Breakfast Tacos
(Breakfast for Dinner, all month!)
Hello from sunny Southern California! If you like tacos, kimchi, seasonal produce, and bright flavors, you’re in the right place. Welcome!
Every Friday, we chat about California Cuisine recipes that will inspire you, no matter where you live in the world.
Some links to help you navigate this newsletter:
Welcome video from me and an intro to California Cuisine
Podcast episodes
If your eyes need a mini-vacay, I read the post to you in the audio link above.
Upcoming Kimchi Workshop!
Want to learn how to make homemade kimchi? Or learn about its gut-healthy benefits? Here’s your chance!
Beth Bollinger and Anja Hall of The Blood Sugar Method are hosting an interactive kimchi workshop with me! We will be talking about fermentation and making a jar of homemade kimchi from scratch. Get all your kimchi questions answered!
Join us Friday, April 10th at 4 pm PST / 7 pm EST on Zoom. The class is FREE!
It was such an honor and pleasure to be featured recently in Beth Bollinger’s newsletter post, 4 healthy food writers worth following. I am inspired by Beth and her approach to metabolic health and aging.
Breakfast for Dinner
If you’ve read this newsletter for any length of time, you know I love to bring you recipes in a series format, like my recent Dinner for 2 + Movie series, Big Batch Cook Once Eat 3x recipes, and Beans & Greens posts. This month, we’re going all in on breakfast, all month long!
Before you say, “I’m not a breakfast person,” please hear me out. Breakfast-type foods can be eaten at any time of the day.
The Breakfast Crew
Last month, I helped make breakfast for 20 people. This was no ordinary breakfast. It was served to food writers and recipe developers at a food writers’ retreat I attended in Pennsylvania, organized by the amazing Jenn Sharp of Roux and Choux Entertaining and Rebecca Blackwell of Let’s Get Lost. I will be sharing more about the retreat and the other attendees in coming posts!
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I am normally not a breakfast person. Ha! So, it was ironic that my team of cooks was assigned to brekkie for that first morning of the retreat. We christened ourselves The Morning Glories!
My teammates were two wonderful people whom I now call friends. First was Anne-Marie Pietersma, a Certified Cheese Professional (yes, there’s such a thing, and there are fewer than 1,000 of them in the U.S.) who writes Trust Your Taste, a newsletter about cheese. Her recent endeavor, I’ll Have What Cheese Having, is a beautiful book of cheese pairings inspired by rom-coms.
The second teammate was CulinUrsa — Elizabeth Baer, a Latin teacher by day and a newspaper food columnist, recipe tester, copyeditor, and food blogger the rest of the time! She also pens CulinUrsa, a newsletter about food in the Berkshires.
As an aside, food people truly are the best people, as Julia Child used to say. Anne-Marie gifted me with a signed copy of her cheese book, and Elizabeth shared a jar of her homemade ginger-lime jelly with me. So lovely!
Anne-Marie, Elizabeth, and I jumped on the opportunity to feature a breakfast with something that everyone loves: tacos! Our breakfast tacos were a build-your-own affair that peeps could customize to their tastes.
These breakfast tacos are deliciously good served for brunch, lunch, or dinner!
Recipe
Breakfast Tacos
Yields 6 to 8 tacos
Time: About 1 hour
Easy and delicious, any time of day! Breakfast tacos are customizable and riffable. It’s easy to sub in bacon and cooked potatoes for the sausage and hash browns, add black beans for extra heft, or swap in corn tortillas for the flour ones. Make these your own!
Notes:
It’s easy to prep some of these ingredients ahead of time and reheat when ready to eat. The sausage and hash browns can both be cooked, cooled, and refrigerated for a few hours (or a day) in advance. The pico de gallo can also be made a day ahead. FYI, scrambled eggs are best made right before eating.
An optional step that I think is worth doing: heat the tortillas in a dry skillet over high heat. This will not only warm them, but slightly char and crisp the edges, giving them a lovely toasty flavor and appearance.
Pico de Gallo Ingredients:
1/2 white onion
1/2 pint grape tomatoes or 2 small Roma tomatoes
1 handful fresh cilantro
1 jalapeno (optional), trimmed and seeded
1 lime
1/2 teaspoon salt
Taco Ingredients:
1 pound bulk breakfast sausage
2 Tablespoons olive oil
16 ounces frozen hash browns, thawed
12 large eggs, lightly beaten
6 to 8 flour tortillas (6-inch, fajita size), warmed
Garnishes: shredded cheese, guacamole, salsa, lime wedges
Directions:
Dice the onion and tomato, then add them to a medium bowl. Chop the cilantro and jalapeno (if using) and add to the bowl. Juice the lime and add the juice to the bowl. Stir to combine. Taste and add salt or other seasonings, if desired. Set aside.
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Evenly distribute the sausage into the pan and press down to flatten it. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes, undisturbed, or until browned on one side. Flip the sausage over in sections and brown the other side for another 5-ish minutes. As it gets close to being done, break up the sausage into smaller bite-sized bits. Spoon off any excess grease.
While the sausage cooks, heat another large skillet over medium-high heat. Tip in the olive oil. Once the oil is shimmery, add the hash browns in an even layer and press to flatten. Turn the heat down to medium and cover the pan. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes, undisturbed, or until the potatoes are brown and crispy on one side. Flip it over in sections and brown the other side for another 5 to 6 minutes. Remove from heat.
Heat a large skillet (this can be the same one used to cook the sausage or the hash browns) over medium heat. Depending on the amount of oil left in the pan, you may need to add a few teaspoons of oil. Pour in the beaten eggs and cook to desired texture. For a soft scramble, cook the eggs until they are fluffy, custardy, and softly set. For a hard scramble, cook a little longer until firm and slightly dry.
Now it’s time to assemble! Lay a tortilla on a plate, add a spoonful of hash browns, sausage, and eggs to it. Sprinkle on garnishes and squeeze a lime wedge over everything. Fold and eat!
If you can’t get enough of Latin-ish food for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, you might enjoy my Mexican Desayuno (Breakfast) Pizza or Vegetarian Crunch Wraps.
Beverages
Need some fun drinkie options with your breakfast-for-dinner tacos? I gotchu, friend. Try a Grapefruit Coconut Paloma Mocktail (zero-proof, fruity, and tropical!) or a Carajillo Spanish Coffee Cocktail (low-alcohol, warm, and cozy!).
Good Reads
Read more about the value of in-real-life events:
Elizabeth Pizzinato wrote beautifully about it in her Field Notes from a Food Writers’ Retreat and included her gorgeous radicchio/orange/fennel salad recipe.
Rachel Ciordas penned her weekend takeaways in Food People are the Best People and shared one of her signature gluten-free recipes, chocolate almond truffles.
Rebecca Blackwell kept it real in her post, IRL. But with magic. She includes creamy mushroom chicken with rice and honey wheat bread recipes.
Kristen Hess reflected in Finding Your Tribe: A Food Writer’s Retreat That Changed Everything and shared her recipe for curried spinach and queso pot pies.
Tell Me
What breakfast items do you like to eat for dinner (or any time of day, for that matter)? I’d love to know!
Coming next week: the April Dinner Party Menu! This one features Sheryl O'Connell as the guest chef, and it’s a fun breakfast-for-dinner menu. See you next Friday!
A nice vibrant breakfast anyone can put together. Excellent idea for people wanting to eat healthier breakfasts.
These are so inviting!!!! I would answer your question with a tofu scramble taco, avocado, hot salsa and a layer of cumin-y hash browns in there, too (okay, a la memories of Austin, 2015)
<3