A quick and easy meal to make your family if they're banging their forks on the dining table.

Brown ground beef with onion and season to taste. Pour in sauce and simmer over low heat. Add water if mixture gets too dry. Heat refried beans in a saucepan. Add cheese and stir in till melted. Keep warm. Heat tortillas in microwave for one minute. Spread a small amount of beans on each tortilla. Add meat. Fold over ends, then roll up. Place two burritos on a microwave-safe plate. Drizzle red sauce over the top and sprinkle with more grated cheddar. Microwave for one minute, or until cheese is melted and burritos are very hot. Serve immediately. OPTIONAL: Fill burritos with any optional ingredients you like. (I love them full, but my boys like them very plain.)

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First, an important clarification: The Pioneer Woman Cooks is not meant to be an encyclopedia of innovative gourmet recipes. It is a reflection of what is going on in my kitchen day in and day out, whether that’s necessarily thrilling or not.

*The above disclaimer has never been more applicable than it is right now.*

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

My girls left yesterday for a whole week, which means I’m the only female around our homestead (well, except for Daisy the Cow) for the next seven days. This is scary and I’m frightened at what it all will mean. Channels will be turned to sports and superheros and bowling. I’ll have no one to talk to who can relate to my femininity and femaleness and feminineness and feminista-ism. I’ll be all alone in the house with nothing but three unruly boys, fifty dirty socks, and a stinky Basset Hound to keep me company.

Or three stinky boys, fifty dirty socks, and an unruly Basset Hound.

Or dirty boys, unruly socks, and a dirty Basset Hound.

Anyway.

I had a busy weekend (more on this on Confessions later), then was gone all day yesterday delivering my girls to their destination. When I arrived home at 7:00 last night, Marlboro Man and the boys were sitting at the dining table and banging their forks. I felt doomed and began to cry.

Then I got my second wind and made them beef and bean burritos, which took exactly sixteen minutes to get on the table. And I cracked up, reflecting that it was but the first of what will surely be a week-long fest of brown and plentiful food.

I’m sharing these process photos with you, not because this recipe is complicated and requires a pictorial tutorial—but because this is The Pioneer Woman Cooks…and the photos depict The Pioneer Woman, cooking.

Amen.





Ground beef and diced onions. Brown in a large skillet. Drain off excess fat (leave a little bit for flavor!) and add whatever seasonings you like: garlic, cumin, chili powder, oregano, salt. I tend to go easy on the seasonings for my picky crew, but go for it if yours can handle it!

El Pato tomato sauce—sold in the Mexican food aisle. You can use regular canned enchilada sauce, but this stuff is my favorite. It’s a tomato sauce spiked with chilies, onions, garlic, and cilantro and it just has a nice rich quality I haven’t been able to find in most enchilada sauces. It has a nice authentic Mexican flavor to it.

Pour in one can to about two pounds ground beef. This’ll give the meat a little flavor and spice, but it doesn’t just overtake the whole thing.

Let the meat simmer while you get the other ingredients ready. You can splash in a little water if it looks like it’s getting dry.

Yes. You heard me.

Sure, you can make your own. But you try making homemade refried beans while the three men in your life are pounding a dining table with eating utensils. It can’t be done, I tell you!

Dump the beans into a pan and start warming them on the stove.

Grate up some cheddar…

And dump it on in.

Stir it up until the cheese melts. Add a little more if you think it needs it. And you can season the beans if you’d like…but I tend to like to leave them plain. The cheese gives them all the salt they need, and if you pile on too much Mexican seasoning, the burritos will be overpowered.

Finally, nuke some burrito-size flour tortillas for about a minute or so. You want them to be soft and pliable.

Spread on some warm beans…

And some of the yummy meat.

NOTE: If I was making this for myself, I would also add the following inside the burrito:

Mexican rice

Sour cream

Guacamole

Chopped black olives

Diced green chilies

Chopped tomatoes

But if I tried doing that for my three boys, they’d seriously call the sheriff.

Fold over the ends…

(Do you know how difficult this is to do with one hand? I never knew this until last night.)

Roll it over…

And place them on a plate.

Now, you can either spoon some of the meat over the top (which is yummy), or (if you like things a little simpler) you can just drizzle on a little more of the sauce.

Sprinkle on more grated cheese…

And nuke it for about a minute, until the cheese is melted and the burrito is very hot. And that’s it for my bunch! Serve this with a big green salad with lots of carrot slices and a big glass of milk and you’ve got a meal fit for a king.

Well, three kings.

Don’t tell them I called them kings, please. It’ll go straight to their heads.

By the way, if you need to dress this up a little bit for yourself—and I definitely had to dress mine up—just sprinkle on a whole bunch of cilantro leaves. You wouldn’t believe how much flavor it adds.

Listen. I know this isn’t going to win any culinary awards for innovation. But for a sixteen-minute meal, it was pretty darn delicious.

I’ll share more of my I’m-Stuck-on-a-Ranch-With-Three-Boys meals as they happen this week. And while you won’t necessarily be bowled over by the brilliance of it all, you might come away with a few more sixteen-minute meals for your arsenal.

And if you have small humans in your house, you can’t have too many of those.

Love,

Pioneer Woman