of the kitchen?!’ hahaha.

Throwback Burritos via Ken Snider

-large tortillas
-taco seasoning
–Sirarcha/rooster sauce
-minced garlic (though back in the day we used garlic powder)
-some sort of salsa or pico de gallo
-ground beef at least lean/medium (high fat content is needed here to get the smooth texture, if you use extra lean it’ll taste grainy)
-Uncle Ben’s long grain & wild with roasted garlic flavor (you can make this yourself in a rice cooker with some chicken broth and garlic, but if you want the taste you remember you want Uncle Ben’s)
-*fucktons of cheese* (I believe that’s an accurate measurement of the specific amount of cheese needed)

Ok, so first brown ground beef, drain. Add taco seasoning and water (one cup water per packet per pound of ground beef) and simmer until thicken (it won’t thicken much, might want to add some cornstarch or flour, not much, maybe a teaspoon, to allow it to thicken). Now add Sirarcha and garlic to taste. Prep rice and prepare. If you use the uncle bens stuff, it takes two mins in the microwave, which is awesome. (Except I still don’t have a microwave haha).
Add rice to meat mixture and stir. Remove from heat, place in a heat-resistant bowl and refrigerate, for a minimum of one hour. THIS STEP IS CRUCIAL. It’s what allows the fats from the meat and cheese to commingle and congeal into burrito deliciousness. Be patient. Wait. It’s worth it. (Obvy, Ken is a wise, wise man). Then grate your fucktons of cheese and set aside. I put them side by side in the fridge in similar container and cover them.
I usually layered cheese (as a stabilizing agent), then some of the mixture, then cheese, some of the pico de gallo, some more mixture, fold and top with more cheese, and more hot sauce if needed. Nuke for 3-5 minutes and you’re done! (The first time I folded one of these – well the first time this time around – I did it perfectly and crazy fast and my husband goes ‘omg what was what?’ and I was all ‘it came from the back of my brain!’).
Mine were heated in the oven this time around, but I swear, they taste like 1999. <3