This chilli con carne and cheese quesadillas recipe could not be simpler. Especially if you’ve done all the hard work making the chilli con carne and, hopefully, our red tomato salsa recipe. They make a fantastic and super-easy brunch and lunch or even a casual dinner.
We love our Mexican comfort food and these cheesy chilli con carne quesadillas topped with red tomato salsa and sour cream are favourites wherever we are in the world. They make an easy brunch or lunch or casual dinner and quesadillas are perfect for using that leftover chilli con carne from the night before – with the bonus that chilli always tastes better the next day.
These chilli con carne and cheese quesadillas are also fantastic as part of a full Mexican food feast if you’re entertaining. You could kick off with a sopa de tortilla (tortilla soup) then fill your table with dishes of Mexican guacamole, salsa and sour cream, and platters of tacos al pastor, char-grilled corn on the cob, grilled corn salad, and our ultimate nachos.
If you’re making these quesadillas for a full Mexican lunch for friends, don’t forget to also mix some pitchers of classic margaritas and micheladas. If you’re making these these cheese and chili con carne quesadillas for brunch, then you just might want to skip those Mexican cocktails.
Cheesy Chili Con Carne Quesadillas Recipe for an Easy Mexican Brunch or Lunch
We don’t have a lot of recipe notes for you for these chili con carne and cheese quesadillas recipes as it’s pretty straightforward, so just a few tips. While we’re big on corn tortillas for the classic carne asada and tacos al pastor, packaged flour tortillas are best for this recipe as they’re stiffer and hold shape like a good piece of thin crust pizza.
If you don’t like your Mexican food too spicy then you can skip the jalapeños, but we love the hit of sweet heat from them. You can also adjust the heat on our easy red salsa recipe too. By the same token, if you’re a spice lover, you can up the fire factor on both the quesadillas and salsa.
Eating these chili con carne and cheese quesadillas can be a bit messy. We like to slather on some sour cream and then salsa onto a slice and dig in anyway.
However, if you’re serving these quesadillas to guests, you might want to slice them into pizza-like pieces as we’ve done above and serve the salsa and sour cream in small dishes on the side.
We use cheddar cheese because it’s the easiest to get just about anywhere. To make these quesadillas a little more tasty, if you can get your hands on some queso Chihuahua (sometimes called queso menonita, for the Mennonite farmers who traditionally made it), it has fantastic melting properties. Another tasty alternative is a fresh Monterey jack cheese.
Cheesy Chili Con Carne Quesadillas Recipe
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 cup of chili con carne - warmed slightly
- 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
- 2 jalapeño peppers - tinned, diced
- 8 flour tortillas 25 cm - 10-inch diameter
- 1 cup red tomato salsa
- 1 cup sour cream
Instructions
- Preheat a nonstick skillet large enough to fit a tortilla flat in the bottom of the pan.
- Combine the chili, cheese and jalapeño in a bowl.
- Using a tablespoon, spoon the mixture evenly over one side of each open tortilla. Fold the tortillas in half.
- Place two of the tortillas in the skillet and cook until the tortillas are browned. Turn the tortillas over and cook to the same level of doneness.
- Place the finished tortillas on a warmed plate and cover with a warmed tea towel. If you’re making big batch, you can place that in a warmed oven (that’s turned off, of course).
- Once all the tortillas are done cut each tortilla into thirds.
- Serve with salsa and sour cream.
Nutrition
Do let us know if you make our Chili Con Carne and Cheese Quesadillas recipe as we’d love to know how it turns out for you.
This was ace. We made the works last night – your guac, your salsa from scratch, the chilli con carne, had that for dinner last night. The Mexican eggs for brekkie this morning and made these for lunch. We are all feeling very Mexican in our household right now. Muchas gracias!
We really appreciate the time you’ve taken to leave all these comments about your Mexican feast. Thank you so much, Trevor! You’re ace! :)