Where's the Beef?

6/7/09: Beef and Bean Chimichangas

• Meal details: Chimichangas filled with cheese, onion, corn, refried beans, chicken, peppers, and taco sauce baked in the oven to become an ooey, gooey, cheesy package full of goodness. :) What, no beef? Read on to learn why.

• Recipe sources: This recipe came from a book called Allrecipe's Dinner Tonight. If you have been reading my blog for awhile you would know that I go to allrecipes.com frequently for Sunday supper. This website has a huge amount of recipes that have been submitted by home cooks, so for me I find them easier to follow and the ingredients tend to fall within my family's comfort zone. I mean, I don't usually have goat cheese, lamb, or tuna filets available all the time! For some of you these may seem like everyday ingredients but I find them to be exotic! If you want to take a look at the recipe you can find it here.

• Defining moments: Before I began making Sunday supper my family used to have store bought chimichangas every Sunday. This is what made me choose the recipe, I wanted to see if I can make them myself. I'm always interested in making my family's "everyday food" from scratch. That is why I was so fascinated with making homemade hamburger buns a few Sundays back. Click here to read about it.

• What I learned: It was a very easy recipe to follow and execute so not many new techniques or ingredients were learned this time. But I did learn how to roll up a flour tortilla burrito style, and I discovered that smearing the tortilla with the refried beans really helps in performing this step.

• Any modifications? Yes. I substituted chicken for the ground beef so this recipe would be better known as Chicken and Bean Chimichangas. And I omitted ground cumin and chili powder from the recipe and used taco seasoning instead. I didn't follow the amounts exactly either so maybe I should write down my ingredient list here:

To make 20 chimichangas:

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 large onion
1 cup bell peppers
2 cups whole kernel corn, drained
1 (8 ounce) bottle of taco sauce
4 tbsp of taco seasoning
2 teaspoon of garlic salt
1 (32 ounce) can refried beans
20 (9 inch) flour tortillas
2 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese
2 tablesppon butter, melted
Toppings: 1 (16 ounce) container of sour cream -- Note: I thought the added sour cream was fantastic!

• How it tasted: Everything about it was great! Even though these chimichangas would probably be regarded as 'burritos' by any die hard Mexican restaurant (because they were baked rather than fried), I believe my family truly enjoyed the homemade version of our classic Sunday supper meal.
• How about a 2nd time? You betcha!
  

I had to make two 13 x 9 pans of these. I only wanted to have a picture of this batch because, well, let's just say the first was my rough draft!