Fire Roasted Vegetable Burritos with Cilantro Roasted Pepper Queso
Grilled or roasted vegetables, juicy rice, smoky beans, loads of cheese and homemade queso sauce, all rolled up in a flour tortilla for a filling and flavorful meal
Grilled or roasted vegetables, juicy rice, smoky beans, loads of cheese and homemade queso sauce, all rolled up in a flour tortilla for a filling and flavorful meal
- 1 cup salsa
- 1 cup long grain rice
- 2 ea vidalia spring onions (green onions if you can't get them)
- 1 ea red bell pepper
- 1 ea poblano or cubanelle chile
- 1 ea cherry pepper
- 1 can diced tomatoes
- 2 cups cheddar cheese freshly shredded
- 1 ea serrano pepper finely diced (skip if you want mild, double if you want hot)
- 1 cup refried beans
- 6 ea flour tortillas (mission sized burrito tortillas)
- 6 ounces mexican dipping cheese (we get el viajero brand)
- 4 ounces milk
- 1/4 cup cilantro
- Carbohydrate 2004.47376666667 g
- Cholesterol 237.3 mg
- Fat 360.910733333333 g
- Fiber 134.095662966172 g
- Protein 381.876966666667 g
- Saturated Fat 117.270416666667 g
- Serving Size 1 1 recipe (3037g)
- Sodium 26874.4533333333 mg
- Sugar 1870.37810370049 g
- Trans Fat 18.4305466666666 g
- Calories 12911 calories
Step-by-step
- Start your grill to direct high heat at about 500f (skip if using your broiler and oven)
- Cook your rice according to directions.
- Grill the green onions just enough to get a slight browning on them (about 1 min a side). Fire roast or broil your peppers until blackened on all sides. The fire roasting brings out the best of the veggies.
- Don't be afraid that they are "too charred". That makes them easier to peel and won't affect the final flavor. This one wasn't done enough yet, just to give you an idea.
- Place the peppers in a plastic zip top bag, they'll steam on their own for 5 minutes.
- Cut the ends off each pepper and slice down the length of one side to open them up. Remove the seeds from the inside. Flip and lightly scrap the charred skin off with the sharp edge of a knife.
- Dice the green onions.
- As soon as the rice is finished, stir in the green onions, red bell pepper, and cubanelle/poblano pepper (reserve the cherry pepper for the cheese sauce). Stir in 1 cup of the cheese and the serrano pepper.
- Taste the rice mixture for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.
- Repeat for each tortilla: Spread about 3 Tbsp of refried beans on the tortilla. Top with 1/2 cup of the rice mixture. Sprinkle more cheese and 3 Tbsp of salsa on top. Roll up burrito style and place seam side down in a casserole dish. (Click here for a photo tutorial of how I fold mine.) Top with a few sprinkles of more shredded cheese.
- Place the dish in your oven preheated to 350f (or in our case, a grill set up at 350f for indirect heat) and cook for 25 minutes.
- Cut the queso cheese into 1/2" cubes and put into a small sauce pan. Add the milk, cilantro, and diced cherry pepper and warm until melted over medium/low heat.
- Serve the burritos with the sauce poured over the top or on the side.
Home cooks often treat vegetable burritos as a dumping ground for cold, watery produce that immediately steams the interior of the tortilla upon wrapping, turning a crisp-skinned roll into a soggy package. Proper moisture management begins at the heat source, where high-temperature direct contact forces surface water to evaporate rapidly before cellular walls break down completely. Charring the exterior of peppers until the skin turns completely black accomplishes more than imparting smoke; it denatures the outer layer so it sloughs off easily while trapping steam internally to loosen the bitter epidermis.
Controlling Moisture and Starch Dynamics
When working with starches like long-grain rice, adding hot cooked grains directly to roasted vegetables requires immediate folding to distribute residual heat evenly across the entire mass, preventing localized condensation pockets from forming in the mixing bowl. If Vidalia spring onions are unavailable, standard green onions serve as an adequate substitute, though their lower sugar content yields less caramelization when subjected to direct flame exposure. Placing charred peppers into a sealed plastic bag for exactly five minutes traps ambient heat, generating enough internal vapor to separate the burnt skin from the succulent flesh without requiring abrasive scrubbing under running water that washes away water-soluble aromatics. Shredding cheddar cheese directly from a block rather than purchasing pre-bagged varieties removes the cellulose coating manufacturers add to prevent caking, ensuring the internal cheese binder melts into a smooth emulsion rather than separating into greasy pools during the final 25-minute bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Refrigerate assembled, unbaked burritos for up to forty-eight hours before baking, though the flour tortillas will soften as starches absorb ambient moisture from the refried beans.
- Reheat leftover queso gently over medium-low heat with an extra splash of milk to restore fluidity if the cheese proteins tighten and separate during storage.
