Perfect Carne Asada Burritos: Takeout vs Pro Chef

The idea is the cheese is gonna melt.

You're gonna wrap the burrito with this, okay?

This thing's on fire!

[upbeat music]

Yes, we are here super excited to be in the Test Kitchen.

It's been a dream, and now we are here, we made it.

We out the hood, know what I'm saying?

Keep focusing on your dreams, you can do it, too.

Oh, it's warm.

Oh, this one's in a container. Nice.

[jazzy music]

So this first one, size-wise, a bit small,

I think this is for a half-human,

not like a big human like myself.

Flour tortilla.

They did a nice crisp situation here

to keep the fold in place.

I can tell this is the proper way to make the Mexican rice.

The beans has a little bit of liquid

when they put it into the burrito.

So it kind of mixed in with the rice a little bit.

This from a real Mexican spot.

You can taste the flavor in the rice, too.

How much?

[Male Speaker] $9.50.

I'd pay for that, $9.50, I'll take that.

The second one, supposed to be in a foil situation,

that's how you really keep the burritos kind of warm.

The aluminum foil part

is a very important part of the burrito.

One, it helps keep the burrito together.

Two, it creates a steam situation in the burrito.

So once you put all these components together,

they kind of just mold right into each other.

And then when you have a burrito, it's the easiest way

to eat with the foil, you can just rip the top off.

You just toss that into the garbage, right?

This one's a little bit looser,

but it's a little hefty though, so I like that.

They mixed the rice with the beans.

It seems like there's only one side condiment situation,

maybe it's just like guacamole or salsa verde.

That's a lot of flavor. It's like a guacamole tomato mix.

It's really nice, it's a great burrito.

You can't judge a book by its cover, right?

[Male Speaker] It's $11.95.

Yeah, that's about right.

Regular Financial District money, you know what I mean?

This kind of burrito's what I like,

gonna go ahead and cut it in half.

Ooh, somebody put some love into this one.

That's a great roll, visually,

this is the way to roll the burrito.

Nice little spice at the end,

maybe jalapeno, maybe Serrano peppers.

The meat itself is a little one-noted,

they need to give it a little bit more body,

a little more flavor, right?

$14? [beep] [laughs]

You better give me more meat, damn.

Hell no, no way.

Look, meat's already gone, chill.

I'll make you a $14 burrito, all right,

I'm gonna show you what a $14 burrito look like.

Visually, this is the way you would want

to roll the burrito, with the layers and all that stuff.

But then flavorful-wise, the meat from this spot is great.

And then the accoutrements on this burrito spot

is the best one, with the guac being

a little bit more diced instead of mashed.

And then the rice itself has a ton of flavor.

The beans has a ton of flavor.

This is the most authentic carne asada burrito

I think I've tasted out of the three,

especially being here in New York, that's a hard job to do,

and this place is doing a great job.

[jazzy music]

Sirloin here, and then some skirt steaks.

I think I would just choose the skirt steak

over the sirloin steak, it's a lot easier to cook.

The marinade could seep in a little bit better,

and you'll get the nice char color.

monterey jack cheese is commonly used

for this style burrito.

Colby cheese, this is great for color.

Some lard, I'm gonna add some flavor,

and I think a lot of people would appreciate me using lard.

I like the black beans, it stays a little bit more moist,

I think the pinto beans gets a little bit dry,

and it also gives it a different color

when you cut into the layers, so I kind of like that look.

Handy-dandy white rice, Carolina rice, super easy to use.

Ancho chiles, too, kinda give you the kind of a smoky,

kind of like mild chili flavor to it.

For the rice, we're gonna go ahead and use a tomato paste

to give it a nice reddish color.

Flour tortillas, these the ones you can get in your store.

This is a nice size, I think,

we'll be able to feed one to me, not two, just one.

[Male Speaker] There's a lot of ingredients there.

Yeah, and also, you forgetting love.

That's the last ingredient.

[Male Speaker] Where's the love come from?

It's from here, it's right here, right here.

[jazzy music]

The ratio is one pound of beans to eight cups of water.

Put that into our instant pot.

The beans weren't soaked overnight,

and this specialized situation,

you won't have enough water that is ratioed to the beans,

so you can soak them, and then pressurize cook them

at the same time, then you will have

that soft, nice beans you were looking for.

So now we're gonna make our sachet

that we're gonna put in the beans to flavor our beans.

I like to put them in a sachet,

because the seeds that we're gonna have on there,

like cumin seeds and all that kind of stuff,

you don't want it to get lost in the beans,

and then somebody bites into it.

I'll do a little bit of ancho, one chipotle also.

Garlic, a couple of cloves, open them up a little bit.

You want to take half of an onion.

Save the other half for later for our guacamole, too, okay?

Put that in there.

A couple of bay leaves, some cumin seeds,

just a little bit like this.

Woo, Mexican oregano is super poignant,

and it'll give you, you know, that herbaceous flavor.

Close it up, and this is what's gonna give

our beans that flavor that you're looking for.

Couple of nice pinches, black pepper in there.

And then we're gonna go drop the sachet in.

Nice, all right, there it is.

The orange juice is the most integral part

of the marinade, two cups of orange juice, all right?

The marinade with the orange just kind of breaks it down

a little bit, because of the acid from the oranges,

but it also gives it that sweetness.

Garlic powder, cumin seed, instead of ground cumin,

I like it like this because it kind of gives it

a little bit more, I guess, nutty flavor,

when you start mixing it into the meat.

Chipotle chili powder, just a dash, all right?

Coriander seed, and then a couple of bay leaves.

Go ahead and grab some of the limes, also, for lime juice.

The sourness and kind of sweetness,

is gonna really play well with this marinade.

I'm gonna get a couple of sprigs of cilantro.

Cilantro is great herb for Mexican food,

it's always prominent.

If you have it in the marinade,

we gonna have it in our pico,

we're gonna have it in our guac,

so it's gonna be all throughout.

So we're just gonna go and cut it in half,

and put it right in the marinade.

If I was working on a restaurant,

I would marinate the meat probably for 12 hours

to give it that great flavor.

I'm gonna cover this, put it in the fridge,

then we're gonna go ahead and make our rice.

Mexican rice really is kind of like a platform

for all of the dishes in Mexico, right?

Like it needs to have either a red color to it,

or yellow color to it.

It's super flavorful, there's usually a tomato base,

you know, so that's why we're using a tomato paste.

We're gonna rough chop this garlic, a small dice,

not too minced though though.

When we cooking this dish,

the onions and the garlic cannot burn.

The color's gotta be nice and translucent.

And if it starts getting brown color, you gotta pull it off.

I'm gonna use the whole onion,

'cause I like that onion flavor, small dice, too, okay?

You want it to cook evenly with your garlic.

I love onions and rice.

I create it with a base of onions and garlic,

and that's the way to go.

A little bit of medium-high heat.

We're gonna do non non-flavored oil.

And we're gonna start off with the onions

and the garlic first together.

The reason why I'm doing it in a shallower-style pot,

you know, wider face to it,

is because I can control the temperature of this pot.

And I can cook the rice a little bit faster,

instead of a higher lip, it's gonna create

a much bitter steam.

This is the best pot to do rice,

if you're gonna do it on the stovetop.

Salt, black pepper.

So once again, you don't want any color,

you just want to sweat it out.

The best way is controlling the fire.

Medium-high heat, and then moving it around

once in a while to make sure

that everybody gets cooked evenly.

So once that starts getting super translucent,

this is where I'm gonna add the rice.

We're using Carolina rice, get it at any supermarket bodega.

Then you wanna put enough rice to cover

the bottom of the pot.

What we gonna do is, it's kind of like toasting the rice.

It's like cooking a paella, or a risotto.

And I'm also gonna keep seasoning along the way,

because you want this stuff to be flavored, okay?

The reason why we're doing it this way,

instead of just putting it in the boiling pot,

is you want to build flavors for the rice.

So every single item needs to have flavor,

it needs to have seasoning.

It needs to be taken care of with love, like I do.

Putting about a couple squirts in this giant.

Make sure every kernel of rice is coated

with this tomato paste.

And if you can smell a vision,

you can just smell the tomatoes,

getting cooked out the onions, getting cooked in.

And also the garlic just going in there, man,

I mean is gonna be some tasty rice.

And I'm gonna give her a little bit of garlic powder,

because I like that flavor in my rice,

but I'm just gonna eyeball it.

But for now, we're gonna bring this up to a boil.

Then we're gonna turn it down and bring it to a simmer.

Okay, the stems is where most of the flavor

of the cilantro is at.

So now it's up to a boil, we're gonna go ahead and close it.

You want to turn it down. That's it, wait 20 minutes.

I don't like to use the middle of the tomato

because it's too liquidy,

or it just has too much water in it.

So I'm gonna go ahead and just use the skin.

So I'm gonna go and cut the middle part off, okay?

And that's all we're gonna use for this pico de gallo.

If I put the pulp in there, the middle part of the tomato,

it's gonna get too wet for me.

Most people like to use white onion for their pico,

I like to use red, gives it a nice color contrast.

Gives it a little bit more, I dunno, bite to it,

you know, use a little bit more flavor.

So you want it to be almost the same size as your tomato.

And then I like Serranos, I like a little bit of heat,

so we're just gonna do one, all right,

this is spicy, do one.

Matter of fact, we're just gonna use half of a serrano.

DC this real quick, and then we're gonna go ahead

and grab a couple of bunches of cilantro,

going all the way down this way,

is where the herbaceous flavor comes in.

And then next we're gonna go ahead

and put our lime juice, a couple of pinches of salt,

and then pepper.

So this is like one of the accoutrements

for the burrito that's super fresh.

It plays with marinated beef,

the very [indistinct] rice, the beans.

It really just gives it that freshness,

and also opens up the dish.

So we gonna go check on our rice.

Look how beautiful that thing looks,

you can tell every grain is covered by this tomato sauce

that you made, married with onions and garlic,

this is great looking rice right here.

It's such a simple thing to make, anybody can make it.

Wow, these look great.

When you're feeling an avocado,

you want to make sure that it is not too hard.

You don't want it to be too mushy,

that means it's over-ripened.

Pop out the avocado itself.

Just give it a nice slice right across,

and then slice across this way,

and then we're just gonna dice.

We're just gonna use maybe a half

of this half of this onion, we want to dice it

as small as possible, okay?

I like to use red, personally, just for pico,

and then for the white for the guac

is because you want it to be a little bit

more subtle, you know what I mean?

One jalapeno, seedless.

I want to make this one with a little bit of spice,

and a little bit of aggressive seasoning.

Cilantro and the limes is really adding

that herbaceous freshness that you're looking for,

but also the acidity that you're gonna need.

Salt, black pepper.

We're just gonna put a little bit of olive oil, too,

I like it 'cause it gives a little sheen to it,

and gives it a little bit more fat, too.

[Male Speaker] How do you feel about restaurants

upcharging you a dollar every time you get guac?

That's the game, man. [laughs]

Release the kraken.

We check our beans, ooh. See where we at.

Perfect, y'all.

Let's go ahead and get in there.

[Male Speaker] Why is this a better option

than buying like a shredded bag of cheese?

Because they like me to work at Bon Appetit,

and earn my paycheck, so I gotta [beep] shred it myself.

This right here, it gives you an attachment to the process.

Let's mix it up.

First what we're gonna do is strain the marinade.

I want to save it, I wanna bring it up to a boiling point

so all those bacterias from the steak will get cooked out.

When we cut the steaks,

we'll put them back in there to keep 'em moist, okay?

So when we build the burrito, it's not dry as hell.

Salt and pepper, a little black pepper.

Just gonna go ahead and throw them on here.

You want that char on the steak, okay?

We're gonna cook this to like medium,

that's the best way to like really enjoy skirt steak,

maybe four minutes on each side.

I want to still see that little red when I slice into it.

All right, we're gonna pull it up now, that's it.

So this thing just went up to a boil, so it's good to go.

I'm gonna strain- ooh, look at those perfect beans.

So lard is the fat of the pork.

In Mexican cooking, this is very much used a lot.

I'm gonna put it in our beans

to give it a little bit more flavor profile,

but gives it a little bit more oomph, right?

So while that's kind of melting,

I'm gonna go ahead and scoop some rice out,

and have it kind of warmed up in a little pot here.

As you can see, the color is different

from the tomato, also has onions and garlic.

It's an ongoing flavor profile

that's all throughout our dishes, right?

So what we're gonna do next

is I'm gonna go ahead and slice our skirt against the grain.

So we've been resting this for about five minutes now.

It looks like it's a little bit of a mid-rare right now.

Once we put it into the pot,

they'll cook just a little bit more.

See where the flavor's at.

Mm, that's [beep] nice.

That sour orange, oregano, coriander seed.

Oh wow, that's really good.

I'm gonna keep it here in our sauce.

Scoop a couple of spoonfuls of beans.

Take a little bit of the bean liquid,

it has a lot of flavor in it.

All right, so now we're gonna start building.

I'm gonna go ahead and use the flat top.

So what I'm gonna do first is I'm gonna put

a little bit of fat, toast our tortilla,

cheese right on the tortilla now, so I want it to melt.

What I like to do, too, is like to do this, all right?

Get it right into the joint.

It's nice and melted cheese, right on top, right here.

You want to put sour cream first.

The main purpose of sour cream

is to give you kind of cooling factor.

There's a lot of spices and all the things going on here.

I'm gonna go ahead and, ooh, base our very moist beef.

Next, we're gonna go with the rice,

and then we're gonna go ahead and put our beans,

super nice, super hot.

I'm gonna go ahead and do a little extra,

because, you know, I'm from the Bronx, we extra.

We're gonna go ahead

and create a cheese crust for the burrito.

The idea is the cheese is gonna melt,

you're gonna wrap the burrito with this, okay?

Ooh, that guacamole. A little bit of pico.

I think this is a small burrito,

so I think we're gonna be overstuffing this,

but you'll learn from mistakes.

This is how we gonna do this all right?

So the way you fold the burrito is you fold in the sides,

and then you go all over the top,

and then you just tuck in the sides.

On the cut side down,

and we'll lay it on this side right here.

There's another way also to maintain

the integrity of the burrito, all right?

This thing's on fire!

Ooh!

Shout out to lowkey burritos

for showing us this technique, all right?

Now what we're gonna do is, get this up in right here.

With the foil, you want to roll it tight,

so it steams it up.

It also kind of melts the cheese inside of the burrito.

There's your style burrito.

Damn, it's gonna be a good burrito.

[funky music]

All right, so now we're gonna go ahead and taste,

and we'll see who has the best burrito.

Bean and meat ratio, gotta pay attention to it.

I think they have a little bit more beans than meat.

So hopefully when I bite into my burrito,

I can taste all the components.

Nice, that's a homemade burrito right there.

Ooh, this thing, man, look at that, little cheese crust.

Mm.

That's a good burrito.

'Cause I'm not trying to like talk [beep],

but it's [beep]...

Look at this crust, man, look at this thing.

Oh...

That's [beep] fire.

That little extra step that we took

to give you this cheese crust,

putting this burrito over the top.

The pico de gallo is there, the guacamole's there,

the rice is flavorful, too.

Can really taste the meat.

All of it's coming together.

And then the sour cream is just giving it

that coolness factor that you need, you know?

That's a really good burrito.

This burrito is great, too,

I think we just gotta understand, the bean and meat ratio

is less meat than beans and rice.

The pico itself, the guacamole,

doesn't have that much flavor,

compared to what I did.

But, you know, we sat and really focused on this thing,

and really like went through it.

So, you know, the reason why I can taste mine

a little bit more, also, the rice.

And this one got mixed with the beans,

which is a one scoop situation,

we put it right into the mix.

The one that I made is a little bit more layered.

It has rice, it has beans,

freshness of the guac, freshness of the pico.

And theirs, I guess, they just added guacamole on top,

with a little bit of tomatoes.

I wouldn't be mad

if I got something like this for $9.

My burrito, it's very compact,

and that's a lot of time and effort

that went into it, a lot of labor.

I would charge $11 for it.

Having taken the time to cook down the rice,

cook down the beans, marinating the beef,

attention to the detail of creating this burrito,

really made a big difference between these two, you know?

And then creating another layer

with the cheesy crust on the outside,

really put it over the top.

You, too, can also put together a great burrito,

just make sure you stay focused on the effort

to do the right things, buy the right products.

South Bronx, old days of how, Bon Appetit, peace.

♪ I can see clearly now the rain is... [laughs] ♪

I hate you guys. [background laughter]