Picadillo burritos with green chile

2020-07-21

Pic1a: Tia Rita's products

Pepper's used to sell the green chile stew here in Deming a few years back, but discontinued the brand. There are a few stores in Las Cruces that sell a selection of their products. To get the entire listing, you have to go online to their website.

I ordered the green chile stew, picadillo burrito filling, green chile cornbread, green chile powder and red enchilada sauce and green pepper jam. I've only ever tried their green chile stew, so there will be some experimenting in the near future, and this one is the first.
The one major drawback of dehydrated foods imo is that it takes a lot more time than the recommended 30 minutes to fully rehydrate. In my experience, most products need at least 2 hrs. cooking but the diced potatoes will only fully rehydrate with overnight refrigeration. That makes them imo less suitable for camping trips. One could try cold-soaking before cooking, have not done that so far.
The drawback for preppers is the flimsy packaging, definitely not bug-proof. If you intend to store this long-term, transfer to vacuum-sealing bags and freeze, or vacuum-seal a mason jar and add an oxygen absorber. That will dramatically increase shelf-life.

All these Tia Rita products seem way too spicy for Marielos. This one was no exception. I had to go through a detour of crockpot soup to make it acceptable for her. In addition to the recommended ground meat, I also added cut-up sausages that I cooked inside a duck.

Considering the very long detour I had to make to reduce the spiciness, it might be preferable to just make this from scratch.

INGREDIENTS

This is what you need for 6-8 servings:

1 pckg. picadillo burrito filling
OR fresh ingredients:
- 6 medium potatoes, diced small
- 3 cups chopped onions
- 1-2 cups green chile
- S&P
  cumin, garlic, cayenne, oregano
1 lb. ground beef or pork
and/or sausages of your choice
flour or corn tortillas, whichever you prefer
2 cups shredded melting cheese
S&P, spices

Pic1b: picadillo burritos with green chile

Directions

2020-07-21

Pic2: dehydrated picadillo mix
Pic3: simmer
Pic4: ground beef and sausages

Combine the content of the package (Pic2) with 4 cups of water.
If using fresh ingredients, stir-fry the onions and potatoes instead.
Bring to a boil, Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes. (Pic3)
Stir-fry ground meat and sliced sausages until brown. (Pic4)

Pic5: beef, burrito filling
Pic6: add water
Pic7: next morning

Because the potatoes did not rehydrate properly, I switched to a crockpot. (Pic5)
After overnighting the crockpot on high setting (Pic6) the mixture looked quite different. (Pic7)

Pic8-10: served

Drain excess fat and/or liquid.
Heat the tortilla.
Add burrito filling. (Pic8)
Add melting cheese. (Pic9)

Pic11-13: served

I am not a great fan of tortillas, so I served the meat mix as a side dish instead. (Pic11)
I served this with linguini Stroganoff. (Pic12)
I like to mix and mash it all together. (Pic13)

b. crockpot green chile duck soup

To reduce the excessive spiciness, I turned the leftovers from the above picadillo burritos recipe into soup by adding several quarts of water. I added the carcass from the bacon-wrapped sausage-stuffed roast duck because I had it available anyway.

The description is for an easy crockpot recipe from scratch. Use the fresh ingredient listing from above.

A duck carcass is optional, but it adds a lot of that rich duck flavor. Be careful with the duck carcass. You might want to cut away the ribs. They tend to become very brittle and can turn into needle-like bone splinters.

2020-07-22

Pic14: crockpot
Pic15: served
Pic16: with cream

Combine the stir-fried onions and potatoes, stir-fried meat and optionally a duck carcass in a crockpot.
Add 2 qts. hot water.
Season to taste, including green chile a.o. hot spices you like.
Run 3 hrs. to overnight on high setting
Serve and enjoy the soup.
Optional:
- Add heavy cream to each bowl.

c. burritos again

The spiciness from the burrito filling was greatly diluted into the soup and as a result, the solids were now considerably less spicy, acceptable for another go at those burritos.

There wasn't all that much left, so I served it with a variety of other leftover meats and potato salad.

2020-07-22

Pic17-19: separating the solids

Strain the soup to remove the remaining solids. (Pic17+18)
Carefully go through all the meat and remove all the bones you can find. (Pic19)
Refrigerate for later use.

2020-07-26

Pic20: soup meat
Pic21: stir-frying
Pic22: stir-fried

Stir-fry the drained soup solids until dark-brown.
Serve and enjoy.

Pic23-25: served #1

Served with the tortilla on the side, with potato salad, beef tongue and duck.

Pic26-28: served #2

Served as a burrito with chicken and potato salad
Marielos liked this 3rd-stage burrito, and it went down a lot easier than the original one.
Truly, it would have been so much simpler to make it from scratch and add green chile to taste instead. But we didn't know that until we tried it. :-)

See also: Deming, NM gardens, animals and more and avemariasongs.org

See also: Deming, NM gardens, animals and more
and avemariasongs.org