Tasty Ideas For Tortilla Fillings

By KC Kudra

If you want to make lunch in a rush or you are looking for easy ideas for a buffet, what about grabbing a package or flour tortillas and making some Mexican inspired treats with them?

Tortillas can be filled and served hot or chilled, depending on the meal, how much time you have and what you want to make. If you are catering for a buffet, you might want to make some chilled tortilla pinwheels.

Chilled Filled Tortillas

Cream cheese is a great ingredient to use in tortilla recipes because it is sticky as well as tasty, meaning it can hold the tortilla together. If you are making tortilla pinwheels, you will not want them to fall apart.

Spread some cream cheese over a flour tortilla and add fresh spinach, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, basil, ham, chopped cooked chicken, or bacon. Roll the tortillas up and secure them with a toothpick. Chill them for a couple of hours, then cut them into one inch pieces and serve. The pinwheel effect means you can see the filling in a spiral. These are always popular at buffets and parties.

If you want to make simple tortilla pinwheels, stick with just two ingredients - try cream cheese and pineapple, cream cheese with sliced tomatoes, peanut butter and jelly, chicken and mayonnaise, fresh basil and cream cheese or any other variation you can think of.

It is best to use one sticky ingredient, else the pinwheels might unravel when you remove the toothpicks. Make sure you do remove the toothpicks before serving these, by the way, since most people do not check canapes for toothpicks before putting them in their mouths!

Hot Filled Tortillas

If you want to make a tasty lunch, what about a quesadilla? Fold a flour tortilla around some cheese (shredded, grated or crumbled) and fry it. You can make a half moon-shape tortilla or a wedge-shaped one. Add some ham, chicken, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes or anything else you like.

The great thing about traditional Mexican foods like quesadillas is that you can make one in less than two minutes. It takes about half a minute to assemble and a minute to cook. Once the cheese has melted and the tortilla is hot and golden brown, it is ready to serve.

Tasty Tortilla Stacks

You can also make tortilla stacks. Heat some tortillas in the oven if you want them soft or deep fry them if you want them crispy. Between each tortilla, you can have bacon, refried beans, salad, ground beef with onion, guacamole, salsa, cheese, or anything else.

Put a different ingredient between each layer and serve this for dinner. If you use four or five tortillas you can feed a family. Make sure the different layers complement each other since you serve a dish like this in wedges and eat the different layers together.