Pan Burritos — When October Asks for Something Warm in a Pan

October arrived with the bluntness October always has in Duluth. Frost on Tuesday morning. The maples on Skyline Drive turned overnight, as if they'd been waiting for a signal. The sweaters came out of the cedar chest and the wool socks went on the radiator and the kitchen window frosted over by 6 AM and I made coffee in the dark and stood at the sink and thought: this is the second autumn without Paul. The second one. The one without the shock. The one where the absence has become the architecture of the day rather than the demolition of it. I made tater tot hotdish on Wednesday — the most Minnesotan meal there is, the meal Paul loved without irony, the meal that tastes like every church basement potluck I have ever attended. Ground beef, cream of mushroom soup (I am not above the can; Mamma uses the can; if it's good enough for Ingrid Johansson it's good enough for me), green beans, tater tots arranged in concentric rings on top because that's how Mamma does it and that's how I do it. Forty minutes at 350. The smell is unmistakable. The smell is Minnesota. The smell is a winter that hasn't started yet but that the body already knows is coming. I ate at the table. Two places. The hotdish steamed. Sven sat at my feet, hopeful, dignified, thirteen and a half years old and slower than last week but here. Always here. Mamma called on Thursday. "Did you make the hotdish?" she asked, because Mamma knows the calendar — first frost means hotdish. I said yes. She said, "With the green beans?" I said yes. She said, "Good girl." Ninety years old and she still calls me good girl. I will take it. The Damiano Center on Thursday: wild rice soup, fifty gallons. Gerald (homeless, recovering, Vietnam veteran, theology degree from a state school he won't name) helped me ladle. He told me about a man who got an apartment last week. First apartment in eleven years. Gerald said, "Linda, the soup helped him hold on long enough to get there." I said, "The soup didn't get him an apartment." Gerald said, "You don't know what the soup did." I thought about that all the way home. Friday I baked limpa bread. Two loaves. The smell of caraway and orange peel filled the kitchen and traveled into the hallway and up the stairs into rooms I no longer enter. The bread doesn't know which rooms have people in them. The bread fills the whole house anyway. The bread is generous like that. I gave one loaf to Mamma. The other loaf I'm eating slowly, in slices, with butter, in the morning, while Sven watches. The second autumn alone. The hotdish. The bread. The soup. The window in the dark. The dog at my feet. I have been thinking about how the second autumn is harder in some ways than the first one. The first autumn after Paul died, the grief was acute and people sent flowers and the kids called daily. The second autumn, the kids assume I am okay, the flowers have stopped, and the grief has not stopped — it has only learned to live more quietly inside the body. The kitchen knows. The dog knows. The lake, possibly, knows. Nobody else needs to. It is enough. It has to be. And on a morning like this, with the maples burning red and the lake gray as iron, it is.

The hotdish is Paul’s meal. It will always be Paul’s meal, and I will always make it on the first frost, and that will not change. But Wednesday comes again the following week, and the cold does not let up, and Sven is still at my feet, and the kitchen still needs to smell like something. That’s when I pull out the pan burritos — another Midwest assembly-line dinner, another thing you build in layers, layer by layer, like you’re putting a week back together. Mamma doesn’t make these, so they’re mine alone, which is its own kind of quiet comfort.

Pan Burritos

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs ground beef
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 packet (1 oz) taco seasoning
• 1 can (15 oz) refried beans
• 1 can (10 oz) red enchilada sauce, divided
• 1 can (4 oz) diced green chiles
• 8 large flour tortillas (10-inch)
• 2 cups shredded Mexican blend cheese, divided
• 1/2 cup sour cream, for serving
• Sliced green onions and salsa, for serving

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish and set aside.
2. Brown the beef. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook ground beef and diced onion together, breaking the meat up as it cooks, until beef is no longer pink and onion is softened, about 8–10 minutes. Drain excess fat.
3. Season the filling. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more. Stir in taco seasoning, refried beans, green chiles, and half the enchilada sauce. Mix until fully combined and warmed through, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat.
4. Assemble the burritos. Lay a tortilla flat. Spoon a generous 1/2 cup of the beef filling down the center. Sprinkle with about 2 tablespoons of shredded cheese. Fold the sides in, then roll tightly. Place seam-side down in the prepared baking dish. Repeat with remaining tortillas and filling, fitting burritos snugly side by side in the pan.
5. Top and bake. Pour remaining enchilada sauce evenly over the top of all the burritos. Sprinkle with remaining shredded cheese. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes.
6. Uncover and finish. Remove foil and bake an additional 10–15 minutes, until cheese is melted and bubbling and edges are lightly golden.
7. Rest and serve. Let the pan sit for 5 minutes before serving. Top with sour cream, sliced green onions, and salsa as desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 480 | Protein: 28g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 42g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 890mg