Nothing beats crunchy quesadillas with a gooey cheesy center!
Quesadillas were one the first ‘real’ Mexican dishes I made when I started cooking. Although we had a Mexican restaurant in the city where I grew up, nobody ever came there for the quesadillas. It is an all-u-can-eat restaurant where you basically just stuff yourself with fried wings, spareribs and fries. Yes, sounds really Mexican right? Well, at least you get watery salsa and tortilla chips before your meal… So this was my primary motivation to try to make real authentic Mexican (well, tex-mex) food at home! Over the years I have made these quesadillas time and time again – sometimes for myself as comfort food after a long day, but mostly for friends as snack or delicious Mexican feast. If you know you’ll have company over, think quesadillas!
A slight word of caution: Quesadillas don’t hold really well. They get soggy when you try to keep them warm. But you can prepare your quesadillas in advance and then simply bake them when your guests arrive! That way everyone can indulge on crunchy gooey cheesy quesadillas. Mix up the cheeses you put in there and dare to experiment which combination works best for you!
I always use a griddle pan when making quesadillas to give them those awesome looking grill marks. As soon as the first grill marks appear on the tortilla I turn the quesadillas about 60 degrees. That way you end up with those nice diamond-shapes. It looks really impressive but is super easy to do!
And of course you can’t serve your quesadillas without salsa and guac! Try my recipes for homemade picco de gallo salsa and guacamole. This will set you back only about 15 minutes but you know that it will taste so much better than those store-bought dips! Add a salad and some corn on the cob and you have a whole Mexican feast!
(This is enough for 4 people, with 4 to 6 slices of quesadillas per person, depending on the way you cut them)
Ingredients
- 6 spring onions
- 1 yellow bell pepper
- 1 red chili
- A few coriander leaves
- 200g of grated mild cheese (I use young Gouda, but you can use Cheddar as well)
- 200g of grated mature cheese (and for this one I use old Gouda, try Manchego)
- 8 flour tortilla wraps, the same size as your pan
In advance: prepare your quesadillas!
Thinly slice up the spring onions, really finely dice the yellow bell pepper and dice the chili.
Put your sliced and diced vegetable in a big bowl and add the grated cheeses. Add a few chopped coriander leaves, a generous amount of black pepper and mix well.
Lay the 8 tortilla wraps side-by-side and put a handful of cheese mixture on half of the tortilla. Fold over the other half of the tortilla to end up with 8 half-moon shaped quesadillas, filled with the cheese mixture.
When your guests arrive: bake or griddle your quesadillas!
Put your pan or griddle pan on medium heat and allow it to get hot.
When your pan is medium-hot, put two of your half-moon shaped quesadillas next to each other into the pan. Bake for about 2 or 4 minutes and flip as soon as the tortilla starts browning and the cheese starts to get gooey.
Flip and bake for another 2-3 minutes allowing the other side to crunch-up as well.
Serve your crunchy gooey quesadillas with dips and some beers!
You can add a lot of other ingredients to the quesadillas as well. For example cooked chicken, other chopped vegetables and bacon work perfectly! As the cheese works like glue, make sure you always have enough cheese in your filling to hold everything together. Also, try not to over-stuff your to quesadillas – just make more! 🙂
Let me know in the comments what you think! What is your favorite quesadilla filling? Which combination of cheeses works best for you? And where can we find the very best quesadillas?
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