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Hey, it’s Jenna here from Sip Bite Go and today I’m sharing a tasty cook with me video. Needing to whip something up fast for the family to eat, here I’m cooking quesadillas with leftover bbq pork ribs and IP rice. Inside the quesadilla made from leftover pork ribs is a ton of other tasty stuff. More barbecue sauce, cheddar cheese, mozzarella, and red peppers to name a few.
Doesn’t that sound like quite the combination?
This cook with me video will walk you through how I made the quesadillas with leftover bbq pork ribs, prepared the Instant Pot brown rice, and put the meal together with steamed veggies.
If you like this video, subscribe to Sip Bite Go on YouTube for more.
Things mentioned in this bbq leftovers cook with me video
- What To Buy and Freeze for a Month at Costco – VIDEO
- All the Details: How to Grocery Shop for One Month at Costco
- BBQ Sous Vide Spare Ribs
- Cheesy Baked Rigatoni
- Sip Bite Go YouTube Channel
Don’t forget: when you make this meal – or your version of it – you can use anything else that you can find in your fridge—the sky is the limit.
Preparing the Leftover Barbecue Ribs…
My leftover barbecue ribs are in the fridge, and I’ll get them out and remove the meat from the bone. I ended up only using the meat from two to three ribs in my quesadillas; one cup of leftover barbecue rib meat.
What happened is one night my husband made a huge rack of delicious oven ribs. It was roasted for hours, and it was delicious. The next night was my night to cook and I didn’t have anything planned.
So what I did was come up with these BBQ rib leftover quesadillas, and they turned out wonderful.
Preparing the Instant Pot rice
The part of this meal that takes the longest is actually the Instant Pot brown rice.
It takes 15 minutes to cook rice in the Instant Pot once it reaches full pressure.
To make the instant pot rice, into the Instant Pot goes one cup of rice, one cup of water.
Later I’ll add Chipotle salt, pepper, and cilantro. When I cut up the cilantro I cut up a little extra to add some in with the barbecue leftovers in the quesadilla. This is very similar to how I like to make the dressing for my Mexican tortellini pasta salad.
Why not make it like an exciting component of the dish? This instant pot rice brings quite a bit of flavor to the dish.
Making garlic oil for Instant Pot rice
To roast garlic, I put in about one tablespoon of olive oil and the teaspoon of garlic. I cook that on medium heat for one to two minutes until the garlic becomes translucent, and then take it off of the heat.
It’s not just enough to let the pan sit on the same burner.
No, you need to take that pan off of the burner and let it cool.
Making rice in the Instant Pot
On the instant pot I used the rice button and it cooks the rice for 15 minutes. After that, you keep it on sealed for another five minutes to keep steam in there.
After the five minutes are up, you turn the dial to venting, which means that the instant pot is going to start releasing the steam. The rice has reached optimal cook time, and it’s time to get it out.
Time to open up the machine, check out what’s going on in there. This is some beautiful brown rice.
I love having something like this to whip up because the machine does all the cooking for me. And then I can just add some flavor to it at the end. I let it sit for a minute. So it didn’t come up as easily, but you can usually get that out pretty easily.
Seasoning Instant Pot rice after it cooks
The garlic oil that was roasted on the stove gets stirred into the cooked brown rice, along with some salt and pepper and about a tablespoon of fresh chopped cilantro.
I added a little bit of chipotle powder as well. I wouldn’t add too much of that. You could also use cayenne or chili powder, but I love the flavor of smoky chipotle powder.
When it’s all put together I take a bite just to make sure it’s delicious.
Prepping the Tortillas
Now it’s time to get out my tortillas. I’m going to be using Costco tortillas from a recent Costco haul I did.
I get these uncooked tortillas in the refrigerator section and they come in a large pack. I’ll pop half in the freezer, half in the refrigerator, and then we always have tortillas ready when we need them.
I love using these, but the deal is they’re raw. So they need to be cooked on the outside, both sides.
Each quesadilla is made from two tortillas, so four sides need to be cooked.
The good news: this can be done any time within a couple hours leading up to dinner and you could just leave them out already cooked.
So what I did is I added a teaspoon of butter to the pan, and then I turned up the heat to medium high.
When the pan is hot it’s time to add the tortilla.
And once it starts to bubble and turn brown, it’s time to flip the tortilla over and do the other side. So I like to use tongs for this, because these are large quesadillas to work with just a small spatula.
Little bubbles will pop up, and I’ll poke little holes or tear a little bit of the tortilla to stop the pockets, so everything cooks evenly.
Between my husband and I, and a bite that the baby gets, I usually do one quesadilla and add sides like rice and vegetables. Today I did two tortillas, which means I am cooking them for about five minutes while the rice is in the instant pot.
I also had some frozen green beans and some fresh carrots that I diced up to steam.
They steam for about six minutes over boiling water in a strainer. I like to put a lid on it so the steaming goes as it should, and it doesn’t take as long.
Assembling quesadillas with bbq leftovers
Once that is taken care of it’s time to assemble the quesadillas. First I put half a cup of cheddar cheese diced, and then a cup of the barbecue ribs leftover from the night before.
And then I add two tablespoons of diced red pepper, a quarter cup of mozzarella cheese, and then one and a half tablespoons of barbecue sauce and about a tablespoon of fresh cilantro.
You could substitute anything you have in your refrigerator.
You could use any sort of cheese you like, or try tomatoes in place of the red peppers.
You could use black beans, if you had them.
If you have any smoked salt, you could sprinkle a little of that inside.
That would taste delicious.
There are really so many things that you can do.
Tips for making quesadillas with Costco raw tortillas
There are a couple of extra things I want to mention about how I made the actual tortillas for the quesadillas with leftover bbq pork ribs. I like to start with a pan that is completely cold.
The tortillas from Costco that I already browned are going to be cooled down.
Since the pan’s not hot, everything on the inside is going to get warm together. Cook on medium heat and start it from cold. When I add the leftover pork quesadillas in, it’s going to slowly come up to temperature.
So the tortilla shouldn’t burn.
If you aren’t using the Costco raw tortillas, and instead buy already cooked tortillas, you would just start at this part, adding the filling and then putting them directly in a pan.
You don’t have to use a little butter or a little olive oil, but if you do, it makes it brown a little more.
In my perfect quesadillas the cheese completely melts.
That’s why this is my ideal cheese combination: using fresh mozzarella and a nice cheddar cheese means that it melts very easily.
When the cheese is all melted and the flavors are all mixing together inside I’ll flip it back and forth a couple times in the pan. Then it’s ready to eat.
I take it off the pan as quickly as possible so the outside tortilla doesn’t burn. After just a couple minutes, it’s cooled down enough to be ready to slice.
Now it’s time to do the plating and that really is my favorite part.
Love cooking tasty things? See my new cheesy baked rigatoni recipe.
That is also a dish that makes leftovers that reheat well the next day.
Final Plating: My Favorite Step
What I envisioned was something that had to be super quick and easy because I only had a couple of minutes until it was time for dinner at my house. Baby makes us keep a schedule.
I like to start with a little pile of rice.
On the next quarter of the plate are the vegetables, the steamed carrots and green beans. And then on the next quarter of the plate are two pieces of the quesadillas.
On top of that, I threw a few sprinkles of cilantro just because it looks pretty.
And this is when I went to the fridge and realized we did not have sour cream.
We did not have avocado.
So I added more barbecue on the side, drizzling it artistically. I wish my drizzle was a little bit more beautiful, but this is the drizzle that I got, which is okay. It looks like a strange little cloud, squiggly thing, but just a little bit more barbecue sauce.
The flavors were really delicious with the rice being so garlicky, and there were even some leftovers (rice and veg) that I put in fridge for lunch the next day.
What are the odds that my leftover pork quesadilla dinner turned into more leftovers…
That’s it for my leftover BBQ pork quesadilla dinner
Don’t forget to subscribe to the Sip Bite Go channel on YouTube for more delicious recipes.
If you like meal prepping, see this video on how to grocery shop for one month at Costco. In the video I talk about buying Costco tortillas for a month at a time, and how I freeze them. You’ll see how I stock up on some of the ingredients use in these quesadillas with leftover bbq pork ribs. So then you can think ahead and meal prep with quesadillas —and anything else you’d like to eat- throughout the month.
Until next time, I hope that you enjoy all of your leftovers. This is a great meal for any leftover sous vide chicken or brisket.
Have a wonderful and delicious day.
Cheers!
Jenna
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