Braised Beef Burritos with Tomatillo Salsa

PDM came up with this recipe to improve our beef burritos, which were always tasty but sometimes a bit on the chewy side. The braising method tenderizes the meat and adds to the flavor, plus it makes a nice sauce that can go into the burrito with the other ingredients.

Braised Beef Burritos - serves 4 (~400 mg sodium per serving)

1.5 lb skirt steak, trimmed of excess fat and cut into skillet sized slabs
cumin powder
cayenne powder
chile powder
black pepper
garlic powder
1 T canola oil
1 cup beef broth (low sodium if possible)
1 medium onion, sliced into half rounds
1 T unsalted butter
Tumaro's Gourmet Tortillas - multigrain, low in carbs variety
Mexican shredded cheese blend
Tomatillo salsa (recipe below)
Hot sauce to taste

Preheat oven to 300 F. Sprinkle the skirt steak slabs liberally with cumin, cayenne, and chile powder. Dust lightly with black pepper and garlic powder. (See photo below.)

Sear seasoned beef in oil, working in stages using a cast iron dutch oven or oven-safe skillet over medium high heat. Remove and set aside. Add broth to pan and use wooden spoon to deglaze the pan and incorporate the fond into the liquid. Return the beef to the pan, cover, and cook in oven for about one hour. Turn the meat over half way through the cooking time, and add enough water to keep the liquid level about halfway up the side of the meat.

During the braising time, melt the butter over medium low heat. Add onion slices and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until onion begins to carmelize (~30 minutes).

Remove meat from braising liquid, transfer to cutting board and slice into small, bite-sized pieces. Meanwhile, reduce the braising liquid over medium heat on the stovetop until it is about 1/3 of the original volume. Return chopped beef and any juices to the pan, toss and saute briefly, and remove pan from heat.

Steam or heat tortillas topped with cheese until the cheese melts and tortilla is softened. Fill with beef mixture, carmelized onion, hot sauce and tomatillo salsa; wrap and serve.

Tomatillo Salsa


3 tomatillos, diced into medium cubes
~1/3 medium onion, diced medium
2 fresh jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely diced
juice of 1 lime
1 t sugar
1 t cumin powder
2 T minced cilantro


Saute tomatillos 3-5 minutes until softened. Drain excess liquid and allow to cool. Add the remaining ingredients, mix and refrigerate until ready to use.

A Hint of Normalcy

I worked very late on Tuesday, and when I finally got home my husband had dinner in progress on the stove (because he is awesome like that). The remarkable thing about this meal is that it was so much like what we used to eat before Low Sodium. He is very good at making burritos from scratch using a variety of ingredients, but it didn't seem like we'd be able to make a low enough sodium version of any of them - tortillas have a LOT of sodium, as does cheese, canned black beans or refried beans (even the "low sodium" varieties), and even hot sauce isn't sodium free. And of course he would always include salt in the seasoning mix applied to whatever meat we used as well.

PDM's delicious low sodium beef burritos were made possible by: not including any salt in the seasoning for the meat (he used a lot of other spices), making more carmelized peppers and onions than usual to add delicious flavor and aroma without any sodium, starting with dried black beans rather than canned (much more work and time required, but no sodium unless you add it yourself), using some no-sodium "chicken flavor" fake bouillon powder to add flavor to the cooking water for the beans in lieu of salt, finding a semi-lowish-sodium cheese blend and not using very much of it on my burrito, and some very tasty tortillas that had less fat and much less sodium than our usual brand (Tumaro's jalapeno and cilantro gourmet tortillas, with 105 mg sodium each). He made a fresh jalapeno and onion salsa that was very tasty sans salt. I ended up using it to perk up my black beans, which were sort of bland. I also put just a tad of "No Salt" (which is KCl - potassium chloride) on the beans because they really needed it!

All in all, I could barely tell that this meal had FAR less sodium than any of our old burrito concoctions. And since the lowly burrito (done creatively with whatever we happen to have around) has been such a staple of our dinner routine, this success was quite a relief! It also means that we should be able to make quesadillas using some of the same methods, although I will have to make mine small to limit the tortilla and cheese sodium contribution.

And for whatever reason, I've been eating smaller portions than I used to. My theory is that (so far) the food isn't quite as tasty, which makes it easier to stop when I feel full. Since I only ate half my burrito, this helped further reduce the sodium count of this meal, and gave me a low sodium lunch to bring to work the next day.