---
title: 'How to Make a Chipotle Burrito from Scratch'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=z__A0TZPirM'
video_id: 'z__A0TZPirM'
date: 2026-08-10
duration_sec: 1139
---

# How to Make a Chipotle Burrito from Scratch

> Source: [How to Make a Chipotle Burrito from Scratch](https://youtube.com/watch?v=z__A0TZPirM)

## Summary

This video is part two of a series where the creator attempts to recreate popular fast food items from scratch using homegrown ingredients. The focus is on Chipotle's chicken burrito, comparing the chain's version to a homemade one made with garden produce and a custom spice rub.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to the Challenge** [00:00] — The video begins with a comparison between a store-bought Chipotle burrito and a homemade version, setting up the goal of turning fast food into slow food.
- **Chipotle's Cooking Process** [00:41] — Unlike typical fast food, Chipotle prepares food from scratch in-store, leading to fresher taste but more inconsistency between meals.
- **Tasting the Chipotle Burrito** [01:36] — The burrito costs $9.60 and is a lot of food. The chicken is peppery but lacks complexity. The salsas are spicy but basic, and everything is notably salty.
- **Copycat Chicken Recipe Analysis** [05:05] — Most copycat recipes use chipotle in adobo sauce, but the creator's taste test suggests the actual chicken uses a spice rub, not a wet marinade.
- **Making the Spice Rub** [06:10] — The creator uses homegrown jalapenos, habaneros, tomatoes, and oregano, smoking and dehydrating them to create a custom spice rub.
- **Tasting the Homemade Chicken** [08:13] — The spice rub chicken has more complexity and layers of flavor compared to the adobo marinade, which is one-noted.
- **Making the Salsas** [10:01] — The creator makes a salsa verde and a combined pico/corn salsa using garden ingredients, including a hack for substituting tomatillos with unripe tomatoes.
- **Cilantro Rice and Beans** [13:08] — The cilantro rice is a key element, made with fresh cilantro, lime, and avocado oil. The black beans are cooked simply with aromatics.
- **Homemade Tortillas** [14:37] — The creator makes 12-inch flour tortillas from scratch, using a King Arthur recipe and homemade beef fat, with a weight of 115 grams per tortilla.
- **Final Comparison** [16:28] — The homemade burrito looks similar to Chipotle's but has more subtle flavors, allowing each component to be tasted separately. The homemade version is less salty and more balanced.

### Conclusion

The homemade burrito is a success, offering a fresher and more balanced flavor profile than the original. The process is more labor-intensive but yields a superior result, highlighting the benefits of cooking from scratch.

## Transcript

This right here is a chipotle chicken burrito with beans, rice, a few salsas, and sour cream. And this is the same burrito made completely from scratch with a few key improvements. Here's how I turn chipotle from fast food to slow.
So it's the end of August, summer is coming to an end quickly, which is a big time of transition in the garden. Starting to make room for those fall crops, but there's still a copious amount of those summer staples like peppers, tomatoes, beans, and corn.
So I thought for part two of this Slow Food to Fast series, I would head to Chipotle, a chain restaurant that has exploded in popularity over the last decade, really by perfecting the concept and business of fast, casual food.
So Chipotle is not exactly your classic fast food establishment, where most of the food is made in bigger factories, then shipped to the restaurants for just heating up and assembling. At Chipotle, as you can see right here in this Day in the Life video from Maxwell,
He's a Chipotle cook. The food is actually being prepared from scratch, which means the food will taste fresher, but there's also going to be a level of inconsistency meal to meal. For my order, I went with the most popular item, the chicken burrito,
and I chose the toppings that would have the most crossover with what's growing in the garden right now. They gave me all of these sides for free, possibly because I was filming. I will say that. They also loaded up, like, this is a puffy, beautiful...
And I've definitely eaten Chipotle. And I know there's currently a lot of controversy over burrito sizes. For me, again, I was filming. I think they were, like, under pressure. I think this is a great deal.
$9.60 for the burrito. That's a lot of food. Let's start with the chicken. This is, like, you know, what we're here for, right? This is my go-to when I order a school lunch. It's fine. It's fine.
That's my initial. Some of the spice mix. Not too salty. It's not that layered, this flavor. I thought it would have more complexity. It's got like peppery. Yeah, peppery flavor all the way through.
Let's move on to this. This looks really good. All the salsas look good. Like these look very appetizing. That's just thick. Yeah, that's good. It kind of reminds me of like Taco Bell hot sauce in the packet.
But like a fresher. But like a fresher version that is very like basic red salsa flavor wise. wise. But like spicy. That's spicy. That is spicy. Yeah. And that's the point of that. And it looks
spicy. But it doesn't have like that much depth of flavor. Like I feel like it's just red spicy. Yeah. And like maybe some cumin. I agree with that. Let's move on to this. We've got the salsa verde. They're quite all over.
That's spicy too. Not as spicy as this. Very similar flavor though. Yeah. Really similar that like red pepper and cumin. It tastes like salsa verde from a jar. Yeah.
Not supermarkets, but a little better. Let's do the pico, which was a basic salad. Yeah, it was a salad bowl. Not as bad as I thought. Not as bad as it looks, that was right. Not as bad as it looks. I can taste the lime juice, a lot of salt, cilantro, onion, really basic.
Paper full. Very, very basic. Pretty standard, yeah. And we got the corn. This I also always order. Yeah, this is your go-to. Yeah. Sweetness from the corn, definitely. Salty. Yeah, everything's salty. Everything's salty. And then the fast food. Yeah.
It's interesting. and I've never really had them separate like that. And they're all salty. They're all very salty. This is basically everything. We just sampled fluff, rice, and beans. Tortilla.
Whoever made this greenwoods, it'll be a good job. When he was rolling it, I'm like, no way, that's the fun part. No way they're going to fit that all in. And it just, once it goes in the tin foil, it's like sushi.
They just mold it, and you're like, oh, look, that's a big baby. I think your chipotle experience depends heavily on who's making your chipotle. Yeah, and I feel like they tried it extra hard. Good tip, just film them and have them try like 10 times out of their own.
I love chipotle. That's really good. Not nearly as spicy when it's in there. Or salty. Or salty, yeah. I think the beans and the rice and the lettuce and the salad cream, it balances it out nicely.
I mean, you see why people love it so much and why it's done so well. Like, for the price point, it's just a lot of food. I think it's just they're doing fast food, but it's probably fresher, for sure, than a lot of standard fast food places.
This tastes very much like burrito. Like, you eat it all together, and it's like burrito. It's not like, how did you taste the tomato? You cannot pick out a single burrito Also classic fast food You shouldn be able to pick out anything And it was all it like a smoothie It should all come together into one flavor And it was similar too with the McDonald burger where once you were eating it it just
becomes like this like singular flavor in your mouth. And texturally too. Mm-hmm. We'll see the difference there. I mean, that is all one. Mm-hmm. Just like McDonald's. Yeah. All right. You've got a lot of things to make.
There we go. All right. So let's talk about Chipotle's chicken. Now when you look up copycat recipes, most of them use this right here. This is chipotle in adobo sauce, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with at this point.
These are smoked jalapenos in a vinegar and tomato paste sauce. And for most chipotle chicken copycat recipes that you see on the internet, they take a can of this, they add some onion and some garlic, a little bit of oregano and some spices,
and they blend that up to give you a wet marinade for the chicken. So I am going to be testing this classic copycat recipe, But from our case test, it seems like the standard chipotle chicken is not a marinade. It's actually a spice rub.
So I had another plan for a spice rub using, of course, as many homegrown ingredients as possible, and then we'll see how it performs compared to the classic marinade. Now, I did a full short last year on what an actual chipotle pepper is.
Most of us are familiar with a green jalapeno, and those green jalapenos will eventually ripen, which is when they're picked in Mexico, and then they're smoked and dried. That is a proper chipotle pepper. Now the jalapenos that I'm growing right now are all green, so I'm going to pick a bunch of those.
Then to add some of the fruitiness that I'd be missing from the ripening process, I'm going to add a few of these bad boys, the habaneros. These have all of the fruity flavor of a habanero, which is less spicy. I'm also going to be picking some roma tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, which will increase that umaminess and also add a nice red coloring to this spice mix.
And I remove the stems of the peppers and I slice the tomatoes in half because these babies are going on the smoker. I smoked them at a low temperature for just six hours, so I wanted as much of that flavor to penetrate as possible.
So when they came off the smoker, I additionally added some onion and some garlic that I had stored in the basement from earlier this season. And then I dehydrated all of these veggies and aromatics for two days at 130 degrees until they were very dry.
I also picked a bunch of oregano from my garden, tied that up, and dehydrated that as well, which is a very classic herb in these Mexican spice mixes and marinades. And I decided to remove all the seeds from the peppers because these homegrown chilies are extremely powerful.
And if I need more spicy, I can always add seeds back as needed. And the dried goods get added to a spice grinder along with some of that oregano, some coriander seeds, some cumin seeds, and some salt.
So here's my dry rub and here is the wet marinade. And just so you know, these two things are basically the exact same ingredients, just in different forms. Now in this Chipotle advertisement, you can see they're using chicken thigh, but the chicken I sampled was definitely breast.
And I'm going to do two breasts coated in that smoky spice rub. I also added a little bit of lime juice, which I accidentally didn't film. This will help tenderize the chicken, plus the other marinade has it as well. And the second two pieces, of course, get that Chipotle and adobo marinade.
After about 14 hours in the fridge, this chicken was ready to hit the wood fire. I feel like we have to taste at least the chicken before the whole thing comes together.
The smell is insane. This is garden spice mix. This is chipotle adobo sauce. I think we should start with the chipotle adobo because I'm more excited about the dry.
Mmm, that's solid. Solid. I thought it was going to be really spicy. No. But it's not. It kind of tastes like a blue chicken. Yeah, it's got a nice, even, smoky spice. Yeah. That's kind of like the main vibe you're getting.
Yeah. There's not too much more, but it's really good. It's really good. I would be very happy with that as just a base chicken. Yeah. I mean, it's a little like one-noted. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Just kind of smoky, spicy.
Here we go. Yeah. This is what I'm excited for. Whoa. Wow. The complexity is like a lot more going on now. It keeps going, too, because the spice is more intense. Wow.
That is so many layers of flavor. That's the biggest difference. This is smoky, spicy, sweet. I mean, the smoky from the grill, but the smoke from the peppers that you did, I think this is, like, spot on.
I much prefer that. Takes a lot of effort. Yeah, it takes a lot of effort. But now we have, you know, a jar that you can use over and over again. Yeah. So it's not, like, a one-time. We might have just created like the greatest just smoky barbecue spice ever It also really does taste like the short That Yeah Interesting I was saying you can put that on anything Fish Yeah Meat veggies Also in terms of the overnight marinade
I kind of expected this to have more flavor, but it's this one that really, like, all the way through the chicken. So, most recipes are the marinade. Yeah. But because you're doing just the spice rub,
you're getting much more flavor. So, it's almost a little bit unfair. But it's a good point that, like, even though that looks heavily spiced, it's not going to even compete with us. That's amazing. All right, let's get into some of these salsas.
Again, I'm picking what crosses over the most with my garden right now, and also my favorite salsa is from Chipotle, and we're going to start off with by far my favorite, which is the salsa verdas. So I'm going to take a little trip to the garden with my air fryer basket,
since everything is getting roasted, and I'll start off with some of these longer green peppers. And unfortunately, I didn't grow tomatillos this year, but I do have a ton of tomatoes. And a great little hack for a tomatillo replacement is picking tomatoes right when they start to ripen.
This way they still have a little bit of sweetness, but they're a little firmer and you get that green color. I'm using these smaller plum tomatoes, which certainly look like a lot of tomatillos I've either bought or grown. And I added in just one jalapeno, which you can see right here, which will increase your spice level.
And finally, I'll add some red onion from the garden, and I sprayed these with some oil, pop them in the air fryer on the broil setting for about seven to eight minutes until they look like this. And the chipotle salsa verde is nice and chunky, so I'm going to use my food processor
over the blender, and I'll just add some additional fresh garlic, some cilantro, which unfortunately we failed to grow this year. We struggled with most herbs due to the intense heat this summer, and of course these salsas need some lime juice, which I'm not growing here on the northeast. So
I'll season it up and I will pulse everything up until I get a nice chunky salsa verde. Now for salsa two and sort of salsa three, I'm going to make the pico. But what I realized is the pico de gallo and the corn salsa chipotle have the exact same ingredients
except one has a base of corn and one has a base of tomatoes. Everything else in there seems to be identical. So since I have all of these ingredients in my garden, I thought why not take some time and combine the two into one salsa.
This year was the first time we experimented in the garden with the ancient Mexican growing technique of the three sisters, which is basically just growing corn, beans, and squash as companion plants, and it has been straight abundant.
I'll be doing this every single year. So I'm going to pick some of this corn. I thought Roma tomatoes would be good due to their lack of juice, which certainly is not present in Chipotle pico. You can see here their pico de gallo also has a lot of peppers, which I believe are jalapenos, but it's not that spicy.
And I think the reason for that is standard jalapenos that you would get from the store can be very mild. So I grabbed some jalapenos, which are very spicy in my garden, and then some mild green peppers just to increase that pepper ratio and bulk things up a bit.
And then all I needed was some red onion and garlic from the basement. So these are my garden ingredients for the salsa, and the only other additions I need are cilantro and lime. I chopped up the onion, Roma tomatoes, green peppers, jalapenos, cilantro, and garlic,
and added them to a bowl, and then I sucked my corn. This pollination is terrible.
And when everything was in the bowl, I seasoned this with lime juice, a little bit of salt, and since the chipotle pico was very sweet, I did just add a little bit of sugar to enhance the natural sweetness of the tomatoes and the corn. Let's talk about chipotle rice, which is
cilantro rice, and it might just be my favorite element of the chipotle menu. All you have to do is take some long grain rice. I'm using one cup of white jasmine rice. Give it a few rinses until the liquid runs clear, and I'm going to be using my rice cooker, which I know will cook it to
perfection, but of course you can cook it in a pot, and once the rice is cooked, I'll dump it into a bowl. I'll chop up a bunch of cilantro, toss that in, then I'm spraying the rice with some avocado oil to evenly distribute the oil, and then I'll hit it with the juice of one lime
and toss everything together. Trust me, if you're making chipotle at home, don't serve plain white rice. I think the cilantro rice is a big part of that just iconic flavor of a classic chipotle burrito. And for the beans, unfortunately, it's early for dried beans in the garden, but you can
see they are pumping in this three sisters patch. But I did grab some dried black beans about a month ago when I took a little trip out east on Long Island. Shout out Amber Waves. I'll soak these beans overnight, and really, Chipotle black beans are pretty simple. There's no need to cook down
any aromatics I just going to dump all of my soaked beans into a pot and I simply adding these three aromatics in my garden Red onion garlic and bay leaves I cook these on a nice gentle low heat for about two hours with the goal of having that perfect tenderness where you can smush the bean in between your fingers
but the beans completely hold their shape and aren't cracked. Then I'll season everything with salt after, which I find helps the beans from breaking early during the cooking process. Now you didn't think I'd be making all of these elements completely from scratch
and then go buy some store-bought tortillas, right? If you did, you have not watched this channel long enough. So for these flour tortillas, I'm using a very trustworthy recipe from King Arthur's. I've linked this below.
And I'm weighing everything out, so I'm going to start with the flour. I'll add in some fat. I'm using some homemade rendered beef fat. Then a little bit of baking powder to help with that puff and some salt. And then you work that fat into the flour,
just like a pie crust. Then you add your hot water to create the dough. And then over the course of an hour, I just really fold this dough, let it rest, fold the dough until it is perfectly smooth. And you can make tortillas right away.
I do like to let this dough rest overnight. And the next day, I portioned out the dough. And as most of you know, chipotle tortillas are oversized tortillas. They come in at 12 inches in diameter compared to a typical store-bought tortilla at around 10 inches.
They also steam press them, which gives them an almost stretchability in order to pack in all of those ingredients. So it took me a few different weight tests to actually get the proper ratio of that thickness for a 12-inch tortilla.
And for anyone wondering, the weight that worked for me was 115 grams per tortilla. And my largest pan in the house was 11 inches in diameter, so I needed a plan B. Oh, come on. It bubbles pretty quickly.
Wow, it's already bubbling. Whoa. It's like a pizza. We've got to keep rotating it. Oh, my God. Talk about air. Oh, my God. Let's go. rice, onions, chicken, salsa verde, pico, sour cream, just glue it all together.
Come on. Woo!
I mean, that's... That's too Chicago burritos, isn't it? Insane. I did not expect that they would look so similar. Yeah. I'm just blown away. Like, you wouldn't even be able to really...
At first glance, they look very similar. This is more at the pricing. is like, I like that as a package size that looks ready to munch on. This is a little bit, you know, and they go aggressive with it.
Yeah. But I think a normal burrito is probably more. Yeah. And I think it's funny because the Chipotle burritos are so sized and consistent that this could just be a very small burrito. Yeah. That's true. That's true.
Tortilla. Okay. You get it. Do we try this again? I think. Maybe after. Maybe after. Okay. Let's not spoil that experience. Yeah. The tortilla has, like, good stress to it. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm. Wow. Oh, my God. Tastes so good. No words. I think, like, after eating this one and eating each component separately, I never put together how salty chipotle is.
So salty. So salty. Same thing that happened with McDonald's. It's like, that is an immediate reaction when you're trying them back and forth. Yeah. It's much more subtle, the flavors. The salt and the sugar are toned down.
Yeah. So instead of it all blending together... You can taste each thing separately. The rice tastes fresh instead of salty. Yeah. The chicken tastes fresh instead of salty. You can really taste the beans. Yeah. You can really taste the rice.
Yeah. Which I feel like in here, in the Chipotle one, the rice is, like, extremely neutral. It's just a base. This is a burrito that I would eat a lot. That's what a burrito, I feel like, should be.
Yeah. I will say, this process was much different than McDonald's because, right off the bat, Chipotle is making things from scratch. So it is much harder to replicate the exact flavors, the exact sizing of everything.
Because there's people actually making the food, which is good for Chipotle. They've been able to turn actual cooking into fast food. For McDonald's, their whole business is built on perfect consistency.
Down to the genetic, scientific level, perfect consistency. So this recreation was a bit different. and I feel like we had more ability to kind of do what we wanted in some ways.
Yes. That's it. Comment in below what you want to see next. Yeah, there's more out there. The garden is still popping. Yeah. So let us know, and we'll be continuing to eat our burrito.