Perfect Chicken Burritos At Home

You know, a burrito could be the greatest food on planet Earth. It's just that most places make them kind of mediocre. We don't have to abide by that. I think most people would agree that Chipotle makes a pretty decent burrito, right? But there may not be a nearby place. You may not live in LA where some of the greatest burritos of all mankind reside, unless you were to make it. Although there are a lot of elements to a burrito that you have to make, this one is, to me, the most deduced down, simplest form. I chose to make my own tortillas because, duh, it's about 10 times better than a store-bought. But trust me, if you do this right, it might just be the greatest burrito you ever have. So that being said, let's make this, shall we? We're gonna start by making our homemade flour tortillas. A fragrant, spicy pinto bean. Then we'll marinate and cook our chicken. Next, a citrusy rice. And finally, a refreshing, simple guacamole. Assemble and serve. So we're gonna make our tortilla from scratch. Just gotta do it. Two cups of all-purpose flour. One teaspoon of salt. Half a teaspoon of baking powder. Whisk together to combine. So you're going to add three-quarters of a cup of warm water. A quarter cup of vegetable oil. Super important add. This is what's gonna help make the tortillas chewy. Now, mix that all by hand. It'll start out a little shaggy. Just keep mixing. Now, you're gonna knead this for about two to three minutes or until incredibly, beautifully smooth and elastic. You cover that bad boy in plastic wrap. Let's just let it rest a few minutes. You know, anywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes. The more you let it rest, the easier it is to roll. Once you have your dough, it's nice and rested. I'm gonna form it into six even pieces. You'll roll those pieces into rough balls. And then here's how you shape it. A lot of all-purpose flour dusted on your counter and also on your ball of dough. Pat that down. Flip it over. Push it down into a nice circle. And then you're just gonna roll that out until you get about a 12-inch circle. It's about an eighth of an inch thick. We want this pretty thin. If you can go even thinner, better. Get a 12-inch cast iron pan or ideally, if you have something larger like a komal, which will allow you to make bigger tortillas. And once that's ripping hot, you're then going to add in your tortilla and cook for about 15 to 30 seconds. Flip and cook for an additional 15 to 30 seconds. The tortilla should be bubbled up, lightly charred on both sides and cooked through. Repeat with the rest. And as each one finishes, place on a plate wrapped in towels to keep them warm until ready to use. For the beans, very simply, you're gonna start off with half of a white onion. Cut off the top of your onion. Slice it in half. You're gonna use this whole onion in this recipe, just not all in the beans. Remove the first layer of the onion. And then you're gonna finely dice this. Onion's done. Three cloves of garlic, thinly sliced. You're gonna do the same thing with some jalapenos. Now, look, you could seed these personally. I think the cooking process, the sweetness from the onions, all that stuff, it'll keep the heat relatively low. All right, got my onions. And I'm just gonna throw it all in the same bowl because it's all going in the same place. Four ounces of the smokiest bacon you can find. So we're gonna lay this bad boy out. And then we're just gonna rough chop it, you know, sort of into lardons. You can also turn them the other way and give them one good, clean slice down the middle so they're just a touch smaller when they render out. And that's gonna go into a cold, large sauce pot. Set that over medium-low heat. Now, you're gonna cook this, stirring constantly, about three, four minutes until that fat is rendered out and your bacon is starting to turn nice and brown and crispy. We're at like two minutes in on this. And it's looking good. It's crispy. It's frying. But I want it a little darker. All right, we have our nice cooked down bacon. Turning this to medium. And then I'm gonna add all my veg that I chopped earlier. Touch of salt to draw out that water. Then you're just gonna saute that for about three minutes or until the vegetables are softened, not quite mush. Now, at this stage, we're gonna add two cans of rinsed and drained pinto beans. I know the purists out there are gonna say, oh, well, you should use dried beans that are then sat with water overnight and then boiled and cooked. And look, I'm trying to make this easy on y'all. If you want to make your own beans too, more power to you. But to make it easier, there you go. Followed by a quarter cup of chicken stock and a touch more salt. Now I'm gonna stir that together and just let that simmer until the liquid is half reduced and everything is hot throughout. Taste, adjust salt. This is done. Beans are ready. Moving on. You can't have a chicken burrito without chicken, especially if there's no marinade on that chicken. Now, I wanted to make an easy marinade. One seven ounce can of chipotle peppers and adobo. The whole thing. No need to drain it. No need to wash them. None of that bull. If you want to get this out, you can always get a little splash of water. Run that around in your can. I already poured them out of the can. There you go. A little extra juice. Two cloves of garlic and about four tablespoons of lime juice. I'm feeling this is one of the juiciest limes I've ever squeezed. Some salt. I'm gonna give that a nice little rip until it's smooth as possible. So start low and gradually raise that to high. Once that's reached a texture that's as smooth as possible, you're then gonna stream in one large tablespoon of a neutral tasting oil like vegetable oil or avocado oil. And then you're left with this beautiful spicy, sweet, smoky, peppery marinade. Let me tell you something. We're not using chicken breast. We're using chicken thighs. Six of them to be exact. Boneless, skinless. Into a medium-sized bowl, which you will then pour all of your marinade on top of. And you're going to massage that into the chicken. Oh, by the way, be sure that you taste your marinade first. If you taste it and you feel like, oh, this could use some more salt, add more salt. This is the only stage you can add salt. If your marinade is not salty, then your chicken will taste under seasoned when you cook it. At this stage, you can obviously go ahead and cook it right away if you want, or you can wrap it in plastic wrap and leave it in the fridge to marinate overnight. Woo! We can cook our chicken now. Yay! Okay, you're gonna need a big, heavy bottom pan. 10 inches minimum, 12 inches ideally. You're gonna add two tablespoons or so of a high temperature oil. That could be vegetable oil, canola oil, avocado oil. I'm tired of having this conversation of which oil that tastes of nothing is better. So medium-high heat. And once that's real hot, okay, just barely smoking. From there, you will add your marinated chicken in. Away from you, it's gonna sputter a little bit. Now, you're probably not gonna be able to fit all your chicken in here. Somehow, I managed to fit most of it. You want one even layer. Let that sear for about two to three minutes. Once it gets a little bit of char, you're then going to flip it, sear for another two to three minutes on the other side. It's gonna take a little bit for this to cook all the way through, so you can keep flipping back and forth until the chicken is cooked all the way through to 165 Fahrenheit internal, the deepest part of the chicken. Or you could transfer this chicken over to a sheet tray. You can also just leave it in the same pan if it's oven safe. Pop it in a 375 oven just until cooked through, which will take like another five to ten minutes. That way, you can move on to the next step. Layer all the different things you're doing cooking-wise. So you're doing two things at once, not one thing at once. So rice. I'm doing it in a rice cooker. You can also do this on a stove. That's fine. But I think rice cookers make better rice. I'm really sorry to tell you that. I have one and a half cups in here. This is a medium grain. It could be long grain. I don't really care. The point is one and a half cups. It's been rinsed already. I've shown you many times how to rinse your rice. It's very easy. And then you're going to top that off with another one and a half cups of water. Equal parts rice to water. Finger test. Close that and turn it on. If you're going to do this on the stove, you can absolutely do it in a pot. You can still do one and a half cups of rice. There's a different formula. That's the formula right there, okay? You do that if you're going to do it on the stove. It's okay if you don't have a rice cooker. Now, once your rice is done, you're going to fluff it first, okay? Because we want to get some of that steam out. We don't want it to overcook. I also want those grains separated nicely over here. Big bowl. And you're going to drop all your rice into your big bowl. We're going to add one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt to our rice. Then we're going to add one tablespoon of softened butter. The rice is hot. The butter will melt in there. While this is hot though, we're going to go ahead and incorporate that butter. So just toss it all together. Gently fold it together to get that butter not only melted, but equally incorporated all across your rice. So every little grain has a touch of butter in it. Then you're going to add just a touch of lime zest. Not the whole lime, just a little dab. You know, like half teaspoon of lime zest. The juice of one whole lime. And then about three tablespoons of very finely, freshly chopped cilantro. Gently mix that together. Fold everything in until it's thoroughly coated. Now first, we have to taste. Make sure it's good. It's perfect. It's crazy how the salt is immediately balanced by that acid. It makes a huge difference. At this stage, you're going to add your rice back to your rice cooker or your warm pot or whatever you cooked it in. Pop that bad boy in. Now this is the beauty of a rice cooker. Set it on the keep warm function and just keep this warm while you make the rest of your stuff. Guac. I don't always put avocado in my burrito, but this one I just felt like needed a nice simple guac. Very, very easy. Avocado, cilantro, onion, lime juice, salt. So we're going to cut our avocados in half. So you cut down the middle, and then you rotate your knife around the seed until you come back with that original cut point. Cut through, twist, and remove. Get the pit out very simply. Tap, twist, and pull it out. Then we'll split all these. Peel all your avocados. Now once they're all peeled, I like to cut them just a touch smaller. I like to cut them in half again and then sort of rough dice them. You don't have to do this. It just makes your mashing 25 to 35% faster and less annoying. If you want to just throw them in the bowl for the next step, that's fine too. In a bowl, you're going to add all your avocado. Season it generously with kosher salt. And then using a fork or a potato masher or literally your hands, you can squeeze in there. A mortar or pestle works great too. Get your lime juice ready because you are going to put some of that in there at this stage. But first, I just want you to get the mash working. Mash it up just a touch. That's 50% of the work done there. Obviously, you can go fine or you can go coarse. Up to you. Just be cautious of that because you can't unmash it. So now I'm going to add the juice of one lime just to start. If I want to add more, great. All right. Now I'm going to give this another good mash. Once this is close to the texture I want, I'm going to stop because as you mix this and you sort of agitate it, adding all the other ingredients, it's going to get even finer. So I would stop slightly before you're done. I'm swapping to a spatula. It's a little easier to stir. Mix that up. First, you're going to taste for salt. Touch more salt. Now at this stage, you have that other half of the onion left over. That was what this is for. You can add as much or as little of this white onion as you want. Just add it as finely chopped as you can. I really like small slices of onion. I don't like huge, gigantic chunks of onion in my guac. I do love onion. I think I'm happy with that. We'll call that a quarter of a white onion. You can always go more. I give it a few run-throughs with my knife just to get it a touch finer. Now I'm going to drop that in. Followed by a touch of cilantro. I'm going to do like a couple tablespoons finely chopped, right? Let's take some fresh cilantro. Bundle it up real, real tight. And then I'm just going to first chiffonade it relatively thinly. I've chiffonaded all one direction this way. So I have threads that are kind of running this direction. We're then going to chop those threads into little tiny, almost cubes in a way. That's pretty much it. You could stop there or you can run it through a few more times until it's as fine as you like. That right there is acceptable, I would say. Into your guac. All right, now we're going to mix that together until thoroughly combined. It looks like guac if I've ever seen it. This is your opportunity to taste. Make sure it's perfect. It's nice. I think a little bit more salt, a little bit more acid. I like mine salty. I like mine acidic. Touch the lime. Give it a mix. And that is the guac. On to the next step. Our chicken is done. It's cooked nicely. I'm going to take it out of the pan first. Leave all that good stuff in your pan. I just need you to cut this into bite-sized pieces. I'll give you one example. First, cut it into about half inch thick slices. Turn it and then cut it half an inch the other way into little cubes like this. It's the Chipotle way. Little bite-sized pieces. Set them to the side and repeat with all your chicken. Now what we're going to do is grab that chicken, place it back in your hot pan or warm pan. Toss it around and then just cover that and keep that warm until we're ready to assemble. Well, you have a hot tortilla. It's important that your tortilla is hot so it is pliable. Place that down. Add your rice. A nice amount of it in the lower third, followed by your beans. Then your chicken. Stack that up as much as you like, as little as you like. And finally, a generous helping of guac. Fold the sides in and then while keeping those sides in, you're going to start from the bottom closest to you and roll that all the way up nice and tight. Don't freak out if it starts pushing out the edge. Keep folding those sides in until it reaches the other end. Optionally, you can place it in some foil and wrap it tightly in foil so it holds its shape and kind of steams in there for a couple minutes before slicing and serving. To serve, split them in half and look at that. It's been a while since I've had a burrito. Let's taste this and see how we're feeling about it. Not a single beat is missed, even without the cheese. All the flavors come together and are beautifully familiar. They're exactly the flavors you're looking for in a burrito like this. The chewy tortilla, that nice sort of unctuous, slightly spicy chicken. It's juicy. The rice is fragrant and a little bit citrusy and also buttery. And then those cooked pinto beans add the ooshy-gooshy of a good burrito. And they combine with that acidic, refreshing guacamole. I mean, it's a perfect burrito. You can mix and match different things in here. You don't have to make it exactly like this, but you've been given the blueprint to the great chicken burrito. Choose your own adventure. But honestly, I would choose this one exactly as it is. So don't forget, the recipe's in the link in the description on our website. We have a new website. Go check it out. It looks lovely. We worked really hard on it. Would love if you went on there. And also, there's a newsletter. You should subscribe to that. All the new recipes, anything new coming out, you'll find out first on there. So subscribe. Bye. I love you so much.