Huevos Rancheros

First I was attracted by the music of its name: h-u-e-v-o-s r-a-n-c-h-e-r-o-s ... but at the moment I knew it's all about my favorite food - eggs, it was sold to me entirely.

Blog's Category: International, Vegetarian

Intro

Translated from Spanish, it means "farmer's eggs" and well known as traditional Mexican egg breakfast. For me, it's a perfect weekend breakfast when I like to feed my folks with a big breakfast to stretch time to the next meal as much as possible (that's time when I like to tackle my big, ambitious cooking projects and prefer not to be disturbed by ordinary requests of ordinary lunch :)).

Back to huevos rancheros.. There is a few "the must" ingredients to the dish: eggs, of course, corn tortilla and tomato sauce. All other, avocado, beans, cheese and cilantro are embellishments that can be easily omitted, or varied in different combinations. Below is a recipe  of the most common version of huevos rancheros: with avocado, queso blanco cheese and fresh cilantro. I tried to stick to authentic recipe as close as I could.


What is it?

It's a sunny-side eggs, rested on a bed of corn tortilla and dressed in homemade tomato sauce. All of this is topped with crumbles of queso blanco. pieces of avocado and a good amount of chopped cilantro leaves. 

 

Taste Description

Delicious! Chewy corn tortilla, smothered in runny yolks and drowned in a medium spicy tomato sauce is such a satisfying fare. Add to this party mild saltiness of chewy queso blanco, buttery avocado and overloaded with flavor cilantro, and you may have an idea (just slight idea!) of how beautiful this breakfast is.

How to Serve

Serve right away when it's still hot.

Huevos Rancheros

For 4 serving:

• 8 eggs
• 8 corn tortillas
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 2 fresh red or green chili peppers (or jalapeno peppers), finely chopped
• 1 large (12oz) can of chopped tomatoes
• 1-2 tbs sugar (optional)
• black pepper
• 1 c fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1 avocado, peeled and sliced (or diced)
• 1 c crumbled queso blanco cheese
• olive oil
• salt

- Get all your ingredients ready and do all prep work of chopping and slicing first.

- Cook onion and bell pepper in a pan with 2 tbs of olive oil for about 7 minutes, stirring, until they soft. Add chopped tomatoes, chili (or jalapeno) peppers, salt and simmer for about 15 minutes. Taste, adjust salt, add sugar if sauce is too sour. Leave it simmering on the lowest setting.

- Meanwhile, fry tortillas in decent amount of hot oil (about 7-10 tbs). They have to be fried on each side very briefly, for about 10 seconds, just until surface of tortilla starts bubbling. Place two tortillas on the each serving plate.

- Fry sunny side eggs and place two eggs on a top of tortillas, on the each plate.

- Pour several spoons of sauce onto the edges of eggs and tortillas, top with crumbled queso blanco cheese, cilantro and avocado. Serve and enjoy!

Note

- It has to be queso blanco cheese - it has very interesting qualities that popular, such as cheddar, mozzarella, muenster, cheeses do not have - dense, chewy texture and mild milky taste with a light and pleasant saltiness to it. I love this cheese fried, it doesn't melt but gets nice golden crust and awesome soft and juicy texture, I would call it cheese steak.

- Stay away from a sauce from a jar - you won't get even close to that homemade sauce above, which is real thing and easy to prepare.

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IN PICTURES

I used great canned Sun Marzano crushed tomatoes. Regular canned crushed, diced, sliced or pureed tomatoes of any other brand will work just as well.

Let sauce simmer very slowly while you move to the next steps. Just don't forget to turn heat off after you will be done with serving.

This is queso blanco. Now it's one of my favorite cheeses.

This is my usual way to cut an avocado: slice in half; twist to separate halves; hit the peat with a knife, slightly twist to get it out. Now cut each half in half and, grabbing corner of a skin, easily peel it off. Now slice and dice just the way you need. This method works for me the best (yes.. I know there is a fancy way of dicing avocado halves right in a skin and then turning skin out but this way is not my favorite).

This is the traditional way of frying tortillas for huevos rancheros: swiftly frying in a hot oil just until it starts to bubble, but before it gets any color.

To make nice sunny side eggs, break the eggs on a hot skillet with a little olive oil or butter and then turn heat to the lowest setting right away. Salt and cook uncovered, piercing whites occasionally to get uncooked whites to run beneath. Take off the heat when whites are cooked and yolks are still runny.