Frozen Burritos That Are Definitely Worth Your Money

Who doesn't love a frozen burrito? Whether it's a spicy meat version, a basic cheese, rice, and beans combo, or something more exotic (and there are plenty of those nowadays), we all seem to love stuff wrapped in stuff. That's not to say that all burritos are created equal, and there are some that definitely aren't worth your money, but that depends on your burrito preferences — and to each their own! 

While you might love a convenience store version that's bland and mushy and 100 percent comforting, someone else might crave an organic, gluten-free, new-age burrito that comes with an eco-friendly pat on the back. There are a lot of differences to consider between frozen burritos, including flavor, texture, quality of ingredients, nutritional content, sustainability, and size. That's why this list includes options that consider all those criteria. Some of the listings are for specific burrito flavors from a particular company, while others are for the company itself. 

Overall, this list is about value and whether each frozen burrito excels at what it's supposed to do, rather than whether absolutely everyone's going to agree that it's awesome. Hopefully you'll see a couple that you love and discover a few new ones, too.

Every list of the best frozen burritos will likely include Amy's, a company that doesn't just top a number of best vegetarian, organic, and healthy frozen burrito round-ups online, but is a solid all-rounder. With gluten-free, plant-based, and dairy-free options, these rice and bean combos are satisfying, preservative-free, and high protein, though also high sodium and high fat, and generally improved by a bit of hot sauce. There are low-sodium options, though, which also set the brand apart, as do the low price tag for frozen burritos made with organic ingredients. 

The classic Amy's flavors are bean and rice as well as cheddar, bean, and rice, both of which are available in gluten-free options. They're a bit tame, though, so if you want bigger flavor, there's also a Southwestern burrito, which combines organic pinto beans with Monterey Jack cheese, roasted poblano peppers, jalapeño peppers, and black olives. It's only available in a whole wheat tortilla, but it's soy-free and tree nut-free, at least. 

Considering the price and organic certification of the ingredients in Red's chicken, cilantro, and lime burrito, it's a good buy. Not all of the company's flavors are organic, but this one is. It also contains no artificial preservatives, making it a healthier and more eco-friendly option than your average grocery store burrito. It's also a fair bit more flavorful thanks to a great ratio of sauce to chicken, with just enough lime juice to add a little life to what's too often a bland mess. According to reviewers, all that juiciness tends to make the burrito explode in the microwave or oven, but a delicious mess is still delicious.

Red's also has a plant-based beef, bean, and cheese flavor now, since faux meats are growing in popularity. The plant-based beef is made with real cheese and soy protein concentrate, which includes malted barley extract, so it's not gluten-free or vegan-friendly, but for anyone wanting to reduce their meat consumption and still get that beefy burrito flavor, you've got another option.

The biggest selling point for Lilly B's, an organic brand, is that it's low sodium, but still has some flavor in there. The company has an enriched wheat tortilla version for its organic bean, rice, and cheese flavor and gluten-free versions for the rest of the flavor line. While a lot of frozen burritos use artificial color to make their cheese yellow, the golden hue in Lilly B's is ensured by the use of annatto, a natural food coloring. In fact, there aren't any artificial preservatives in sight and the corn is non-GMO. 

The shredded beef carne asada flavor adds a bit more beefy taste, but the classic meat-free version hits the spot just fine. Bonus: Thanks to the lower sodium count to begin with, you'll feel just fine about adding a few dashes of extra hot sauce to the beef to amp it up a notch.

This brand is generally a bit more expensive than most of the other frozen burritos on this list, but if there was a vegetarian exotics category, it'd come in at the top for flavor and texture. Sweet Earth has a more classic Santa Cruz flavor with pinto beans and Monterey Jack cheese and a more new-school vegetarian Mayan burrito with black beans, ground seitan, and Cotija cheese, but the clear winner in the lineup is the Peruvian. With sweetness from sweet potatoes and corn, creaminess from the black beans, chewiness from the quinoa and, most importantly, umami from goat cheese, each mouthful is one to savor. 

Sweet Earth also has a line of meatless breakfast burritos featuring vegan bacon and non-vegan cheese or seasoned tofu and no cheese. These are not your average late-night mushy frozen burritos, but they still might be what you pop in the microwave after a few too many fancy cocktails.

These much-loved and simultaneously much-disparaged burritos make this list because they're definitely worth the tiny price tag. Would you pay more than $1 for them? Maybe not, especially since they're some of the smallest burritos on the list and there are a lot of preservatives in there, plus 5g of saturated fat and 16g total fat per burrito. But they're definitely the upper crust of dirt cheap frozen burritos. 

The standard refried beans, cheese, and meat flavor do what a burrito needs to do: be soft and warm and savory. And they'll definitely be soft since you're probably not going to spend 40 minutes reheating these burritos in the oven for a crispy exterior like the directions suggest. The popular Red Hot Beef flavor uses real meat, which is an actual selling point. And the enriched flour tortillas are made from scratch daily and according to the list of ingredients, have niacin, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin and folic acid added to the bleached wheat flour, which is considerate of the company considering that their frozen burrito-loving clientele might not be getting enough nutrients. The tortillas are then filled before being flash-frozen, so they'll be as good as they'll ever be when microwaved.

Trader Joe's has its own extensive line of frozen burritos. And in true Trader Joe's form, they're pretty good and pretty affordable. Sure, you could probably make a better version of the chicken chile verde and the classic bean and rice burritos pretty easily at home (take some rice, refried beans, salsa, cheese and optional chicken and wrap it in a tortilla, or get fancy), but that's not what frozen burritos are for, right? They're supposed to be pre-made, factory-perfect, and dependable. 

These burritos are also pretty small, which feels intentional and can counter-intuitively work in your favor if you're the type of person who'll eat two small burritos and feel more full than eating just one larger burrito. There's also a carnitas with salsa verde flavor for Trader Joe's patrons looking for a frozen burrito flavor that punches above its weight. It has soy sauce for umami flavor along with roasted onions and tomatillo puree. The wheat in the soy sauce, however, adds to the wheat flour and malted barley in the enriched flour tortillas, so it's not a good option for the gluten intolerants among us.

There's a time and a place for a greasy mess of cheese and meat. José Olé's beef and cheese chimichanga –- essentially a deep-fried burrito –- is particularly wonderful and greasy. It no longer holds its crispy luster, but that oil is going to soak into your reheated meat, rice, and cheese and make it all a little more juicy and palatable, which is handy in a frozen burrito. You're also going to get more sauce than meat in this beef and cheese creation, but, again, that's where the flavor is coming from — and it probably helps keep the price down. Besides, if you buy this burrito, you're probably not in it for the vegetable content or even the protein. 

While you're not thinking about vegetables, you should probably also not think about the sodium, because there's a lot of that according to the nutrition facts. Just enjoy this frozen wonder for what it is: post-drinking food at its best.

If you're not in Austin or San Francisco or Los Angeles and can't get an impeccably fresh and tasty breakfast burrito from a nearby food truck on any given morning (or afternoon or evening for that matter), then El Monterey might be what's stocked in your freezer for desperate times. The egg, sausage, and cheese combination is hearty, widely available, and very inexpensive, meaning it'll likely be the favorite of many, especially in quarantine when online food ordering is exploding, much like a reheated frozen burrito.

According to the company website, El Monterey is already the #1 frozen Mexican food in America. And this breakfast option shows why: It's a comforting, eggy, creamy mess with little dabs of meat to make it feel indulgent and carnivore-friendly. Replace the pork sausage and its corn syrup solids with Canadian bacon and celery juice solids or turkey sausage and soy protein concentrate thickened with modified food starch and you've got two more clear winners.

These frozen burritos from Whole Foods are perfectly acceptable when you want something nice and mushy, but slightly higher quality than the really cheap frozen burritos at the grocery or convenience store. They usually sell for less than $3 a burrito, putting them in line with Trader Joe's line of frozen burritos. There are rice and bean and bean and cheese flavors, and the enriched wheat flour tortillas are non-GMO and stuffed like most with seasoned brown rice, but also with Serrano chili peppers or flavor and carrot juice concentrate and carrot fiber to boost the onion, carrot, and celery vegetable base. 

Will your kids like these? Probably. They're soft and not overly spicy. They're also not as high in sodium or full of preservatives as some less expensive brands. Reviewers suggest they probably will explode in the microwave, though, so if your kid has a school microwave to reheat their lunch, they might not end up being the most popular kid in the lunchroom.

Most people would probably just call this flavor of frozen burrito a wrap, stuffed as it is with sun-dried tomatoes, basil, shallots, "mozzarella style cutting board shreds," and meatless beef-style crumbles (which is strangely less weird sounding than the faux mozza). You can see that Daiya is trying hard to appeal to the dairy-free, plant-based foodies who want a melted cheese-like texture in their frozen convenience food, so let's forgive the company for its improper nomenclature. 

The Santa Fe burrito with beef-style crumbles is more traditional, as is the Fiesta Breakfast Burrito, despite its pea protein-based egg-style scramble. The tortilla itself might be the most bizarre creation, though, since instead of just using non-GMO corn, the company created its own blend of rice flour, rice starch, chickpea flour, sorghum, psyllium, xanthan gum, and flax-based leavening to wrap around its dairy-free fillings, which includes yeast extract and konjac gum. But there are no eggs, fish, dairy, gluten, or peanuts in the regular burrito line (there is coconut oil in the breakfast burritos, though), making this one product that allergen avoiders can get behind.

If you're a Sprouts Farmers Market shopper, your frozen burrito options just got a little bigger. All of Cool Beans' plant-based wraps are now available in Sprouts stores across the country. That includes the tikki masala wrap with spiced chickpeas and coconut milk and the Moroccan Gold with kidney beans, sweet potato, and millet, but those aren't exactly burritos, so burrito lovers will go for the spicy chipotle flavor with poblano peppers and black-eye peas. 

The price puts them in line with Trader Joe's and Whole Foods (looks like someone did their market research), they're minimally processed, have a non-mushy texture because of the corn, rice, and black-eyed peas, and have a touch of smoke from the addition of artificial smoke flavor. The whole-grain tortilla is more of a gluten-free wrap like Daiya's than a traditional flour-based tortilla, thanks to a combination of tapioca starch, potato starch, chickpea flour, rice flour, xanthan gum, and some other thickeners and preservatives to give it a bit of elasticity. If you want to give these a try, but you don't have a Sprouts nearby, you can always order them directly from the Cool Beans website.

Johnny Ringo's makes this list because its burritos are delicious and satisfying and the vegetarian bean and cheese flavor uses mayocoba beans. There's also a ton of pepper jack cheese in there, which helps. What are mayocoba beans? They're small, creamy yellow beans also known as Peruvian, canary, or Mexican yellow beans. They're often used in place of pinto beans for refried beans in the Mexican state of Jalisco. And they're also good replacements for cannellini beans or Great Northern beans. To try mayocoba beans for yourself, you can order them directly from Rancho Gordo, but the buttery flavor is a perfect pairing for the cheese in Johnny Ringo's vegetarian burrito. 

The company's spicy beef with pinto beans flavor and the chipotle chicken flavor are also perfectly acceptable Southwestern style burritos. Fun fact: The company is named after a famous Old West outlaw, a former constable who later joined the Clanton Gang in Tombstone, AZ. Coincidentally, that's near where his own tombstone now resides. 

Last but not least, Alpha Burrito makes the list with its low-cost, plant-based burrito line, which includes a soy protein and structured vegetable protein-based faux chicken option with vegan cheddar (officially called a fajita), a Mexicali flavor with meatless beefy crumble, and a Steakless Ranchero flavor with soy protein strips. The wraps are made with enriched wheat flour and the ingredient lists are long, but there's Vitamin B12 added, which is a thoughtful gesture for the product's plant-based clientele. 

Flavor-wise, there's enough oil and sodium to keep these juicy, silky, and satisfying. Just don't let the fake cheese congeal — eat them hot! These burritos are not diet food, but they do compete with Daiya for anyone looking for a plant-based option that includes vegan cheese. If they're not available at your local store, you can always order a burrito bundle with a mix of flavors online on the Alpha website.