Bean and cheese burritos are magnificent. They are an example of how delicious simplicity can be. While nothing out of any frozen grocery aisle will ever compete with the authenticity and flavor of something homemade, you can trade that for convenience.
As a food writer of over 10 years with a ton of experience in fast-food and grocery tasting, I decided to take a gander at what kind of frozen burrito options exist for one of my favorite foods (Al and Bea’s, a Los Angeles institution, makes the greatest bean and cheese burrito in the world, by the way), and if they’re worth stocking. Here are eight frozen bean and cheese burritos, ranked.
Prices and availability may vary.
Best: Trader Joe’s Bean, Rice, and Cheese Burritos
$3.69 (for two)
None of these burritos match the depth of flavor that Trader Joe’s offers. None of them even close, in fact. These beans are great. There’s garlic, tomato, green chile, and plenty of melty cheese. I actually have these in my grocery rotation pretty regularly, and I won’t be slowing it down. The taste is unmatched, and you can get two of them for cheaper than a single Amy’s burrito.
2. 365 Whole Foods Market Bean & Cheese Burrito
$1.99
Gotta say, I’m impressed with Whole Foods’ pricing here. Usually, they’re on the more expensive end, but this is a quality burrito for under two bucks. Feel Good Foods is charging more than double this.
Though it’s a little bit bland, I like this burrito. The tortilla microwaves well, and the beans taste like food that came from Earth. Real beans and actual cheese come together inside of this thing, rather than the unified pasty glob present inside El Monterey, or the ground beef-esque filling inside Tina’s. This needs flavor, but grab some salsa and you’ll be fine.
3. Amy’s Cheddar Cheese Burrito
$3.79
Amy’s gives you two heating options. The first is the microwave, which you’d think is the least complicated, but it starts by telling you to put the burrito onto a plate. Then, it tells you to cover the burrito with another plate. I’m not sure what dimension the people at Amy’s live in, but here in my world, plates are flat, and two plates on top of each other would not stack, or even come close to encasing my burrito. I am not equipped with those big, family-style plates you see at the Olive Garden. Maybe by “plate” they mean “bowl.”
I wrapped it in a paper towel, like everything else, and it was fine. While the gluten-free tortilla is strangely sticky, the insides have good flavor. Sure, the beans are a little stringy, but they’re definitely beans.
4. Red’s Organic Bean & Cheese Burrito
$2.39
Red’s wants you to microwave this thing for 55 seconds per side. That’s an infuriating instruction to me. You want me to take the time to input 55 seconds rather than just press the “1” button that most of us have?
I microwaved it for a minute per side. Guess what? It didn’t explode. It didn’t turn rotten. It was fine. I don’t think the extra 10 seconds ruined it. Red’s has deeper flavors than some of these other burritos, but they’re a little fast-food-esque in my opinion. Nothing about this seems fresh. This burrito right here is sort of the anti-Whole Foods, offering big flavors and mediocre consistency.
5. Feel Good Foods Pinto Bean & Cheese Burrito
$4.49
Feel Good Foods is out of their collective mind with this price. If I want to spend five bucks on a burrito, it is not going to be coming out of my freezer. I can go to a fast-food restaurant and procure a better, fresher, more consistently-cooked bean and cheese burrito.
Flavor-wise, it’s odd. The salsa roja is kind of sweet for salsa, somewhere more in the neighborhood of pasta sauce, but the rice is a nice touch. The gluten-free tortilla doesn’t microwave well and gets sharp and crispy. The beans, the people we’re all here to see, have a strange consistency. I can’t explain it, but it took me extremely off guard. When you chomp down on them, they’re more inclined to slip between your teeth than get caught in the bite. I would never spend $4.50 on this nonsense.
Trending on Cheapism
6. El Monterey Bean & Cheese Burrito
$0.98
If this is a bean and cheese burrito, that’s news to me. This is a tortilla with some sort of paste inside, something that seems like beans and cheese have been blended together to create a chunky goo. Even refried beans from Taco Bell are vaguely reminiscent of actual beans, but I have no idea what the filling inside this thing is.
Is it disgusting? No. I’ll give it that. I’d eat it in a pinch, especially for 98 cents. But I’d call this a “food tube” before I called it a bean and cheese burrito.
7. Tina’s Bean & Cheese Burrito
$0.78
For only 78 cents, you may ask yourself, how bad can it be? Bad, is my answer. The microwave instructions say to wrap this in a paper towel, like so many others. That’s what I did, and when I peeled it back to unwrap the microwaved burrito, it got stuck and took about half the tortilla with it, revealing the insides. You know what they say about seeing how the sausage gets made? I believe an early version of that expression was, “You don’t want to see the insides of a Tina’s bean and cheese burrito all at once.”
It looks more like ground beef than beans, and I don’t see any cheese. Nor do I taste it. To you, Tina, I say: Yuck.
8. Tina’s Bean & Cheese Big Burrito
$1.48
I didn’t realize at first when I grabbed this that I was just picking up a larger version of the other Tina’s. The branding really threw me off. Like the other Tina’s burrito, this one says to wrap in a paper towel, which, as you can imagine, is not easy for a monster of this size. You’ll need to use two to get it properly covered up, and even when I did, the inside was ice cold and watery wet, while my tortilla was burning hot. I admit that a buck and a half is an excellent price for a torpedo this size, but I think you also want your food to be at least somewhat good. This isn’t.
Sign up for our newsletter
More Taste Tests From Cheapism
- 10 Store-Bought Flour Tortillas, Ranked — Find out which tortillas came out on top for chewiness and authentic char, and which brands you should skip unless you want bland wrappers.
- The Best Store-Bought Guacamole, Ranked — Eleven guac brands were compared side-by-side; only about half had flavor and texture good enough to buy again.
- We Tried 10 Hot Dog Brands and These Were the Best — These franks stood out for meatiness, snap, and flavor complexity; budget picks also made honorable mentions.
