My name is Victoria, and I’m somewhat obsessed with Chipotle’s sofritas.
I first tried sofritas a year or so ago, when my (then) office had lunch catered by the neighborhood Chipotle. This was one of the first times I had something made with tofu that wasn’t cut into flavorless blocks with the texture of a kitchen sponge.
I was hooked.
Being a vegan freelancer on a budget, frequent trips to Chipotle are not feasible, so I set about deconstructing their sofritas so I can make it at home. And, hey, while I’m at it, how about taking a shot at making my own cilantro lime rice, right? And no burrito bowl is complete without black beans–at least no burrito bowl in MY house.
I soaked and cooked up the black beans in the Instant Pot the day before. That left the IP free to make the rice. Since I only had the dried cilantro (I’d prefer fresh cilantro, added at the end of cooking), I added that to the pot with the rice and water and let the IP do its thing.
For the sofritas marinade, I used about 2/3 of the can of chipotle pepper, a roasted poblano pepper plus a roasted green pepper. I had about a teaspoon left of the chile-lime seasoning and the Mexican oregano, plus I added a couple of teaspoons of cumin, a little bit of salt, and some olive oil. I blended the mixture up in my bullet blender, while the tofu was drying out in some paper towels.
Once I got the excess moisture out of the tofu, I shredded it in a bowl and then poured the marinade over it and mixed it well. I snuck a tiny taste of the marinade and proceeded to spend two and a half excruciating hours waiting for the tofu to marinate.
I used part of the time to throw together a batch of guacamole.
At last, it was time to cook up the sofritas. I put a little oil in the pan and heated it up while I got a small pot out to cook up the beans.
The kitchen smelled amazing while the sofritas cooked. I added a little bit of red onion, some salt, and a tiny bit of cumin to the beans and heated the pot up while the sofritas cooked. I opened up the warm pot of rice and squeezed the juice of a lime into the cilantro and rice and gave it a few good stirs.
Then it was the moment of truth. And the truth is…
Oh My GAWD! I’m making sofritas ALL THE TIME!
Yep, fam. It was that good.
