Recipe of the week, Homemade Taquitos!
Easy, fast and healthy! Homemade Taquitos are great for any meal of the day and perfect for birthday parties. We recently had a birthday get together for our tween-age son and were struggling with what to have as a food item. Since the birthday get together was offsite and at a mall location (Time Mission - Palisades Center!), it was challenging to find a light but filling food item which would also be a great alternative to the usual go to, pizza.
No offense pizza, but it is good to change things up. Especially when having to bring food with you and not wanting to worry whether it is still hot by the time you can serve it!
Although taquitos are best served hot, they were equally delicious and were gone in a flash!
We chose to make cheese and vegan taquitos but you can also make them with chicken/beef. Add seasoning and some salsa for texture and flavor. You are all set!
Here is my recipe:
Ingredients:
Organic soft tortilla shells (1 package made 12 taquitos)
Cheese- Cheddar and vegan/plant-based cheese.
1. (1, 12 oz package of melted yellow cheddar or you can use the already shredded cheese mixes.)
2. Vegan cheese did melt as well but it did the job! ( I used white "cheddar" variety.)
Seasonings of choice- We used powdered garlic, black pepper and parsley.
Chunky tomato/red salsa- *We drizzled the salsa over the taquitos and around the perimeter for added color*
Spread shredded white cheddar over the taquitos * This is optional but we added a little for the visual effect.
Lightly coat a sheet pan with olive oil. Place your soft-shell tortillas along the pan. Toast/low broil the shells first for approximately 4-5 minutes. Then add your choice of cheeses in the middle of each tortilla shell. Allow to melt for another 3-4 minutes. Roll each soft shell toward the middle as in the photo, or from one end to the other then continue to place on low broil for another 3-4 minutes.
Bring out from the oven and turn tortillas/taquitos over so the opening is now on the underside as this will help keep them closed. Add some "cold cheese," seasoning and salsa on top and bam! Taquitos to go!
The key here is to try not to eat them yourself! I settled for scraping off the melted cheese from the pan and boy was that satisfying!
Enjoy!