So apparently the Super Bowl is coming up soon? I dunno. I don’t follow football, but I know a lot of you do, so I wanted to give you some budget-y options for football eats! These cute and crispy little Creamy Black Bean Taquitos are really easy, fun to eat, and are totally Super Bowl worthy. Plus, they make a pretty impressive presentation, especially when provided with multiple sauces for dipping.
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Keep Costs and Waste Down
Making a vegetarian taquito means that almost all the ingredients are very budget friendly. Corn tortillas are super cheap, especially when you buy a large pack. If you can’t use 30+ corn tortillas at once, you can freeze half of them or just use the other half to make some homemade baked tortilla chips. Because it isn’t a party without some tortilla chips anyway, right?
You can also cut the cost significantly by using beans that are cooked at home instead of canned. I’m out of my home cooked beans right now, so I had to use canned, but home cooked are usually about 1/3 the cost for me. Here’s a tutorial on how to cook beans easily using a slow cooker.
How to Serve Creamy Black Bean Taquitos
These taquitos are great on their own, but it’s always fun to have something to dip them in. I like salsa for these because the filling is already creamy, but sour cream or guacamole are also nice!
Goes great with: Cowboy Caviar, Warm Corn and Avocado Salad, Fire Roasted Salsa, Best Ever Avocado Dip
See this recipe used in my weekly meal prep.
Creamy Black Bean Taquitos
Servings 15 taquitosIngredients
- 4 oz. cream cheese (room temperature) ($1.00)
- 1 15oz. can black beans ($0.95)
- 1 4oz. can diced green chiles ($1.09)
- 2 green onions ($0.21)
- 3 dashes hot sauce (optional) ($0.05)
- 1/8 tsp garlic powder ($0.02)
- 1/8 tsp salt (or to taste) ($0.02)
- 15 6-inch corn tortillas ($1.37)
- 3 Tbsp cooking oil, divided, for frying ($0.12)
Instructions
- Rinse and drain the black beans. Drain the diced green chiles. Slice the green onions. Add the cream cheese, black beans, green chiles, green onion, hot sauce, garlic powder, and salt to a bowl. Stir together until evenly combined, then taste and adjust the salt or hot sauce to your liking.
- Stack 5 tortillas on a plate, cover with a damp paper towel, and microwave for about 20 seconds to soften (this helps prevent them from cracking when rolled). Heat a large non-stick or cast iron skillet over medium heat. Working quickly as the skillet heats, place about 2 Tbsp of the black bean filling in each tortilla then roll tightly closed.
- Once all five are filled, add about 1 Tbsp cooking oil to the skillet, give it a few seconds to heat (it should shimmer), then add the filled taquitos seam side down. Cook the taquitos on each side until brown and crispy, then transfer to a clean plate.
- Repeat the process in small batches of five, adding a little more oil to the skillet each time, until all the filling has been used (about 15 taquitos). Serve while still hot.
See how we calculate recipe costs here.
Nutrition
Have you tried this recipe?Mention @budgetbytes or tag #budgetbytes on Instagram!I seriously love anything in a tortilla. 😅
How to Make Black Bean Taquitos – Step by Step Photos
Start by rinsing and draining a 15oz. can of black beans (or 1.5-2 cups if using homemade). Drain one 4oz. can of diced green chiles. Add 4oz. room temperature cream cheese to a bowl with the black beans, green chiles, 2 sliced green onions, 2-3 dashes of hot sauce, 1/8 tsp garlic powder, and 1/8 tsp salt.
Stir everything together until well combined. Taste the mixture and adjust the salt or hot sauce to your liking. The mixture isn’t very pretty, I’ll admit, but it’s SO tasty!
Working in small batches of about 5 tortillas at a time, place the 6-inch tortillas on a plate, cover with a damp paper towel, and microwave for about 20 seconds to soften them up some. This helps them stay pliable and not crack open when you roll them.
Begin heating a non-stick or cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Working quickly, begin filling each tortilla with about 2 Tbsp of the black bean filling, then rolling tightly. You’ll need less filling than you suspect, I promise. You want the tortilla to wrap around itself at least once, so don’t over fill.
Once the skillet is hot, add about 1 Tbsp cooking oil and swirl to coat the surface. Give it a couple of seconds to heat until it looks shimmery, then add the rolled taquitos seam side down. Let the taquitos cook on each side until golden brown and crispy. Keeping them close together as they cook also helps prevent them from unrolling while in the skillet. You can use the few minutes while they cook to start warming, filling, and rolling the next batch of taquitos. Repeat the process in small batches, adding a little more oil to the skillet each time, until they’re all filled and cooked.
And that’s how you make super simple, delicious, crispy, and creamy black bean taquitos!
I make this often, with a few tweaks!
First, the “microwave under a damp paper towel” trick doesn’t really work for me. But I’ve found that heating the tortillas gently in a pan on the stove – med-low heat and about 20 seconds on each side – seems to work beautifully. They soften first, but crisp up quickly so you’ll want to work fast! I make an assembly line – warm one tortilla in the pan, and then while you’re filling and rolling the first one, add a second tortilla to the pan to warm. The timing seems to work out perfectly.
Second, I’ve tried adding some ground beef to the recipe in the past which worked ok (black beans are too intense for my tummy), but hubby and I found that what we really wanted was a soft, creamy, cheesy filling, so now we do refried beans, cream cheese, and a little shredded cheddar in addition to the chiles and spices.
Third, I found that pan-frying was too messy, time-consuming, and finicky. I oven-bake in a big batch, and while they don’t always turn out as attractive or tightly-rolled as I would like, they taste yummy and I’m sure the presentation could be improved with the use of some toothpicks during cooking!
So my subs are – heat the tortillas individually in a pan, sub refried beans for the black beans, and bake in the oven. Hubby and I mix together salsa and sour cream to dip, and serve corn on the cob, salad or coleslaw alongside :)
If it helps anyone, I suggest 5 to 10 seconds longer on heating the corn tortillas before rolling up, just worked easier for me with my microwave My kids like these and they are not always easy to please. Our family eats meat but trying to cut back on how often we eat meat dishes and I see several good vegetarian options on this site so I’m Glad I found this website! Thank you!
Do you have any suggestions for an alternative to cream cheese? These look AMAZING but we both have a strong aversion to cream cheese. Love your recipes, thanks!
Hi Allison! You could try this suggestion from a previous reader: I made this recipe without the cream cheese as I did not have that in my fridge at the time. But to make up for it, I put my canned black beans in the blender. Putting the black beans in the blender made the beans have that binding property to the corn tortilla in the same way that cream cheese would have (and I saved money too since I didn’t have to buy the cream cheese). I added spices like cumin to give it a nutty and meaty flavor too. I am from the South so I added a little pat of butter to the pan while frying and these were delicious.
I’m sure these taste good but I can’t assemble them at all. Everything just falls apart.
I’m saving this to try, but I’m wondering if anyone has tried them adding shredded chicken? My guys are pretty demanding when it comes to having meat with their meal and I use a lot of rotisserie chicken when making things like this.
Canned chiles aren’t really a thing in Australia. Could I sub some fresh chopped capsicum (bell pepper)? I don’t like super-spicy anyway so it’s more about replacing the volume than the flavour :-)
Yes you could chop up bell pepper for replacement and be fine.
Delicious!! I wish I could post a picture. I loved the recipe. I doubled mine.
Tweaked it a bit…
– Vegan cream cheese (some else mentioned the same one in an older comment)
– half the amount of Chile’s (I have a 2yr didn’t want it to spicy.
– Heated tortillas wrapped in a reusable napkin (1min for every 5 tortillas)
– used toothpicks right at the end of the taquito to keep it from falling apart.
– baked them. Sprayed a baking sheet with coconut oil, laid the taquitos toothpick down. Sprayed the tacos with oil. Put them in the oven at 425, 30min flipped them half way 👌🏻👌🏻
Huge hit and my 2yr old LOVED them. I also used this recipe to make black bean dip! 🤤 I just blend it and add some cumin. So good!
where is the nutrition info? I see a disclaimer but there isn’t any info on any nutrition facts. Where would I find those? I see prices, but not nutrition.
We only recently brought on a Registered Dietician to our team. She’s working hard behind the scenes to update the entire recipe database, over 1500+ recipes, with nutritional information. She’s working her way from the newest recipes back and it takes some time to update them all. It’s not a one click approach when you want them to be accurate. To read more about our approach to nutritional information check out our disclaimer here.
I’m so sad! I followed all directions exactly and mine completely fell apart. :( I should’ve read the comments before making them. I went to the store just for these ingredients for dinner and meal prep this week and nowwww….lol…well…definitely won’t be eating for lunch tomorrow like I had planned. I wonder if baking them would be better to keep them from falling apart? The microwave did nothing for me.
I’m so sorry to hear this Savanna. We’ll work on this and see what we can do.
Made these last night as a veggie option with our chicken taquitos. Followed the recipe to the letter but changed the prep. We too have had a hard time with corn tortillas that break when you roll them. One tried and true way to get them not to break is to fry each side in a tiny bit of oil. See the video and instructions on Simply Recipes for exactly how to do it. We then baked in the oven at 400 until the filling was warm and the tortillas were a little crispy. Served with rice cooked with tomato, dipping in queso, salsa, and guacamole.
Thank you so much for sharing!
This was not a good recipe. Mine kept falling apart, even after cooking them seam side down and pushed together really tightly.
I’m so sorry to hear that Sarah. I’m happy to walk through the recipe for you if you’d like.
If you don’t like corn tortillas and want to use flour, would you recommend doubling the recipe to get the same amount of taquitos?
Yes you can swap for flour. No need to double it if you can find those smaller street taco tortillas in your store. They’ll work perfectly.
Am I reading this right? Is a serving size really 1 taquito?
Yes you can always have more if you’d like!
To simplify, with cooking that is what I do, I made the filling, spread it on half the tortilla, folded in half and it was very good. We used guacamole’ for the dip. We liked it and will make it again. Used this way, we had 9 individual flat tacos.
Oh love the dipping into guac. So good!
This is, quite frankly, simply a bad meal prep idea. If I wanted to eat soft, falling apart corn tortillas with beans getting into my rice, I would not bother with the effort of panfrying everything. The microwave tip did not work well for me at all. I had more success wetting down the corn tortillas on both sides prior to rolling.
While, fresh, hot and properly rolled, I don’t doubt these tacquitos are tasty, they simply cease to resemble anything like what they are intended to when refrigerated and reheated in a bowl with rice. The components are tasty — it’s very frustrating to spend a lot of time trying to make the components into tacquitos only for all that effort to be wasted by refrigeration and re-heating.
I mixed my salsa up with my rice because honestly, I had nothing worth dipping into it.
I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work out for you Emily! Let me know if you have any questions.
It doesn’t look like any reheating instructions were given, but I know from experience (ex reheating pizza) that the microwave will never restore crispiness, in fact quite the opposite. If you want crispy, either reheat in an air fryer, or in a skillet on the stove. Good luck!
A toaster over works really well, too!