Many years ago, I frequently ate these frozen burritos and they were easy to cook - put on plate and microwave for couple minutes. I hadn’t had them for years, but noticed them in my grocery store a week ago. New cooking instructions are: loosely wrap in paper towel, put on plate, and microwave for 2-3 minutes. When done, part of the tortilla was hard. I ate some of it, ended up tossing the rest out. I tried again next day making sure the paper towel covered the entire thing, but loosely, then microwaved. Worse result than before - most of the tortilla was hard and I tossed it. I have two burritos left but won’t try again until someone can tell me what I’m doing wrong. (If a conventional oven is used, it takes almost an hour to cook.)
Heh, you can never go home again. The burrito not living up to your fond memories?
For the exact reasons you stated above; I cook mine in the oven with much better results.
Or sometimes, when I really hate myself, I deep fry them. SO FREAKING GOOD!!
Call me crazy, but have you tried cooking them the way you did before (i.e., without the paper towel)?
Might just be they added the paper towel part because people complained that the burritos would occasionally explode and spooge burrito filling all over the inside of their microwave and the guys in labelling just changed the instructions without the guys in packaging changing the burritos in any way.
You could try making the paper towel damp.
If memory serves, when I’ve gotten frozen microwavable burritos, the directions have said to just microwave them in the plastic wrapper after cutting off one end.
Your microwave is probably stronger than average. Try microwaving for a short time, then feel the burrito to see how it’s doing. Keep zapping and feeling until it’s done.
Using a damp paper towel is also a good idea. This works great on plain tortillas, so it might be just the thing for your burritos.
Wrap burrito in paper towel, microwave for 35 seconds; stop. Turn burrito over and microwave for another 30 seconds. This is my no-fail method and I’ve cooked thousands of these things for my children.
The ones I buy are Old El Paso brand, not Patio, so they may be different, but I just take them out of the wrapper, put them on a paper plate and nuke them for the time specified on the wrapper.
I only use full power on the microwave for liquids and cooking:
Heating/boiling water or, say, warming left over coffee; popcorn; cooking frozen peas or corn …hmm, can’t really thing of anything else.
ALL food reheating is done at no more than 60% power and 40-50% is typical. Those sections of hardened tortilla? Overcooked. Knock back the power and experiment with increased time and I’m sure the results will improve.
I also wrap almost everything I nuke but in this case, the tortilla might suffer.
I’d check the date on the package. That could also be a symptom of the package partially defrosting at some point.
Thanks everyone! I’ll try your suggestions.
Mad Dog 20/20 and a footlong patio burrito…7/11 used to be soo cool…
Foreigners never acquired the concept of pinball late at night.
Today I thawed four El Monterey beef and bean burritos in the microwave, then deep fried them till they were brown and crispy and heated through. Delicious!
Today, I tried one without the paper towel – it was much better, but a small part of the tortilla on the end was hard. (At least I got to eat most of it.) I was thinking about writing to the manufacturer, but at this point, I’m losing interest. There are lots of other snack foods out there that are better.