- This is your brain... This is your brain on drugs. It's um... huevos rancheros. - I can tell...
- Yeah? [Babish]
Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to "Binging with Babish", where this week we're taking a look at the huevos rancheros from "Breaking Bad": a traditional-ish, Southwestern-ish, Mexican-ish breakfast, perfect for nursing that crystal meth hangover. First, we gotta go on Etsy, so we can get one of these weird vintage glass frying pans, specifically so we can do one of these rad Breaking Bad-style POV egg shots, which I actually did in the bottom of a pie plate. Movie magic. Anyway, it's weird frying an egg in glass, it kind of sticks, but it kind of doesn't. And then once we've got one all crispy-edged and sunny-side up, we need to take our tortilla out the toaster, top up with some plain old black beans with plenty of black bean juice, some shredded cheddar cheese, and then top the whole affair up with our crispy fried egg. And then it wouldn't be huevos rancheros without some kind of tomato presence, and Jesse goes for Herdez Salsa Casera, which is not a bad choice as far as jarred salsas go. Generously dump some of that on the side, and that's all there is to it. Break open your runny egg yolk, cut off a piece of tortilla, and dig in. And for a five minute breakfast, this ain't bad. It's got diverse flavors, and textures, and colors. It's not even terrible-looking. That is, until you lift up the plate and see all the various juices swim their way down to the bottom. And so if you've got the time and the patience in the morning, I think we can do a little better. Let's start by making our own corn tortillas. We're measuring out 9.5 ounces of masa harina, which we're going to tiny-whisk together with two teaspoons of kosher salt. And then add one cup plus 2 tablespoons of warm tap water. Give it a cursory mix until a playdough-like ball of dough forms. Which we are going to cover in plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes to let the masa harina fully hydrate. Once that's done, we're forming it into golf-ball-sized pieces and placing into a tortilla press, which you can see that I've lined with a zip-top bag that I've cut open, which allows for easy retrieval of our tortillas. These are then headed into a screaming hot, cast-iron skillet that we've preheated for 10 minutes over medium to medium-high heat, and we're cooking for 30 seconds on each side until lightly browned and blistered. Stack, cover with a kitchen towel, and keep warm until we're ready to use them. Then I'm going to make an approximation of Honduran Crema by mixing together half a cup of sour cream and the juice of one lime, mixing together until we get a drizzle-able consistency and a nice tangy sauce. And speaking of sauce, it's time to make our sauce. We're starting with one large dried Ancho chili, whose seeds we're going to remove, chop into small pieces, and dry roast in a pan. We're also gonna dry roast a few tablespoons of cumin seeds until fragrant, dump them into a spice grinder, and grind to a very finely ground consistency. Just like the corn tortillas, it's totally not required, but freshly ground spices taste and smell and are just generally way better than the pre-ground stuff in the bottle. Go ahead and set that aside as we begin our fresh ingredient preparations. I'm going to roughly chop four things and four things only: one small onion, one jalapeno, half a green pepper, and half a red pepper. That's it. That's all you need. Oh, and of course, uh, one clove of garlic and probably a bunch of other stuff, but let's head over to the stovetop where we are preheating a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil in a large saute pan, adding our vegetables and sauteing over medium-high heat until we get some nice color on them, adding our garlic and sauteing for another minute until fragrant, taking care not to burn the garlic (as we are dealing with some pretty high heat here), and then I'm going to add one Chipotle chili, and a couple tablespoons of the sauce from a can of chipotle chilies in Adobo sauce. Then, I'm going to add a tablespoon of our freshly-ground cumin, toast all that together, before adding a 14-ounce can of fire-roasted crushed tomatoes. You might notice I have a saucepan going over here on the other burner, and that contains half a cup of water with our dried Ancho chilies from earlier, which I've been simmering to get them nice and soft. Cook for an additional 10 minutes to really let those flavors get to know each other, taste for seasoning, add kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, and then dump the whole thing into the jar of a blender where we're gonna blend it on high speed for about 30 seconds until it is chunky smooth. Set this aside, and keep warm while we prepare our final elements. For the beans, We're taking a page out of Gordon Ramsay's book and sautéing the drain beans in a tablespoon or two of olive oil over medium-high heat. Just to up their flavor and texture a little bit before seasoning with kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, the zest of one lime, and the juice of half of said lime to make lima beans. Sorry. Not sure if you can tell from my voice, but I just woke up. Sauté for another 30 seconds or so, cover, and keep warm while we fry up our tortillas in about a quarter (1/4) cup of vegetable oil. The idea here is we want to get them a little bit crisp, but we want them to stay pliable. Once the texture has been achieved, go ahead and drain these on paper towels. That's all the ranchero elements of our huevos rancheros, so now it's time to tackle the huevos. We're frying these sunny-side up in a hot, non-stick pan and basting the whites with the hot oil to ensure that we get nice crispy edges and fully cooked whites. Then, on our final serving plate, we've got our two crispy, soft fried tortillas which we're gonna top with our sauce, a healthy portion of lima beans, and our fried eggs. Then from here you could top it with avocado, chopped onions, anything you want, but I'm gonna top it with a little bit more of our tomato pepper sauce, some freshly torn cilantro (against my will), and a healthy drizzle of our imitation Honduran crema. Then, all that's left to do is pick around this cilantro, cut open your eggs (make sure that they're nice and runny), and dig into a seriously flavorful, delicious, breakfast. Which has rightfully earned its place in the Clean Plate Club. ...Just soon as I can get all the cilantro off of it.
Just sat down down with a slightly fancier version of Jesse's huevos rancheros, check the new Babish episode and see he is going to breakfast shame me.
I’ve only ever seen it with refried beans down here in Texas but this looks good
Where is the Hatch Chile? Jesse is from New Mexico, we put Hatch Chile on everything
The modified recipe, while it looks good, misses the mark for what you would get as a huevos rancheros plate in Albuquerque, the location of the show. The sauce would be based on hatch chile, either red or green (or both). We would never use black beans here, always pintos, and likely refried. Additionally, huevos rancheros here are normally corn tortillas, sauce, cheese, beans, and hash browns -- there's no potato element on the modified recipe.
I can't be mad at him over it though. When I googled "New Mexican huevos rancheros," I wasn't able to find recipes that really showed these regional intricacies accurately. He can only be as good as the information he has access to, and the internet seems to have failed on this one. Maybe I ought to make my own recipe for it and publish it online?
I'm a sucker for huevos rancheros. Always hard to pass it up when I see it on a brunch menu somewhere.
Looks really good. Alas this would probably destroy my heartburn in the morning
Cheeky usage of the Hario v60 as a funnel for the spice grinder there Babby ;)
Quick PSA: If you don't have a high powered blender like a Vitamix, when blending hot things make sure to take the feed hole cover off the lid of the blender and firmly place a towel over it. Otherwise, the steam will blow off the lid and the contents will get everywhere. (Yes, I speak from experience!)
Loved this... it just that... "Salsa Sasera"? =S
The C in Casera is a hard C, as in Cat