We love having these burritos on our menu plan. We usually make extra beans and/or extra tofu and eat those with other meals throughout the week. We really love leftover refried beans with fried potatoes for breakfast. For the toppings section we listed a bunch of options — we often go with what we have in the house. Feel free to just pick one or a couple that sound good to top off these delicious wraps.
Serves: 4-6
Time: 1 hr 30 minutes if using InstantPot
Ingredients
Tortillas (gluten-free option - we recommend the following three for gluten-free options that are burrito sized depending on what your store has: Siete Burrito, Raw Wraps, or Mission Gluten Free Wraps. Also our all-time favorite corn taco sized option if you want to eat this as tacos are Three Sisters Nixtamal)
For the beans:
3/4 cup dried pinto beans
salt
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 onion
4 garlic cloves
3 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp cayenne
For the tofu:
1 block of tofu
3 tbsp high heat oil (we like avocado)
3 tbsp corn starch
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/8 tsp cayenne
1 tsp bouillon (we like Rapunzel or Better than Bouillon)
1 tbsp mamma lil’s red pepper oil
1/4 cup boiling water
For the Fajitas Veggies:
high heat oil
1 big red onion
2 red bell peppers
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 lime
Toppings (we don’t use all of these, just whatever ones we have around or are calling to us, feel free to mix and match):
1 tomato
1 avocado
lettuce
shredded purple cabbage
green olives
hot sauce
mamma lil peppers
cilantro
vegan sour cream
In the Instant Pot:
To cook the pinto beans in an Instant Pot, add 3/4 cup of dried pinto beans to the pot. Cover the beans with water (in the small Instant pot this is about 6 cups of water), season with 1 tbsp kosher salt, 1 tsp chili powder, and 1 tsp cumin. Add half an onion and 4 cloves of garlic. Set the Instant Pot to pressure cook for 18 minutes letting depressurize naturally. Drain and rinse.
On the stove:
If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can easily cook pinto beans from scratch with a little planning. First you will need to soak the pinto beans which can be done one of two ways. 1. you can soak them overnight making sure they have enough water and space to double in size or 2. you can put them in a pot and bring to boil, then turn off the water and let soak for one hour. Again, make sure you have enough water and space that they can double in size.
Once you have soaked your beans, rinse them and then put in a pot with salty water. These will be cooking for about 2 hours so you don’t want as much salt as you would use for pasta, but you do want to add enough that you can taste the salt. The best way to get good at this is to practice. Each time you salt the water, taste it and when the beans are done taste them to see if they are well salted. A well salted bean should taste flavorful but not salty. If it tastes like you are eating salt, you added too much. If the bean lacks flavor then you didn’t have enough salt. For this recipe, also add half an onion, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 tsp chili powder, and 1 tsp cumin to the pinto beans as they cook.
Cook the pinto beans until they are soft but not falling apart (this will take 1.5-2 hours). We recommend checking the beans at about an hour and then every 20 minutes until they are soft but not disintegrating. Make sure your pot has enough water as I have definitely cooked all the water off before and burnt the beans! This may seem like a lot of work, however once you get the hang of it the work is almost all passive and the reward is high: pinto beans cooked from scratch taste much better and are much cheaper!
Press the tofu between two layers of kitchen towel with a weight (like a sheet pan with some cook books on top) for about 10 minutes.
While the beans are cooking and the tofu is pressing, slice the onions and peppers. Heat a frying pan with high heat oil such as avocado to medium high heat. Add the onions and salt. Cook for about 7 minutes stirring frequently. Once the onions are starting to get translucent, add the sliced peppers and cook until the peppers have some browning about 7 additional minutes. Once everything is cooked squeeze half a lime over the veggies and then remove them from the heat and set aside.
Add 3 tbsp of high heat oil to a pan over medium heat. Crumble the tofu into the hot pan and scramble about 10 minutes until it is starting to color. Add 3 tbsp cornstarch, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp chili powder, and 1/8 tsp cayenne to the tofu and turn the heat up slightly. Cook an additional 5 minutes until you get some crispy bits. Dissolve the bouillon and mamma lil oil in the hot water and add to the tofu. The water should boil immediately. Mix the tofu until the water has mostly boiled off, about 5 minutes.
Once the beans are cooked, put them in the food processor and add 3 tbsp of olive oil and 1/4 tsp cayenne and blend until smooth. Add salt to taste, and a squeeze of lime, and set aside.
Slice and dice any toppings you are using. We like to warm our tortillas before assembling. We do that by putting them over the burner on a gas stove, or toasting them lightly in the broiler or a toaster oven. Assemble and enjoy!