The fried quesadillas they are a typical dish of Mexican cuisine. It is one street food very popular: tortilla dumplings stuffed with cheese, meat or fish. To be proposed as starter or for a Mexico themed lunch or dinner.
Ingrediants
- 500 g of white corn flour
- 6 g of instant baking powder
- 8 g of salt
- 1 and a half liters of hot water
- Seed oil for frying
- 350 g of ground beef
For about 15 fried tortillas
For the meat filling
- 1 medium potato boiled in salted water and cut into small cubes
- a quarter of an onion
- salt
- cumin powder
- half a tube of tomato paste
- seed oil
- 150 g of stretched curd cheese like provola in small cubes
For the cheese filling
The fried quesadillas they are a typical dish of Mexican cuisine: one street food very tasty and rich that sees the classics tortillas stuffed with queso (i.e. cheese, hence the name), but also with meat or fish, and then fried in seed oil.
The recipe that we present to you we have prepared together with the lady Antonieta Ruiz, originally from Northern Mexico and who has lived in Italy for many years. This is its version with two fillings of your choice: one of stringy cheese (in this case provola) and one of beef ragout spiced with cumin.
As you will see, to realize the tortillas – comparable to ours wraps – we made use of a “tortillera“, that is the typical accessory that Mexican families have at home and which facilitates execution as it effortlessly presses the balls of dough, making them thin discs. In the recipe we also explain how to make them without the tortillera. The corn flour used is the typical white corn flour widespread in Central and South America: you can find it online or in ethnic shops, prefer Pan Bianca or Maseca ones.
These fried quesadillas they are perfect like starter or in buffet Mexico-themed: to be served with tamales and pan de maiz.
OTHER MEXICAN RECIPES: Corn soup, Champurrado
How to prepare: Fried quesadillas
- Execution
- average
- Preparation time
- 50 min
- Cooking time
-
30 min – 35 min
- Portions
-
6 – 8
How to prepare: Fried quesadillas
Start preparing these fried quesadillas with a meat filling, which needs to rest and cool completely before being used. In a pan, fry the onion in a spoonful of seed oil and add the minced meat and the boiled potato cubes. Stir and let the meat brown. Add the tomato paste, salt, cumin, a glass of water and cook until the liquid dries. Remove and let cool. In the meantime, dedicate yourself to the tortilla dough: in a large bowl, combine the flour and yeast, mix and add the salt.
Mix everything by adding a spoonful of hot water a little at a time: you will need to obtain a solid and smooth dough. Divide it into balls of 3 or 4 cm in diameter.
Prepare some 25×13 cm sheets of baked meat or cling film folded in half. Open the tortillera, first place the parchment paper on the disc, then the ball of dough and close with another disc. Apply pressure with the help of the tortillera handle.
The result will be a disk a few millimeters thick. If you don’t have the tortillera, you can use two smooth plates or two heavy smooth wooden cutting boards, pressing the surface with your hands. Or enclose the ball of dough in two sheets of parchment paper and roll it out with a rolling pin to obtain a disc of about 10 cm in diameter. Now the quesadillas are ready to be filled with the diced cheese and meat sauce.
Stuff half of the disk with the meat, towards the center, in order to leave the necessary space at the edges to make the closure. Take the disk in your hands and with the help of parchment paper create a bundle, overlapping the two halves.
Do this with all the quesadillas, alternating the two fillings according to your tastes. Make sure you seal the bundles well, curling the dough on the edges with your hands. In a large saucepan, heat an abundant quantity of oil and, once hot, immerse the bundles in it. Fry them until they reach a nice golden color and then arrange them, with the help of a skimmer, on absorbent paper to remove excess oil.
Fried quesadillas are perfect served hot. They can be eaten alone or accompanied with some spicy sauce, such as ranchera sauce made with tomato, onion and chilli.
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