Heuvos Rancheros

I'm a bad mother. I should be punished by a horrible, untimely death, a lifetime of gastronomic disasters, meringue that won't hold peaks... or perhaps I'll just send myself to bed early. Why? Tonight, my kids ate TV dinners. In front of the TV. It was glorious.

In my defense, it was just the kids and I for dinner as hubby is working again, and i really wanted huevos rancheros ...really, really. My kiddies won't touch eggs with a ten foot fork unless they are baked into something with a half a pound of butter or sugar; and I'm sick of macaroni and cheese and pizza. Eating out wasn't so much of an option because the last time I went searching for an authentic Mexican taqueria I made the mistake of googling after I visited (and ate.)  I stumbled upon the failed health report for my fleetingly new fav place.  So tonight, as I love to do, I'm testing my culinary skills with homemade huevos rancheros.  At least I won't have to worry about the failure to remove dead pests from the workspace. Yep, really on the health department report.

I'm not really working off a recipe here, huevos rancheros is a pretty straight forward dish, and much of what I love about Mexican food is that you can really use what you have on hand, so feel free to substitute, add and experiment.  The ingredients I used are listed below:

2 Eggs
2 Yellow Corn Tortillas
Canned Refried Beans
Fire Roasted Salsa
Avocado
Queso Fresco (a crumbly Mexican specialty cheese -- you can usually find it in the cheese aisle at large supermarkets)
Cilantro

First, warm the tortillas in a lightly oiled skillet while you fry the eggs. Remember to preheat your skillet first, until a drop of water sizzles then add a bit of oil, preheat for another few seconds and add the tortillas. NEVER put cold food in a hot skillet -- it will stick like crazy! I think the best way to eat huevos rancheros is a lightly set yolk -- maybe an over-medium, but cook them to your preference.  Stack your tortillas, spread them with a few spoonfuls of refried beans, top with the fried eggs, salsa, crumbled Queso Fresco a couple slices of avocado, a few sprigs of cilantro and fiesta! (Maybe just a teeny tiny fiesta for one person, and a bottle of Mexican beer.) 

Note: This was crazy good.  Crazy, crazy good.  I may even force feed it to my picky-eating children soon.  A few variations I would like to try in this recipe includes homemade tortillas, easy but time consuming, homemade refried beans (for which I have an amazing recipe thanks to my mothers cousin Suzie Morales) or black beans as well as substituting pico de gallo or salsa verde for the the salsa.


Thanks for reading!  Happy Fiesta-ing :)