There's no food! There's just ingredients!

I'm sure more than a few of you have yelled that more than once. I do it frequently and this weekend I decided to do something about it. I considered making sous vide egg bites, but a) I am running low on room in my fridge and b) I wanted to stuff the freezer for the future and the jarred bites really should be eaten pretty quickly.

So, why not breakfast burritos? I first came across a breakfast burrito in 1989 in Albuquerque. I was moving for a job from Long Island to Prescott, Arizona. My friend Jason drove with me. He was great company. We mooed at a lot of cows, noted the frequent number of Yellow trucks, and I swear every time we changed states and found a new Top-40 radio station, the Bangles' Eternal Flame came on.

Anyway, our comment at the fast food joint was something along the lines of, "What the f*** is a breakfast burrito?"  Then I was in love. Warm, comforting, convenient, cheesy.

While I'm looking for a job, I'm keeping expenses down, so while I would have loved some chorizo, that will be for a later time. Instead, I grabbed a can of black beans. The whole ingredient list:

• 8 8-inch tortillas (mine came from The Tortilla Factory, and were bog-standard white flour)
• 6 eggs--taken out of the fridge a couple hours before I got going. Cooking with room-temperature eggs just works better.
• 1 can of black beans
• 6 ounces of cheddar, grated. Next time with the black beans, I will get pepper jack
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 1/2 cup green salsa that I found in the fridge
• 3 few shakes of Dave's Habanero Powder (I still don't remember buying this or getting it as a gift)
• 3 shakes of oregano  It might not have been Mexican oregano, but I don't think the Oregano Police are a thing.
• 2 shakes chili powder

A lot of the recipes I looked at had potatoes in them, but I've recently learned how to make Spanish Tortilla  (and I still need to blog about it) and right now, if I'm doing potatoes with eggs, this is how.

I drained the black beans and put them in the largest bowl I had, followed by the green onions, then the salsa, then the spices. Stirred well with a rubber scraper. I started the eggs and alternately kept an eye on the eggs (I always start my eggs in a cold pan on low, gradually increasing temperature to medium-low), and grated the cheese.

When I make scrambled eggs, I do my initial stirring with a whisk once they've been on a the heat for a few minutes. That will usually pull some nice big curds off the bottom. When the mix is about 50/50 curds and runny egg, I switch to a silicone scraper and gently fold them over once in a while. You don't want to scramble them too much. Once I felt they were done, they got stirred into the bowl with all the other goodies.

If you look away from this blog entry when you're making it, please make sure you read this part: Use warm tortillas. They are much more flexible. I zapped mine individually in the microwave for 30 seconds between paper towels. No tearing whatsoever. 

Also this: use a little water (just brush it on with your fingertip) to make the parts of the tortilla stick together when you're folding and rolling.

I spread out my silicone baking mat, lay down a tortilla and put about 1/3 cup of the mixture on the bottom third, and pulled up the bottom like a tab (there's only one of me, I can't take pics of me folding a burrito). Then just like wrapping the sandwiches  I used to make for my school lunches, I folded the sides over so all the filling was kind of in a pocket and then rolled, wetting the top  before I finally sealed it. I let them sit seam-side down while they cooled, then individually wrapped them in parchment paper before bagging and freezin.

My most sincere apologies. I did take pictures, but they came out twelve kinds of terrible.  The burritos themselves are kind of cute and rather trapezoidal. I had enough for 8 burritos and one taco, which was breakfast.

If you try this, please let me know!