Paleo Fall flautas

How lovely are our Paleo Fall flautas! They’re just so dang convenient to eat and finger food reigns supreme over here! The color is perfect for this time of year, we’re calling these “Fall” flautas! Like the season of Fall. You may “fall” over from excitement at how good these paleo flautas taste though. How unbelievable that they are made using grain free tortillas?! Seriously, our love for Paleo Mexican food continues to be ongoing and the ideas we keep coming up with are so fun!!

A few of our other favorite Mexican inspired recipes:

• avocado chicken soup
• tates n taco meat
• tomatilla salsa (for dipping these flautas in)

We also have an ebook full of Paleo Mexican foods! It’s called Paleo Olé and was such a labor of love to put together. Over 40 full flavor Mexican dishes, all with a paleo twist! These paleo flautas were created before we put the ebook together, but we wanted to share them here!

Add a dash or two of turmeric to the tortilla (see recipe below) dough for the vibrant color. While this isn’t a necessary step, it does make for a visual feast before your taste buds even know what’s going on! The subtle warm spices in the filling certainly do make for a flavor explosion on those taste buds, however, so don’t skip adding those!

Making the tortillas (see recipe below,) then the filling and the rolling may seem like a lot of work. Never fear though! Time spent creating your own food literally makes it taste better! Ok, technically that doesn’t hold any sway on the taste, but the effort makes you feel quite accomplished. So make a yourself a double batch, cook one batch up and get that second batch in the fridge to enjoy in a day or two. In fact, prepare a tray of these paleo flautas up and bring them to your next game day gathering. Bake them when you are ready for the game and we have no doubt they will be gone in a jiffy!

Paleo Fall flautas

Recipe by MichelleCourse: Main Dish, Our Favorites!, RecipesCuisine: MexicanDifficulty: Easy

Servings

24

flautas

Prep time

30

minutes

Cooking time

20

minutes

Paleo flautas so vibrant & full of flavor your taste buds may explode!

Ingredients

• 24 flour tortillas, colored with turmeric* (see below)

• 1 lb ground beef (pork, chicken or turkey can easily be used)

• ½ c chopped sweet onion (walla or vidalia)

• 1-2 tbsp avocado oil (depends on the fat content of your ground meat)

• 4 oz canned green chilies

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

• ½ tsp ground cumin

• ½ tsp fine sea salt

• ¼ tsp garlic powder

• ⅛ tsp ground chipotle chili powder (optional)

• juice of 2 limes

• ½-¾ c full fat coconut milk

• 1 tbsp cassava flour

• handful of chopped cilantro (optional)

• crumbled cotija cheese (optional)

• 24 toothpicks

• 2 T avocado oil

Directions

• In a large skillet, (we prefer our 10″ Lodge Cast Iron pan!) add ground meat, onion and avocado oil. If you’re using lean meat like chicken or turkey you may need to add additional avocado oil, just keep an eye on it, you don’t want everything to stick to the pan. Cook until onions are soft and meat is cooked through.
• Add green chiles, cinnamon, cumin, salt, garlic powder & chipotle chili powder if using, stir to incorporate all spices well and simmer for about 5-7 additional minutes.
• While meat and spices are simmering, combine lime juice and ½ cup of the coconut milk in a small bowl and stir to combine and set aside.
• Sprinkle the cassava flour over the meat mixture and stir to combine until all the color of the flour has cooked into the meat.
• Pour lime juice/coconut milk mixture onto the meat and stir, the mixture should begin to thicken up, if it’s too thick you can add the additional ¼ coconut milk. You want a thicker consistency so that as you fill the flautas, the juices don’t run out of the tortilla when they bake.
• Toss in chopped cilantro if using and give it one final stir, remove pan from the heat.
• Preheat oven to 420° at this point.
• Place tortilla on a flat surface, and spoon about 1 tablespoon of meat down the middle horizontally, sprinkle with a bit of cotija cheese if using. Fold the end of the tortilla nearest to you, over the meat and roll away from you as tight as you can around the row of meat, secure with a toothpick and place on a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining tortillas until all are filled, placing each filled flauta next to the previous filled flauta so sides are touching slightly.
• Bake for 15 minutes, remove from the oven and brush each flauta with avocado oil, return to the oven for an additional 5 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven, cool slightly before serving.
• Garnish with additional chopped cilantro and cotija cheese & any additional garnishes you may want to, such as chopped radishes, chopped avocado, chopped tomatoes, chopped green onions & our tomatillo salsa!
• *to make tortillas the amazing yellow color, simply add 1 teaspoon of turmeric to the dry ingredients (plus a dash or two of black pepper – this helps turmeric do it’s thing) so for this recipe, you triple our basic recipe to get 24 tortillas, so it would be a 1 tablespoon of the turmeric. Be warned, most things the dough touches will have a slight hue of yellow, including your hands!

Recipe Video

BONUS TORTILLA RECIPE!

1 c cassava flour
1 tsp turmeric (opt)
⅛ tsp baking powder
½ tsp fine sea salt
3 tbsp organic vegetable shortening
½ cup + 3 tbsp warm water

1. In a medium sized bowl, combine the cassava flour, turmeric (if using) baking powder, salt and shortening. Work all ingredients together with your fingers until you have a crumbling texture.
2. Add the water & work together with a wooden spoon until it all comes together. Use your hands to gather it all together into a nice smooth ball. Divide dough into 8 balls.
3. Take one dough ball & place it between two pieces of parchment paper, then flatten with a tortilla press (or roll out with a rolling pin.) Cook in a dry cast iron pan over medium heat until bubbles start to form. Flip over & do the same for the other side. Remove to a paper towel & repeat with remaining dough balls.
4. Tortillas will be firm after they come off the heat, but will soften up as they cool. Store in a bag in the refrigerator.