The Poor Cookbook: Quesadillas

Lets take a look at another college food staple, quesadillas. Its cheap, easy, and rather fulfilling to make these at home with the right tools and foresight when purchasing ingredients.

Needed:

Tortillas (bigger the better)

Cheese (shredded works best but deli but will work)

Meat (i usually use diced ham, lunch meat works as well)

Pan

Butter

So making these is pretty straight forward. Heat your skillet to medium or just above, throw some butter on and follow it with a tortilla. Now you have to make a decision; you can either A) make a half size by folding this one tortilla in half, or B) make a full size by topping this tortilla with another and flipping the whole thing over which takes some skillz.

Depending on your size decision lay down your first dusting of shredded/sliced cheese. For half size sprinkle cheese over approx half the tortilla (duh) or for full size go crazy with it. After your first layer of cheese is down apply the meat to your liking (thats what she said), and then top it off with some more cheese. Having cheese top and bottom will keep our ingredients in the quesadila whilst turning it.

Now comes the fun part, brown the tortilla on the first side. If your making a halfy you will want to fold the tortilla as soon as all your ingredients are down, for a full size obviously there is no folding. On the half size once your first side is brown flip her over and repeat this process (you may want to add somemore butter to keep the shell from burning). The full size is a bit more challenging. Toss on the second tortilla and prepare to flip. My method here is to take a plate, set it carefully onto the quesadilla (fingers + hot skillet = pain) then pick up the skillet by the handle and flip it over so the quesadilla is plated. It is now rather simple to re-butter the pan and transfer the quesadilla from the plate back to the skillet to brown the other side.

Whatever path youve chosen we should now be looking at a delicious meal, hot and ready to be consumed. Now for our cost analysis:

Package of 12 burrito size tortillas ($3)

Diced Ham ($3)

Cheese ($2-5)

Now we are only using a max of 2 tortillas per meal, which is 6 meals from one package making our tortilla cost $.50 per meal. If we assume our ingredients will be used evenly then the meat and cheese will follow suit, leaving us at approximately $1.50-$1.75 per full size quesadilla. Thats a tasty value.

Of course this recipe has alot of room for experiment. Personally i like to throw in some pepper jack cheese, and all color of lunch meat can be substituted for variety. If you want to dice up some union or tomato into the mix that is always welcome, and of course when this meal is plated i suggest a good spoonful of sour cream and salsa to match. These extras are also extra $$ but well worth the investment.

Happy cooking