Black Bean and Bacon Quesadillas

This is a guest post/recipe from my sister Jessica, who is awesome.

Black Bean and Bacon Quesadillas

I love recipes, which is odd because I hardly ever cook. But I am constantly on the lookout for new recipes. In my perusing the other day, I found a recipe for a bacon quesadilla and one for a black bean quesadilla and I thought, why not combine the two? So I took a little of this and a little of that from each recipe and added something of my own and VOILA! Bacon and Black Bean Quesadillas. These were seriously delicious. Alek, Josh and I all devoured them. They’re especially tasty with Josh’s Famous Guacamole, the recipe of which Jen will post later. The other thing is – they’re super easy, which I am a big fan of. I love, love, love Mexican food and could eat these every night.

Bacon and Black Bean Quesadillas

4 strips of cooked bacon (we used maple-flavored, which was awesome; also, when I say 4 strips, I guess that’s not right. I used two long strips, which I cut in half and then cooked.)

1 can of black beans, drained

1 can of corn, drained

1 small can of diced green chilies, drained (or dice your own green chilies – make sure you take out the seeds!)

1 green bell pepper

4-cheese Mexican cheese blend, grated (or any kind of cheese you like)

4 large flour tortillas

Open your cans of ingredients and drain them all in a strainer to get as much moisture out as you can. Dice the green bell pepper and add it to the strainer. Once drained, transfer the ingredients to a mixing bowl. Crumble the strips of bacon and add to the other ingredients. Mix well.

Warm a pan to medium heat and spray a generous coat of cooking spray on it (or spritz olive oil, if you have one of those cool spritzer things – you know what I mean).

Lay a tortilla flat in the pan.

Sprinkle a light layer of cheese on the tortilla – just enough to help everything stick together.

Spoon in about a fourth of the mixture onto one half of the tortilla. Sprinkle a little more cheese on the top and, using tongs fold the other side of the tortilla on top of the side with the filling. Cook on one side until the tortilla is browned (a few minutes) then flip over (carefully, the filling will want to escape) and brown on the other side. Once browned on both sides, the filling should be plenty warm.

Serve with your favorite salsa, sour cream and/or guacamole.

Makes 4 quesadillas.

Notes:

• I didn’t use a lot of cheese in these quesadillas (so perhaps I need to rename them!) and they were still awesomely delicious. If you finely grate your cheese (or purchase finely grated cheese), a little can go a long way. Of course, you can use as much cheese as you want, but just know that it’s not necessary to use a lot.

• I have recently begun cooking my bacon in the oven, which is so much better than cooking bacon on the stovetop. You can cook a lot more bacon at one time and you don’t have to stand over the stove and have hot grease fly up and hit you in the face. I cook my bacon at 350 for about 20-25 minutes and it gets pretty crispy, which is how I like it.

• I didn’t use any seasonings or spices when I cooked these, but would recommend one or both of the following:

  • Garlic salt (go easy on this, though, because the bacon is already salty) or garlic powder

  • Chipotle powder (But not if you eat the quesadilla with Josh’s Famous Guacamole, because that already has chipotle powder in it and a little of that can go a long way)

• You could also add some sautéed red onion to the filling, but we didn’t because Josh’s Famous Guacamole has red onion in it.

-Jessica