Burritos: The Making Of(ish)

Once upon a time there were two friends and colleagues, Dr Frost- Rathbone and Dr Marcus Chimpington. Together this crime busting duo fought to bring an end to evil. Well an end to evil burritos at any rate. We’ll leave the actual crime busting to our boys in blue. I mean the police by the way – rather than lovely* Coventry FC or stupid Chelsea FC.

For her birthday, Dr Rathbone received a burrito making kit from her friends
Dan and Pamela . They also gave her a massive bottle of gin, some malteaster bunnies and some frazzles – you can see why she’s friends with them. Anyway, this is her story – The Day She Made Burritos.

Burrito in a box

Inside the box were tortillas, salsa and a sachet of beany stuff to make a chilli with. You supply ground (yes I do mean mince but I’m trying to be poncey and cheffy) beef, tomatoes, cheese and lettuce. As you will find out later YOU WILL NEED TO ADD MORE THAN THIS.

out of the box

I didn’t get lettuce, because I forgot and, frankly you try finding things on Easter Sunday. But I did get avacados and coriander because that’s how I roll.
Dr Chimpington deftly chopped tomatoes and some coriander and also made a stonking guacamole – or rather he decided to take over when I started to make a stonking guacamole [/control freak]. He also chopped some green pepper to add to the beef to give it a bit more ooomph. I had the easy job – I grated the cheese and stirred the beef.

the stuff we did

There’s not much to say about the cooking – you fry up beef, chuck in some sauce and, erm, that’s it. I really would add some onions and peppers and some extra chilli if I were you and fling on some coriander leaves afterwards. The beany sauce is a combination of refried beans with extra kidney beans thrown in for good measure. It was ok, in an artificial kinda way, but it needed more kick.

The assemblage involved laying/chucking stuff on the tortilla. The tortillas were smaller than the ones you get in burrito places and that’s the excuse I am giving for not making a beautiful fat self contained burrito.

Blurry assemblage part II


burrito on plate

So here you go, very blurry. A Blurrito if you will. I would tell you the name of the featured nail varnish but this is a serious scientific article and NOT Cosmo. Oh go on then, it’s Nails Inc in Paris and I got it free with a bottle of diet coke some time last year.

blurrry burrito in hand

burrito in a hand

It was fun, it reminded me of being in my teens/early twenties making tacos or burgers for self assembly by large groups of inebriated friends. It was nice to ‘cook’ (I use the term loosely) with Dr Chimpington because he never lets anybody else into his lab (er, kitchen). But the fantastic thing about places like Picante, Benito’s Hat, Chilango , Adobo and Wahaca ** is the flavours It’s because you can taste so many things going on in each and every bite. The meat is usually slow cooked or char grilled with heaps of infused flavour, the salsa has been blended to perfection and, let’s not forget that the rice (a surprise to me on my first experience) makes a huge difference. Next time I’d just get the wraps and make the rest from scratch. I would certainly not use their bland salsa again – it was too fake and too sweet and too claggy. I made two burritos (in the name of science rather than sheer greed) and the salsa free one was by far superior.

They were fine and we had fun, they were never going to win a burrito oscar, but they certainly weren’t the accepted definition of a burrito. They were Tex-Mex wraps.

*Happy now Matt? Honestly, the things I do for family harmony!

** Disclaimer: There are other Burrito Temples available. They might not be that nice but they are out there.