Taco Bell chili cheese burrito, or chilito, is a flour tortilla filled with thick beef chili, refried beans and melted cheddar. Nothing crunchy goes in it, which is rather the point. Thirty minutes makes ten burritos, and they freeze for three months.
The cheese goes into the filling, not just onto the tortilla. Melting a cup and a half of cheddar into the hot chili gives it the heavy, almost gluey texture the original had. Sprinkle it on top instead and you have made a sloppy joe.
Mix the cornstarch with cold water before it goes near the pan, because dry starch hitting hot liquid clumps instantly. The slurry is what turns two cups of water into something thick enough to stay inside a tortilla. Skip it and the filling runs straight out the end.
Taco Bell Chili Cheese Burrito
Course: Main CourseCuisine: American, MexicanDifficulty: Easy4
servings30
minutes40
minutes300
kcalThree tablespoons of chili powder and a full teaspoon of cayenne make this properly hot, so halve the cayenne if children are eating. The filling alone keeps three to four days and reheats better than the assembled burritos do.
Ingredients
- For the chili filling:
1 lb ground beef
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups water, plus 2 tablespoons
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 (16 oz) can refried beans
1 (6 oz) can tomato paste
3 cups shredded cheddar cheese, divided
- To assemble:
10 (10-inch) flour tortillas
Directions
- Brown: Cook the ground beef and diced onion over medium-high heat until browned, then drain the fat.
- Season: Stir in the chili powder, cayenne and salt, then pour in 2 cups of water.
- Thicken: Mix the cornstarch with the remaining 2 tablespoons of water, stir it through and simmer until thickened.
- Finish: Add the refried beans and tomato paste, then stir in 1½ cups of the cheddar until melted.
- Roll: Warm each tortilla for 15 seconds, add about 2½ tablespoons of the remaining cheese and ¼ to ½ cup filling, fold in the sides and roll into a log.
One number on the original recipe is worth checking before you decide this is a light dinner.
FAQs
Is it really 359 calories?
Almost certainly not, because the listed 18 grams of carbohydrate is less than a single ten-inch flour tortilla holds. That points to the tortillas being left out of the calculation entirely. Add them back and each burrito lands nearer five hundred calories.
How spicy is this actually?
Hot, and more so than most copycat recipes. Three tablespoons of chili powder and a whole teaspoon of cayenne go into one pound of beef, which is roughly triple a standard taco seasoning load. Start with half the cayenne and add more at the end.
How much cheese goes inside each tortilla?
About two and a half tablespoons, though the recipe only says a pinch. Half the cheese melts into the filling, which leaves a cup and a half to spread across ten burritos. A pinch would leave you with most of a bag unused.
Why is it called a chilito?
That was the nickname, and for a stretch the menu name too, before it disappeared from the national menu. It kept a following large enough to sustain fan pages years after it vanished, which is unusual for a discontinued item. A few locations reportedly still make it.
What else from that era is worth making?
The discontinued items are where the real nostalgia sits, and most of them are simple. The retro Bell Beefer is the other one people ask about constantly, a sloppy joe in a bun rather than a tortilla. Both come from the same stretch of the menu.
What do I do with leftover filling?
It keeps three to four days and thickens further in the fridge, so loosen it with a splash of water. Spooned into a double decker taco it works better than it has any right to. It also makes a decent chili topping for fries.
The source nutrition lists 18g of carbohydrate per burrito, which is less than one 10-inch flour tortilla contains, so the tortillas appear to have been omitted from the calculation. Nutrition is the source plugin’s automatic calculation and should be treated as an approximation.
