Beef Quesadilla with Homemade Tortillas and Refried Beans
home made tortilla, ground beef quesadilla. homemade refried beans, Sapporo and tequila
Everything here is made rather than bought, and the tortilla is the one that is genuinely worth it. Four ingredients, no rising, ten minutes of rolling, and a homemade tortilla puffs and blisters in a way that a shop one simply does not.
Refried beans are also not a thing out of a tin. Dried pinto beans, cooked soft, then fried in fat and mashed in the pan so some of them break down and some stay whole. The word refried is a mistranslation anyway — it means well-fried, and that is the step everybody skips.
Fold the quesadilla in half rather than sandwiching two tortillas. One fold, one open edge, and the filling stays in.
- Feeds
- 4
- Hands-on
- 1 hour
- Beans
- Overnight soak
- Tortillas
- No rising
What you need
The tortillas — makes 10
- 3 cups plain flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/3 cup lard or shortening
- 1 cup hot water
The refried beans
- 2 cups dried pinto beans, soaked overnight
- 1 onion, halved
- 1 head garlic, halved
- 3 tbsp lard, bacon fat or beef tallow
- 1 tsp cumin
- Salt
The filling
- 1 1/2 lb ground beef
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp smoked paprika, 1 tsp oregano
- 3 cloves garlic
- 3 cups cheddar or jack, grated
- Pickled jalapeño, to finish the beans
How it goes
1 — Tortilla dough: fat rubbed in, then hot water
Flour, salt and baking powder with the lard rubbed through to crumbs, then hot water poured in and brought together. Kneaded two minutes, rested thirty. Hot water, not cold — it makes a dough that rolls thin without springing back.
2 — Roll them thin and cook them dry and fast
Walnut-sized balls rolled to about seven inches. Into a dry hot pan, forty seconds a side. They puff and blister. Stacked under a towel so they steam each other soft.
3 — Beans cooked soft with onion and garlic
Soaked beans simmered an hour and a half with the halved onion and garlic until they crush between your fingers. Keep a cup of the cooking liquid.
4 — Then actually fry them
Fat hot in a wide pan, beans in with a ladle of their liquid, and mashed down with the back of a spoon while they fry. Five or six minutes. They thicken and darken and start to catch at the edges — that catching is the flavour.
pro tip — Leave about a third of the beans whole. Completely smooth refried beans are a paste; the picture has texture in it.
5 — Brown the beef properly, then the spices
In a hot pan, spread out and left to crust before breaking it up. Onion in after, then garlic and the dry spices for a minute until they smell toasted.
6 — Cheese, beef, cheese, fold
Tortilla in a dry pan, cheese over one half, beef on the cheese, more cheese on the beef, folded over. Cheese on both sides of the filling is the glue that holds it shut.
7 — Griddle until it blisters brown in patches
Three minutes a side over medium, pressed lightly. You want brown patches, not an even tan — that is what a tortilla does when the pan is hot enough.
8 — Beans topped and served alongside
Beans into a bowl, grated cheese over while hot, pickled jalapeño on top. Quesadilla cut in half on the plate beside it.
Sapporo and tequila. That is what the man said. LFG.