Tacos: Breakfast of champions

Hello, taco.
Hello, taco.

The best mornings at our house involve some coffee (to wake up the brain) and a savory breakfast (for sustainable energy). One of our favorites is breakfast tacos. Wrap some combination of scrambled eggs, sausage, potatoes, cheese, green onion and salsa in a flour tortilla and you have a delicious, portable breakfast that will definitely tide you over until lunchtime. I’m not sure exactly what I love about them. Maybe it’s the fluffy eggs or the crumbly sausage or the melted cheese or the fresh, flavorful toppings. Or maybe the magic happens in the combination. It’s the sum of the parts, and of course, there are lots of variations on that theme. Sometimes we have chorizo (Basque or Mexican), or we’ll add some bacon into the mix. Potatoes can take the form of hashbrowns or cubes. We usually use medium Tillamook cheddar cheese, but pepper jack, Monterey jack or something else would work just as well. There’s no right or wrong way to do it as long as it pleases the tastebuds.

Austin Breakfast TacosWe used to call them “breakfast burritos,” but after reading a book called “Austin Breakfast Tacos: The Story of the Most Important Taco of the Day” by Mando Rayo and Jarod Neece we were quickly converted to “tacos.” The book, written by two self-professed breakfast taco addicts, is a love letter to both tacos and Austin, Texas. It breaks down the anatomy of a breakfast taco and then interviews several different Austin residents on how they were introduced to breakfast tacos and which ones they like the best. The book also highlights several breakfast taco proprietors and some of their recipes. There truly are hundreds of different combinations that can go into a good taco and this book offers some great insight on what makes them such a delectable way to break the fast.

Here’s a step by step guide of some tacos we had the other morning (we made four):

First we browned some sausage on the stovetop and set it aside on a paper towel-lined plate to degrease a bit.

Sausage

Then we cracked six eggs in a bowl, added some milk, salt and pepper and whisked them together.

Eggs

We scrambled the eggs, added the sausage back in the pan and sprinkled some sharp Tillamook cheddar cheese on top. Turn off the heat and cover.

Eggs and sausage and cheese

Then we got our toppings ready. We happened to have some fresh cilantro, green onion and a serrano chile on hand.

Fresh stuff

We chopped those up, and added our favorite store bought salsas. Fresh tomatoes and homemade salsa would of course be a big plus here, but hey.

Toppings

Then we put it all together. Egg, sausage, cheese, cilantro, green onion, serrano and salsa on a flour tortilla that’s been heated in the microwave.

Breakfast taco unwrapped

Then we wrap it up and enjoy.

031015_0514_TacosBreakf1.jpg

Good morning, taco.

4 thoughts on “Tacos: Breakfast of champions

  1. Yum – you guys are doing tacos right!! We also are a tillamook cheese family, because there are some things that are really important – and good cheese is one of them. 🙂 These look great, and the girls would dig them. Thanks for the idea! Love you guys.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *