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Big Mac Wraps

The familiar burger combination — tangy sauce, shredded lettuce, pickles, onion and melted cheese — rolled into a tortilla around seasoned ground beef.

Prep
15 min
Cook
10 min
Rest
30 min
Makes
Makes 4 wraps
Jump to the recipe
Gloved hands holding a flatbread loaded with seasoned ground beef, shredded lettuce and diced tomato
Photo: ha11ok / Pixabay

This is a cold sandwich with one hot thing in it, and most of the work is keeping those two states apart until the last moment. Shredded lettuce wilts on contact with hot meat — not in a minute, in seconds, going from crisp to gray-green and weeping water into the wrap. Mayonnaise has its own limit: the emulsion loosens with heat, so sauce that meets a straight-from-the-pan filling thins out and runs to the bottom instead of staying where you spread it.

Both problems have the same fix. Drain the beef properly and let it stand off the heat for three or four minutes before the wraps go together. Rendered fat is what carries heat into everything it touches, and a spoonful of it left in the pan is the difference between a warm filling and a soggy one. Cook the beef to 160°F (71°C), which is where ground meat is safe, then let it drop to about 140°F (60°C) — warm enough to melt cheese laid directly on it, cool enough to leave lettuce alone.

The sauce is the whole point, so give it real proportions rather than eyeballing. A half cup of mayonnaise is the base. Sweet pickle relish supplies both the sugar and the chunk. Yellow mustard sharpens it, ketchup rounds it and colors it, and a teaspoon of white vinegar keeps the mayonnaise from reading as flat and fatty. Onion and garlic powder rather than fresh — fresh onion in a mayonnaise sauce turns harsh and watery within the hour, while the powders dissolve and stay put. Paprika is for color as much as flavor.

Make it at least thirty minutes ahead. Powdered aromatics need time to hydrate; mixed and used immediately, the sauce tastes like seasoned mayonnaise, and half an hour later it tastes like burger sauce. It keeps a week refrigerated and improves for the first two days. If you want it as a standalone condiment for actual burgers, the site's burger sauce is the same idea worked out at jar scale.

Order of assembly is what holds a wrap together. Sauce goes on the tortilla first, edge to edge — it is fat, and fat waterproofs bread against everything that follows. Cheese next, then the warm beef directly on it so it melts from below. Lettuce, pickles and onion go on top of the meat, never underneath, where their moisture would sit against the tortilla for the whole meal.

Warm the tortillas before rolling. A cold flour tortilla has stiff, brittle starch and splits along the fold; fifteen seconds a side in a dry skillet makes it pliable enough to roll tight without tearing. Tight matters — a loose wrap unravels at the second bite.

The last step is optional and worth doing anyway. Put each finished wrap back into the dry skillet seam side down for about a minute. The seam sets, the outside gets a few toasted spots, and the wrap stops trying to open itself while you eat it.

Sesame seeds on the sauce sound like a gimmick and are not. They are the only thing that connects the flavor to the sesame-seed bun it comes from, and they cost nothing.

For something on the side that stands in for fries, there are air fryer breakfast potatoes. The sauce and the cold fillings work just as well over a black bean burger for anyone at the table skipping the beef.

A griddled wrap cut open to show beef and lettuce, fries alongside
Photo: Mohamed Olwy / Pexels

Burger wraps, the short version

The familiar burger combination — tangy sauce, shredded lettuce, pickles, onion and melted cheese — rolled into a tortilla around seasoned ground beef.

Sauce, beef and everything cold

For the sauce

  • ½ cup (120 ml) mayonnaise
  • 2 tbsp sweet pickle relish
  • 1 tbsp yellow mustard
  • 1 tbsp ketchup
  • 1 tsp white vinegar
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • ½ tsp onion powder
  • ½ tsp garlic powder
  • ¼ tsp sweet paprika
  • Pinch of fine salt

For the beef

  • 1 lb (450 g) ground beef, 80/20
  • 1 tsp fine salt
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • ½ tsp garlic powder

To assemble

  • 4 large flour tortillas, 10 in (25 cm)
  • 4 slices American or mild cheddar cheese
  • 2 cups (140 g) iceberg lettuce, shredded fine
  • 16 dill pickle chips
  • ¼ small white onion, chopped fine
  • 1 tsp sesame seeds, optional

Make the sauce, brown the beef, roll tight

  1. 1 Stir every sauce ingredient together in a small bowl, cover, and refrigerate at least 30 minutes. It tastes noticeably better after the powders have hydrated.
  2. 2 Shred the lettuce, chop the onion and drain the pickles on a paper towel. Wet pickles put straight into a wrap will find their way to the tortilla.
  3. 3 Brown the beef in a dry skillet over medium-high heat, breaking it up after the first 2 minutes, until no pink remains and it reads 160°F (71°C), about 7 minutes. Stir in the salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder.
  4. 4 Tip the beef into a strainer or push it to one side of the tilted pan and spoon the fat off. Leave it off the heat 3 to 4 minutes to come down to about 140°F (60°C).
  5. 5 Warm the tortillas one at a time in a dry skillet, 15 seconds a side, until soft and flexible. Stack them under a towel.
  6. 6 Spread 2 tablespoons of sauce across each tortilla, right to the edges. Lay a slice of cheese slightly below center, pile a quarter of the warm beef on it, and scatter over the sesame seeds.
  7. 7 Top the beef with lettuce, 4 pickle chips and a spoonful of chopped onion — on top, not underneath. Fold in the two sides, then roll up from the bottom, pulling tight as you go.
  8. 8 Toast each wrap seam side down in the dry skillet for 1 minute to seal it, then cut on a diagonal and serve.

Batch sauce, swaps and packing ahead

  • The sauce keeps 1 week refrigerated and is better on day two. Double it; it is the part you will want more of.
  • No relish: 2 tablespoons finely chopped dill pickle plus 1 teaspoon sugar. Dill relish alone makes the sauce taste sour rather than tangy.
  • Ground turkey works at 165°F (74°C) but renders almost no fat — cook it in a tablespoon of oil or it will stick and dry.
  • Iceberg specifically. Romaine goes limp faster and leaf lettuce has too much water; iceberg is mostly rib and stays crunchy for the length of a meal.
  • Assembled wraps hold about 30 minutes wrapped in foil. Beyond that the lettuce gives up. For lunchboxes, pack the beef, sauce and vegetables separately and roll at the table.
  • Cooked seasoned beef keeps 3 days and reheats in a skillet in 3 minutes. Do not refrigerate a finished wrap overnight.

Sauce, sog and cheese questions

No, and there is no association with them. It is the familiar burger formula — tangy sauce, shredded iceberg, dill pickles, chopped onion and melted cheese — built in a tortilla instead of a bun. The sauce is made from scratch to the proportions given above.

Something wet touched the tortilla. The usual culprits are undrained beef fat, pickles straight from the jar, or lettuce packed under the meat instead of over it. Sauce spread edge to edge is a barrier, not a liability — it is the water underneath the sauce that does the damage.

Yes, and it is the best use of the recipe. Store it in a jar in the refrigerator for up to a week. Do not freeze it — mayonnaise splits on thawing and there is no way to bring it back.

American, because it contains emulsifying salts that let it melt smooth rather than separating into curd and oil. Mild cheddar tastes better and melts less evenly. Whichever you use, put it under the hot beef and let the residual heat do the work — 140°F (60°C) meat melts a slice in about a minute.

A low-carb tortilla works but is more brittle, so warming it is not optional. Large lettuce leaves work as a wrapper too, though without the fat barrier of a tortilla you should keep the sauce on the beef rather than on the leaf.