AI Recipes

I spent three months systematically adding crunchy elements to burritos and sides that did not have them, and tracking which combinations improved. My conclusion: a crunchy element in or alongside a burrito is not optional for satisfaction — it is structural. The best crunchy additions I tested: toasted pepitas (nutty, holds crunch even under moisture), fried tortilla strips (the classic), charred corn kernels (crunchy and smoky), crispy onion (adds a separate sweetness), pickled jalapeño slices (crunch and acid together). The worst: croutons (wrong flavour), raw nuts except pepitas (too dense), anything coated in batter (gets soft within 2 minutes). The ranking: pepitas > charred corn > pickled jalapeño > fried tortilla strips > crispy onion.

Elote (corn on the cob) and esquites (corn kernels in a cup) are the same dish in different formats, and I want to make the case for esquites as the ultimate burrito side. The base: charred corn kernels, crema, lime, chile powder, cotija crumbled, salt. In a cup or on a plate. Add a little epazote if you have it. It works as a side because it is cold or room temperature, which contrasts with the warm burrito. It is acidic, which cuts the richness. It has crunch and creaminess in the same bite. It takes 15 minutes to make and improves every burrito plate I have served it with. This is my standard side when I am making burritos for other people. It never fails.

A question I get asked often: what is the actual difference between mezcal and tequila and does it matter in cooking? Both are made from agave. Tequila must be made from blue agave, primarily in Jalisco. Mezcal can be made from over 30 agave varieties and the production involves roasting the agave hearts over wood or in a pit, which creates the characteristic smokiness. For drinking alongside food: tequila for its clean agave flavour with citrus-based drinks; mezcal for its smoke and complexity with anything rich and fatty — carnitas, dark moles, anything with lard. For cooking: tequila in lighter applications (ceviche, brines, salsas where smoke would be wrong). Mezcal in marinades and braises where the smokiness will complement rather than compete.

Frijoles charros are whole pinto beans cooked with pork products (bacon, chorizo, sometimes ham hock) and aromatics in their broth. They are a side dish but in practice they are the dish I most want to eat at the table. I make them by starting with bacon in a pot, rendering the fat, adding sofrito, then adding soaked pinto beans with their water, additional stock, epazote, and letting it go low and slow for 3 hours. The final addition is a small amount of diced tomato and fresh chile, added in the last 30 minutes so they do not fully break down. These served alongside burritos means every person at the table spoons them over everything. They are both the side dish and the thing that ties the meal together.

Queso fundido is a melted cheese dish that should be separate from the burrito rather than folded into it. It is a side, an appetiser, a dipping situation. When it is inside a burrito it loses what makes it special — the pull, the crater in the centre, the mushroom or chorizo sitting on top. The version I make: Oaxacan cheese (quesillo) shredded, in a cast iron skillet under the broiler for 6 minutes until bubbling and starting to brown at the edges. Roasted poblano strips over the top. Warm corn tortillas for dipping, separately. This is not the same dish as cheese inside a burrito. Serve it first, before the burritos, and everyone is better for it.

Atole is a warm, thick drink made from masa, water, and sweetener — often flavoured with chocolate (in which case it becomes champurrado), or with fruit, vanilla, or cinnamon. It is a traditional morning drink in Mexico and it is unlike anything else. The texture is the thing that surprises people: it is somewhere between a drink and a thin porridge, thickened by the starch from the masa. It coats the palate. It is warming in a way that does not feel sugary. Basic recipe: dissolve masa harina in cold water first (prevents lumps), add to hot water with piloncillo and a cinnamon stick, stir constantly as it thickens. For champurrado, add a disc of Mexican chocolate. This is what I drink on cold weekends when I'm making tamales.

I cook every Sunday for the week. This is my side dish batch process that takes about 90 minutes and produces five days of burrito-ready sides. Rice: a double batch of Mexican red rice. Takes 35 minutes including the toast and cook. Refrigerates for 5 days without quality loss. Beans: a full pot of pinto beans from dried. 2 hours on the stove but mostly unattended. I make this the centrepiece of the Sunday session. Pickled jalapeños and red onion: 15 minutes active. They keep 2 weeks. Charred corn: 10 minutes. Refrigerates 4 days. Everything except the crema and fresh avocado is done on Sunday. Weeknight assembly takes 5 minutes.

Agua fresca has a reputation as something you buy at a market or a taqueria. I thought the same until I made it at home for the first time. The process: blend your chosen fruit with water, strain, sweeten lightly, add lime. Hibiscus: steep dried hibiscus in hot water, strain, sweeten, chill. Done in 15 minutes. Tamarind: soak tamarind paste in warm water, break it up, strain, sweeten, add lime and a pinch of salt. Cucumber jalapeño: blend, strain, lime, salt. Extremely cold, very refreshing, goes with anything spicy. All three of these took less time than going to the shops and they are better than anything I have bought.

After years of using bottled sour mix I finally made a margarita from scratch: two parts blanco tequila, one part fresh lime, three-quarter part Cointreau, half a teaspoon of agave syrup. Shaken hard with ice until the shaker hurts to hold. The difference from a mix-based version is not marginal. The fresh lime has a volatile brightness that no bottled product captures. The agave rounds the edges without adding sweetness the way sugar syrup does. This took me four minutes to make. I have no excuse for ever using mix again.

I whipped Mexican crema with charred jalapeño (blended into the crema), fresh lime juice, and a pinch of salt. The result was a dipping sauce for burrito bites that is completely different from any hot sauce or salsa I have made. What makes it work: the fat in the crema coats the palate before the jalapeño heat arrives, which means the heat builds differently — slower, rounder, more pleasant. The lime prevents the whole thing from feeling heavy. It is not a condiment, it is a sauce in the classical sense — fat and acid balanced against each other with heat as the accent.

I was experimenting with using bean cooking liquid in different ways and ended up making something I did not intend. Thinned black beans — not refried, just regular cooked beans blended with their broth until very smooth — mixed with rehydrated arbol chile, roasted garlic, and lime made a thick, savory hot sauce that worked beautifully on eggs and in burritos. It is not a traditional hot sauce in the chile-and-vinegar sense. It is more like a spicy bean broth concentrate. The depth is remarkable for something with so few ingredients.

Year one of growing tomatillos. The thing nobody tells you upfront: you need two plants for pollination. One plant will flower and produce no fruit. I found out the hard way in July with one beautiful plant that was blooming but setting nothing. Other things I learned: they grow large, spread fast, and need staking earlier than you expect. The fruit is ready when the husk is completely papery and the fruit inside is firm — not soft, firm. Slightly underripe tomatillos have more acid and better flavor for salsa verde than fully ripe ones. Fully ripe are sweeter and better for eating raw.

I have been cooking with dried chiles seriously for four years and I keep coming back to guajillo as the foundation. Here is why: it is mild enough that it does not impose its flavor on everything else, but it has enough body to provide color and a slight fruity sweetness that makes other chiles taste better rather than competing with them. In practice: almost any dried chile salsa I make starts with guajillo as sixty to seventy percent of the chile weight. Then I add heat chiles (arbol, de agua) and depth chiles (ancho, mulato) in smaller quantities. The guajillo keeps everything coherent while the other chiles do their specific jobs.

I tested all three methods over the course of two months with the same recipe. Open flame directly on the gas burner: deepest char, most smoke, but hardest to control. You get uneven charring and occasional burning. Best flavor when done right; inconsistent. Broiler: most consistent results. Set on high, four inches from the element, eight minutes per side. Even color, predictable smokiness. Best for batches of any size. Dry cast iron pan: fastest but generates a lot of splattering moisture. Good char on the contact side only, so you have to flip multiple times. Fine for small batches when you need to be quick. Verdict: broiler for any serious quantity, open flame for when you want maximum char and do not mind the variability.

The problem with most hot salsas: they are hot but they taste like heat and not much else. The solution is to layer chiles that peak at different points in the eating experience. My current stack: fresh jalapeño for the immediate front heat you feel in the first two seconds. Dried arbol rehydrated and added to the blend for the middle heat that builds as you eat. A small amount of chipotle for the finish heat that lingers and has the smoke you cannot get from the other two. Each chile is doing a different temporal job. The result is a hot salsa with a flavor arc instead of just a wall of heat.

Tomatillo is one of the most acidic common salsa ingredients — more acidic than most tomatoes, more than lime. This is both its strength and its challenge. Unmanaged, tomatillo salsa can taste harsh and one-dimensional. Three ways to manage it: charring the tomatillos before blending (the heat converts some of the malic acid and softens the flavor profile), adding avocado in the blending step (the fat coats the acid compounds), or adding a half teaspoon of sugar which rounds the edge without making the salsa sweet. Salt timing also matters: salt before blending pulls more water from the tomatillo which reduces the acid concentration.

Understanding which dried chile does what is the foundation of salsa making. Here is how I think about the major ones: Arbol: sharp, forward heat, almost no sweetness. Use for heat. Guajillo: mild, fruity, good color, slight sweetness. Use as a base. Ancho (dried poblano): complex, chocolate undertones, low heat. Use for depth. Mulato: dark chocolate, raisin, deep heat. Use for complexity in mole-style salsas. Pasilla: earthy, tobacco, medium heat. Use with ancho for a complete flavor. A good cooked salsa is usually a combination: guajillo for color and mild sweetness as the base, arbol for heat, and one depth chile (ancho or pasilla) for complexity.

Fire-roasted tomato, three cloves of garlic cooked in the same pan, two dried arbol chiles toasted and rehydrated, salt, a squeeze of lime at the end. That is it. I have made hundreds of variations over the years — added tomatillos, tried different chiles, added fruit, added smoke — and I keep coming back to this. What it does: the fire-roast adds depth without smoke. The arbol gives clean, forward heat without complexity competing with the tomato. The raw garlic in the pan chars slightly and sweetens. It is a salsa that stays in the background of the burrito and supports everything else rather than trying to be the main event.

I have always found cilantro overwhelming. In a meat burrito there is enough fat to balance it, but cilantro is still a background note I do not enjoy. When I started making vegan burritos I noticed the cilantro was even more prominent — there is less fat to absorb and buffer it. This forced me to find a substitute that actually worked in the vegan context. Flat-leaf parsley with extra lime is my answer. In a vegan burrito without the fat from meat, the parsley is brighter and less herbal than cilantro, and the extra lime lifts everything. It turned out to be better than cilantro for this specific context — not just a compromise.

I have been adding quick-pickled vegetables to my veggie burritos for six months and I will not go back. What pickling adds: acid contrast to sweet or fatty elements, a crunch that survives the fold and the rest period, and a fermented depth that fresh vegetables cannot provide. What works: red onion (30 minutes in lime juice and salt), jalapeño slices (20 minutes in rice vinegar), carrot thin-sliced (1 hour minimum). What does not work well: cucumber (too much water, goes soft), tomato (the skin separates). The pickled element should be small in volume but it carries a disproportionate flavor impact.

This is something I did not know until recently: traditional chipotle in adobo sauce is made from smoked jalapeños, tomato, vinegar, and aromatics. No animal products. It is accidentally vegan and it is the most efficient smoky flavor addition available. For vegan burritos specifically: one or two chipotles pureed into a salsa base, or minced and stirred into refried beans, adds a smokiness and depth that would otherwise require long cooking processes. Most commercial brands are vegan but check the label — a few add ingredients that are not.

In a veggie burrito, guacamole is not a garnish — it is the fat component, the creamy element, and much of the richness all at once. The guacamole you make for dipping is not the same guacamole you want in a burrito. Burrito guac: firmer texture (less mashing), more lime than you think you need, less cilantro than you would use for a dip, a small amount of pickled jalapeño brine stirred in. It needs to hold its position during the fold and not turn into a wet layer. The dip version is too soft and will migrate.

As someone with celiac I have gone through every component of a burrito and verified each one. Here is where contamination risk hides: Masa harina: look for certified GF. Many brands are fine; a few are produced in shared facilities. Spices: bulk spices are high risk. Packaged spices from a dedicated GF facility are safe. Pre-blended spice mixes almost always contain anti-caking agents with wheat derivatives. Canned beans: most are fine but check the label. Salsas: commercial salsas often use modified starch. Crema: most Mexican crema is fine; flavored crema products sometimes are not.

I went through every fat substitute over three months: olive oil, coconut oil, vegetable shortening, avocado oil. None of them produced the result I was looking for. The problem with all of them is that they add fat without the flavor compounds that rendered lard carries. The actual solution, which I found by accident: the bean broth itself, reduced until thick, is the best fat substitute. If you cook your beans in a decent amount of water with aromatics and then reduce the broth before adding it back to the mashed beans, the starchy, savory broth does what the lard does. It is not the same — lard has a richness the broth cannot replicate — but it is dramatically better than any of the oil substitutes.

Five ingredients that add genuine umami depth to a vegan burrito: 1. Dried mushroom powder (porcini or shiitake) stirred into the bean broth. Nearly invisible, significant flavor contribution. 2. Charred vegetables — not just cooked but genuinely charred on one side. The Maillard reaction on plant material produces the same flavor compounds as meat. 3. Miso-rubbed roasted cauliflower. The fermented soy adds umami; the caramelization adds depth. 4. Nutritional yeast in the bean cooking liquid. 5. A small amount of fermented salsa — the fermentation adds a depth that fresh salsa does not have. None of these reads as a substitute. They are just umami sources that happen to be plant-based.