Baked Black Bean Vegan Taquitos

As I said in my previous post, I love mexican food. Lately I have been trying new ways of making mexican food for dinner. I like buying the all-ready prepared taquitos but the vegetarian ones are usually full of preservatives and genetically modified soy. So I decided to make them myself with fresher ingredients. I bought the corn tortillas from a local mexican market. They were made with corn, water, lime and oil. Thankfully no lard. You can fill these however you’d like but here is my yummy recipe.

Ingredients:

16 fresh corn tortillas
2 tbs canola oil
1/4 cup white onion finely chopped
2 green onions finely chopped
1/2 of a yellow or orange pepper finely chopped
1/2-1 jalapeno finely chopped (depending on how spicy you like it)
3 cloves of garlic minced
1-2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp paprika
1-2 tbs beer or vegetable broth
1 15 oz can of organic black beans drained and rinsed
1/2 cup water
8 toothpicks

Pre heat your oven to 450 degrees.

Filling:
In a skillet heat 1 tbs of canola oil and add white onion, green onion, yellow pepper and jalapeno. Saute on medium low. Add salt, cumin and paprika and saute for about 8-10 minutes until vegetables have softened. Add garlic and saute together. Add beer and scrape up the pan and continue to saute till the liquid is absorbed. Finally add black beans and heat through. Taste the mixture to see if you need more salt or other seasonings. Turn off heat and leave the mixture.

Assembly:
Place a drying rack into your baking sheet to ensure full baking of the taquitos. Put water in shallow dish large enough to fit your tortilla. Assemble the taquitos by dipping two tortillas into the water and lay them on a dry place. Fill the top tortilla with about 2-3 tbs of the bean mixture. Roll the first tortilla then place it at the end of the second tortilla and roll again. (The water helps the tortilla to bend with less cracking and using two tortillas help the taquitos stay together). Put a toothpick through the uncooked taquito and place on the drying rack and baking sheet. Continue this until all 8 taquitos have been formed. Then drizzle 1 tbs of oil over the taquitos followed by a sprinkle of salt. Place in the oven at 450 degrees for about 12 minutes. Then they are ready to serve.

Yields 8 taquitos.

*If you feel like your black beans are falling out of the taquito feel free to mash them a little before you assemble. This will help keep everything together.