Who doesn’t know what tacos are?
*crickets*
But did you know that there are also breakfast tacos, a variation first made popular in San Antonio, Austin and other places around the Southwest? They’re a simple to prepare dish that makes for a hearty and filling first meal of the day.
Here’s one particular breakfast taco recipe; the author says that they learnt this recipe from eating with the Mexican cooks at their restaurant. It sounds yummy!!!
- Crumble the sausage into a skillet over medium-high heat. Cook and stir until evenly brown. Set aside.
- Heat one skillet over medium heat, and heat another skillet over high heat. The skillet over high heat is for warming tortillas. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, salt and pepper. Spray the medium heat skillet with some cooking spray, and pour in the eggs. Cook and stir until almost firm. Add the sausage, and continue cooking and stirring until firm.
- Meanwhile, warm tortillas for about 45 seconds per side in the other skillet, so they are hot and crispy on the edges, but still pliable.
- Sprinkle a little shredded cheese onto each tortilla while it is still hot. Top with some of the scrambled egg and sausage, then add hot pepper sauce and salsa to your liking.
Authentic Mexican Breakfast Tacos from allrecipes.com
You may be wondering what kind of sausage the recipe above calls for. Typically, tacos and other Mexican dishes use chorizo, a kind of pork sausage wrapped in a case. You can usually find Chorizo at a Mexican grocery, Cost Plus World Mart, Trader Joe’s or a similar grocery store that has ethnic Mexican foods. But let’s say you decide to make your own for better flavor or more control over the ingredients.
Enter not one, but two chorizo recipes!
The first chorizo recipe is primarily for vegetarians or people who don’t eat pork. It substitutes tofu instead:
- Put oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, 3 to 5 minutes.
- With your hands, crumble tofu into the pan. Cook, stirring and scraping the bottom of the skillet occasionally and adjusting heat as necessary, until tofu browns and crisps as much or as little as you like, anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes.
- Sprinkle with the chili powder, cumin and cinnamon; stir and cook, continuing to scrape any browned bits from the bottom of the pan until the mixture is fragrant, a minute or two. Stir in vinegar and adjust the seasoning taste. Garnish with cilantro and scallions and serve with warm corn tortillas or over rice.
If you prefer to make your own chorizo with pork, the recipe below may be more to your liking:
- Place the pork, Aleppo pepper, chili powder, garlic, salt, black pepper, oregano, cumin, cloves, and coriander into a bowl, and lightly toss the pork with the seasonings until thoroughly blended. Cover the bowl, and refrigerate the meat, your meat grinder's head assembly, and grinder hopper for 1 hour.
- Fill a large mixing bowl with ice cubes, and place a smaller metal bowl in the ice cubes to catch the ground meat. Assemble the chilled meat grinder, and grind the pork and seasonings using a coarse cutting plate. Return ground meat to refrigerator for 30 minutes. Lightly stir the ground pork with the vinegar and water until thoroughly mixed, form into patties, and refrigerate overnight, covered, to let flavors develop.
- Heat vegetable oil in a heavy skillet over medium-low heat, and pan-fry the patties until browned and no longer pink in the middle, 5 to 8 minutes per side.
There’s also Spanish chorizo, which is somewhat different from Mexican chorizo, though I’m not exactly sure how; perhaps someone could explain in the comments?
I first heard about this variant when reading a fiction novel set in the 1920s, where two characters are in Madrid and one of them is confronted by the other in his hotel room; he tries to resolve the dispute amicably in preparation for going out to savor his afternoon chorizo.