$1.50 Vs. $14 Vegan Burrito

I've been training my whole life for this. I won't let Merle's words get into my head. Her head's about to explode. Hey, what's up everybody? It's your girl Merle. Hi everybody, I'm Rachel. So today we are eight feet apart because we are social distancing for safety. You should too. And today we're gonna be making two different vegan burritos at two different price points. One of us is going to be making a burrito for only $1.50 and the other one is gonna be making a $14 burrito. And then at the end, our very good friend Jasmine is gonna come in and decide which one has the best value. So now we just have to flip a coin to see who gets which one. I just so happen to have one right here. Okay, heads is expensive, tails is cheap. Heads. That means I'm expensive. You got the expensive one. You're secretly excited, I feel like when you get the cheap one. I do like having a little budget challenge. Well, Merle, let's see who will be burrito victorious. The O'Neills versus the Gajeskis. So I only have about $1.50 to make this burrito. I really like seitan in my burritos but vital wheat gluten can be a little bit expensive. So I'm gonna hop on the old TikTok train and make the viral seitan using all purpose flour. But we're also gonna put a carne asada twist on it so it's not gonna be the same recipe Merle made in the other video. So first I'm going to add some all purpose flour to a bowl. All purpose flour is pretty much as cheap as it gets. And then a half a cup of cold water. Just mixing this together until it's combined and then I'm actually gonna knead it just for a couple minutes to really start developing that gluten. I mean, it is kind of ridiculous when you think about what we're making because it's just like flour inside of a flour tortilla. We're just not gonna think about it that way. We're gonna think of it as meat. But don't try this at home if you have celiac disease. So now I'm going to just put this back in the bowl, cover it up and let it rest for about an hour. So what we're gonna do now is add the water and we're gonna wash it so that we get out all of the starches and are just left with the actual gluten. The water is getting very white, like milky looking. So we wanna change our water every two minutes or so when it's starting to look really white and add some new water. Wow, what a sensation. Just keep doing this until our water runs almost clear but still a little bit cloudy. So this is also why we used so much flour because so much of it is actually gonna come out in this process. So now I'm just gonna drain the rest of this out and then we can season it. Now it is time to add our spices to our little gluten boy and we are gonna add some salt, some garlic powder, a little bit of cumin, chili powder, black pepper and some dried oregano. Our little gluten ball is gonna be so flavorful. So hopefully we've added enough spices that you will forget you're eating a ball of flour. So we're just gonna let our guy sit here for about 30 minutes to let all the spices really soak in. So now I have to do this twisting method. So I'm gonna twist it and then I'm gonna tie it into a little knot. What you doing there, Rachel? You doing a little loop de loop? Some might say your entire recipe is inspired by me. We had the same exact idea without knowing the other person had the same idea. Some might say I had it first because I got it done first. So some might say I would win. Either way. Did your little seitan ball have 10 plus spices? So this is a whole different experience. Yours looks a little spongy. All right, you keep up what you're doing there, Rachel. I will be going now. Oh, you just ripped my jeans. I won't let Merle's words get into my head. Boom. I'm gonna add my oil to my pan and I'm just gonna sear it for about two to three minutes on each side so it develops this nice golden crust. This is already starting to look really good. So now I'm gonna make a marinade in my bowl that had all of the drippings from the seitan so we can still utilize all this great flavor. So I'm going to add some water, soy sauce, orange juice, and some lime juice. And then I'm gonna pour it right over my seitan and then cover this and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. So while our seitan is simmering, we're gonna get started on our chipotle crema sauce. We can't afford cashews, so we're gonna be using the poor man's cashews, which is silken tofu. I'm gonna throw this little jello blob right into my little mini food processor. So to that, I'm going to add a pinch of some chipotle powder, salt, lime juice, and some water. Okay. Mother. This looks really good. Mm, that's creamy. I think this is gonna be really good on the seitan. Our seitan has finished simmering and now I'm just gonna cut it into strips. Gonna take a little tiny test because I really just can't wait to try this. Oh my God. I think that's better than normal seitan. I'm impressed. Now it's time to assemble our burrito. So we're gonna start off with some romaine lettuce. Not too much lettuce. We don't wanna go crazy here. Our seitan. So we're going to add on some salsa. Salsa is so cheap and it packs so much flavor, so it's a really great ingredient to use if you're on a budget. And then finally, we have our little tofu chipotle crema. It's not the fattest burrito we've ever come across, but look at it. I am so excited for Jasmine to try it, but first, Merle's gonna make her burrito. For my burrito, I wanna go all out, which means I'm gonna invest in some Impossible Meat. Impossible Meat is just, to me anyway, the most convincing and the closest to real meat that you can get. We're gonna go ahead and cook it up. I'm gonna add some olive oil into my pan. I'm gonna toss in some onions. Sprinkle a little bit of salt on the onion. I'm gonna go ahead and add in our Impossible Meat. Doesn't this look like real meat? Oh, it psychs me out every time I work with it. It's just like so close. Okay, so I'm gonna add some chili powder, ground cumin, garlic powder, finally some cayenne. I love that it actually cooks like meat too. All right, this is looking glorious. Now it's time to set this aside and let's make the crema. So now we're gonna make a roasted poblano cashew crema. Fancy, right? So what I did is I just roasted this poblano pepper at 425 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 220 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. What it's hopefully gonna do is add some nice smokiness to the flavor of our crema and jazz it up a little bit. And we've got a big budget on our hands today, so that's why I'm using cashews. I'm gonna peel the skin off of this pepper. Very satisfying to do, by the way. And we're gonna go ahead and remove the seeds, which is really easy to do. Well, right when I said it was easy to do, now the seeds are everywhere. It feels like they're multiplying, actually. Now we're gonna add all of our ingredients for the crema in here. Then I'm gonna add my cashews, some water, lime juice, and some salt. Oh, my God, that scared me. That looks awesome. And now we're gonna make our guacamole. I've got some avocado here, and I'm just gonna add some lime juice, salt, pepper. I'm gonna mash that up. Now I'm going to mix in some tomatoes, some red onion, jalapeno, and some garlic. And just mix that all together. I know that I always ask for extra guac whenever I get a burrito, and I always feel like I'm splashing the cash when I do that, but since we've got the cash to splash, we're splashing. Finally, it's time to assemble. We've got a lot of ingredients here, so I'm gonna be using two tortillas to make this an extra-large beefy burrito. I'm gonna add some rice. There are little flecks of cilantro in here. Some pinto beans. Our meat. I'm gonna add some fire-roasted corn for a little bit of sweetness. Then I'm fortunate enough that I get to buy some vegan cheese. So I'm gonna make it rain with the cheese. I both want to stuff this as much as I can, but I also don't know how much it's gonna fit. Our guac. I don't know how I'm rolling this thing. Got some lettuce, few more tomatoes. Finally, our poblano cashew crema. This looks so good. Jasmine better be ready for this because her head's about to explode with flavor. The moment of truth. Can she wrap it? I've been training my whole life for this. It's not rolling too many times. It's rolling once. Oh, we did it! I don't even care if I win because I just did that. It's not true, I wanna win. Okay, so this is just about done. I'm just gonna quickly toast it on a pan on either side so it gets a nice little golden brown crisp on the outside and it's nice and warm and crunchy when she bites into it. I think I'm gonna wow our judge. Let's get into this. It is taste test time. We have the two burritos for you. One has a high budget, one has a low budget. You don't know who made which burrito. So go ahead and take a test. I'm not gonna lie, I think I have an idea. Mm, mm. This is really good. I am actually very surprised that this is vegan. It tastes like ground beef. There's a smokiness and it's really creamy. I'm really liking the texture in the burrito because the rice is nice and fluffy, the beans have a nice bite, and the ground beef actually feels like meat. The guacamole's super fresh, plus the actual crema inside the burrito. They just mesh together really well. Okay, it tastes like burrito night at Jan's. Who's Jan? A white woman. This burrito has a lot of different flavors going on. It really packs a punch. The texture is really good. It doesn't taste exactly like steak, but it definitely resembles it. There's a creaminess in this burrito too that I really like. It kind of tastes like a chipotle sauce, and that really makes it for me. So now I'll tell you that the burrito on the right costs $14, and the burrito on the left was $1.50. So with that price difference, which one do you think has the best value? So the seitan in this burrito has a great bite to it. It really reminded me of steak. This one had a lot of delicious elements as well, and they all worked together in harmony. $14 and $1.50? Oh man, $1.50 is so cheap. If I had to pick, I would go with this one. I just think it's the best bang for your buck. But this one was also so delicious, and whoever made it is so talented. Thank you, Jasmine. It looks like Merle has won again. I want to bring Aria back. No, he's never coming back. I'm the real food person, so I have better taste. That's right. Damn it, that's true. Don't feel bad, though. I like them both very much, so I will take both home. Thank you. Okay. Wonderful. Seitan.