Tracy Tries: Lesson 6—Quesadillas!

Hello and welcome back to another Tracy Tries blog! If you don’t remember, or if this is your first Tracy Tries blog, let me recap. I am trying different DIY projects with instructions from various online resources that Mid-Continent Public Library offers, and I’m currently enrolled in the online course Tex-Mex Cooking 101 from Universal Class.

For Lesson 6, I had to follow the lesson recipe and make quesadillas. I decided to avoid another fail, and follow the recipe that the lesson provided. The lesson instructions gave me leeway to add any ingredients I wanted, but I played it safe. Believe it or not, I haven’t ever made quesadillas before! I’ve eaten them; I’ve just never made them at home.

First, I had to mix the cheese, bell peppers, and chili pepper to make the base of the quesadilla. Then, I had to pan fry some chicken and cut it into strips. Have I told you that chicken and I don’t get along? Unless I cook it in the rotisserie or air fryer, I can never get it fully cooked. Time was not my friend the evening I made the quesadillas, so I grabbed a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store.

To assemble the quesadillas, I placed a flour tortilla in a pan, put two to three spoonsful of the cheese mixture and several strips of the chicken on top. Then I let it cook until the cheese was melted, placed the second flour tortilla on top, and flipped it. Honestly, flipping these was the hardest part of this recipe. If you don’t get the timing right, your tortillas don’t stick to one another, and you’ll flip your ingredients everywhere. Melting cheese to your stove element isn’t easy to clean up!

The Verdict:

These were a hit! We had family over for dinner, so I was hoping I wouldn’t disappoint them with a Plan B dinner if I messed these up! These cooked up super quick, and I kept them warm by keeping them in the oven until I finished all of them. I doubled the ingredients, so we got eight quesadillas out of the recipe. We topped them with salsa and/or sour cream, and I’ve already been asked to make them again. We recently got an air fryer, and apparently these are super easy to make in the air fryer as well. If I don’t have to flip them, I’ll be happy!

With the recent health recommendations, you may not feel like you can run to the store for quesadilla ingredients, but you’d be surprised at how versatile these are! You can make these with any leftover protein that you prefer—chicken, steak, tofu, beans. Add some veggies with or without cheese, and voilà! I really want to try these with some black beans and mushrooms.

What do you think sounds like a good quesadilla combination? Leave your suggestions in the comments below!

Tracy M.
Electronic Resources Department