Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Breakfast Enchilada Stacks

There's a handy coincidence between 6" corn tortillas and an 8" nonstick pan.


The flat cooking area at the bottom of the pan is just right for the tortilla and makes an egg omelet that matches in size. 


Ingredients

  • Package of corn tortillas, about 20, I'm partial to the white corn, but yellow is equally good. 
  • 5 eggs-seasoned to taste and beaten--I used adobo and cholula hot sauce
  • 12-16 oz Mexican chorizo sausage. I used a Cacique brand beef chorizo. Chorizo can be fairly hot to some tastes. You could use a breakfast sausage or other similar item of your choice.
  • Grated cheese, cheddar, jack, oaxaca would all work well. I used cheddar
  • Enchilada sauce-- I used a can of Hatch Green Chile Enchilada sauce Other brands or recipes would be fine. 


Heat an 8" nonstick skillet over medium heat. Spray LIGHTLY with  nonstick spray.


Pour in about half an egg's worth of the egg mixture.

Tilt the skillet to coat the bottom of the pan evenly


When it just looks moist on top, it's ready flip. Notice also that the very edges have dried and curled away from the pan a bit.


They're too light to reliably flip with a pan toss. Slip a silicone rubber spatula under the omelet, lift, flip and straighten it out.





Don't sweat the small tears. They'll work fine. You'll break some occasionally. That's OK for this recipe.


Here's a good one. Usually the first or second one are more prone to break because the pan isn't evenly hot and slick as it will get when fully hot. After the first two, I usually turn the heat down a bit as well.


Set them aside for use in the enchilada stacks.


Cook off the chorizo, drain excess fat.

Low fat enchiladas usually have some trouble with the corn tortilla breaking up as it absorbs the enchilada sauce. This is particularly pronounced in the rolled version of the enchilada. Cooking the tortilla in oil helps it hold together and produces a better texture.

In this dish, I just sprayed my non-stick pan with a little spray oil and let the tortilla cook in that until brown spots form. Repeat on the other side.

And I only dipped the tortilla in the chile sauce on one side rather than a full immersion. I stacked the dipped tortillas so they still had chile sauce on both sides, just not a lot of it.



Spread a little enchilada sauce in the bottom of your baking dish. This will keep things from sticking.

Start building your layers, each layer with only one ingredient, though it's OK to mix ingredients too. You just want to keep each layer thin. You can build small individual serving stacks of just one of each layer or large stacks of repeated layers.

A layer of egg, then a layer of cheese.


A layer of chorizo. Whoops, also a layer of cheese on one of them. A layer of egg on the next one. Repeat. Finish with a layer of cheese.


I did this the night before breakfast and refrigerated it to bake in the morning.

Set your oven to 350 and bake until bubbly and browned, about 20 minutes.

For a tall stack, cut it in wedges and serve.