What you choose to put in your breakfast burritos make a big difference in their final texture. Read on for a cautionary tale.
Time: 2/5
Eggs cook quickly, and it doesn’t take long to roll a burrito
Effort: 2/5
To be honest, the hardest part was the cleaning up
A Disastrous Combination
Vegetables never cease to amaze me with how they magically multiply in volume after chopping them up (and then again as they shrink down after cooking).
While this is not usually an issue as I take a “the more the merrier” approach to veggies, I wasn’t able to fit all the peppers and onions into my cast iron pan while making fajitas without overcrowding it. Which left me with a surplus of fajita vegetables in addition to the extra tortillas.
I love it when my problems solve each other. I’ve been wanting to meal prep breakfast for my SO for some time now, and breakfast burritos seemed to fit the bill. While I’m perfectly happy with overnight oats basically every morning, she needs a bit more variety to keep things interesting.
The game plan was this: eggs provide the protein, veggies provide vitamins and volume to keep her going all morning, and the tortilla acts as a delivery vessel by wrapping everything up into a finger-friendly package.
The variation would come from changing up the other fillings. While the plain Jane version is fine on its own, I had leftover salsa and guacamole from fajita night so there’s one obvious option. An ancient pack of processed cheese and cocktail sausages sounded nice too, so they went into the mix.
Post-script: these burritos were great fresh, but they did not keep well. They got soggier and soggier as they sat in the fridge for longer, so much so that it was difficult to get them out of the box without tearing the tortilla.
I attribute this mainly to the fajita vegetables weeping moisture. Eggs do this to some extent too, but peppers and onions have plenty of water to give and the texture suffers as a result.
This can be partly remedied by reheating the burritos in a pan with a bit of oil to toast them, but that takes away from the grab-and-go convenience of breakfast burritos in the first place. I mean, you do you, but the last thing I want to do in the morning is fiddle with pans and spatulas and cleaning up.
If I were to do it again, I’d leave out the vegetables. And so the search for a meal-prepped breakfast that will pass my SO’s muster continues …
Have left over tortillas? Don’t worry. Go back and make some more fajitas with chicken or steak and continue the virtuous cycle!
Dramatis Personae
Tortillas – one per burrito like a sane person
I had a few of these left over from making fajitas. The fact that they’re made of flour instead of corn, and that they’re large both help with rolling – after all, the cardinal sin of making burritos is overstuffing, and the amount of stuffing is relative to tortilla size. Warm gently to improve flexibility, stuff conservatively and roll away.
Fillings – half as much as you think you should put
The cornerstone of these burritos are eggs. About 2 eggs per burrito, unceremoniously scrambled and lightly seasoned.
You don’t really need to cook cocktail sausages, even though it would be nice to get some browning on them. It isn’t worth the effort, in my opinion. The same goes with sliced processed cheese.
Guacamole and Pico de Gallo isn’t the first thing you think of when you think breakfast burrito, but they were left over from the same fajita dinner so I thought why not? The richness of the guacamole was a nice addition, but the juice from the Pico probably didn’t help things.
Add vegetables at your own peril. I include my addition here as a warning for posterity: I stuffed four burritos with the equivalent of half an onion and 1.5 bell peppers stir fried together with some salt. It probably made my burritos inedible soggy a few days later.
Executive summary
- Defrost cocktail sausages quickly by immersing them in cold water. (Do not) julienne bell peppers and onions.
- Warm tortillas in a low oven.
- (Do not) stir fry vegetables with high heat in a pan with a bit of oil. Switch off the heat, then stir in the eggs. Season to taste.
- Stuff and roll up the burritos, mixing and matching the fillings.
- Allow to cool before refrigerating. Reheat by toasting all sides lightly win a pan with a bit of oil, or in the oven for a better texture.
Play by Play
Starting off with vegetables in a hot pan and a tiny bit of oil. These are the usual suspects you’d find in a fajita.
Beating and lightly seasoning three eggs while the vegetables cook.
Once the vegetables are done, scramble the eggs in the residual heat. I divided up the filling into three, but the peppers had a lot more volume than I expected so I ended up making 4 burritos.
Get to filling these burritos! I’m trying to be conservative with the amounts, but these still ended up being hard to roll.
Rolled up, divided, ready to go and heading into a swampy disaster. Heed the warning of this cautionary tale.
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