When it comes to work lunches, I am a creature of habit. If I happen upon something that’s tasty, nutritious, and cheap, I will cheerfully eat it every single weekday without fail for months at a time. Such is the case with these burritos, which have kept me fed since approximately April.
These are so cheap it’s ridiculous. Here is what you need.
Take some tortillas, some black beans and rice (this is a bag left over from my last batch of burritos, which I’d frozen), some shredded cheese, some garlic powder and some chili powder or red pepper. Put a tortilla down on a piece of tin foil. Add beans and rice, shredded cheese, garlic powder and red pepper. Wrap that sucker up. Repeat until you run out of at least one ingredient. Stick ‘em in a bag (I reused the bag the beans and rice were stored in, because I AM CHEAP and also, why not?) and stick the bag in the freezer.
These freeze beautifully. I take out one (if I’ve used big flour tortillas) or two (if I’ve used small corn tortillas, like these) every day at lunchtime, unwrap them, slap them on a plate and microwave on high for 3 minutes and 45 seconds. Then I put some salsa and a bit of sour cream on them and nom away. They’re so good, pretty darn healthy, and just insanely cheap.
The breakdown:
- 30 corn tortillas, sale $1.75, plus a 50-cent coupon, doubled: 75 cents
- Bag of black beans, $1, half used in this recipe: 50 cents
- 2-pound bag of rice, $2.69, plus a 75-cent coupon, tripled, 44 cents; about half used in this recipe: 22 cents
- Shredded cheese, 8 oz., $2
- Garlic powder, 79 cents at CVS, say 10 cents’ worth here: 10 cents
- Red pepper, 79 cents at CVS, say 10 cents’ worth here: 10 cents
- Tin foil, sale $2.69, plus a 75-cent coupon, tripled, 44 cents; about a quarter used in this recipe: 11 cents
TOTAL: $3.78. I made 22 burritos before running out of beans and rice; the cost, including tin foil!, is thus 17 cents per burrito. Of course, the salsa and sour cream also cost money. $1 worth of sour cream will last me about three weeks, or through all 22 burritos. Salsa is a bit more — I get a big old jar for $2 and that lasts me a week and a half, so call it $4. Add $5 to the $3.78 and you get $8.78; divide by 22 and you get 40 cents per burrito.
Still not too shabby, but I’m keeping “The 17-Cent Burrito” as the title of this post anyway. I could argue that not everyone likes salsa and sour cream, and besides, it just sounds that much cooler that way.
[...] Harris Teeter black beans, $1.69 (I’m going to use these, the 55-cent tortillas, and my free rice to make some more 17-Cent Burritos) [...]
[...] have long been one of my favorite work lunches. They’re tasty, reasonably healthy, filling, freezable, and ridiculously cheap. This batch [...]