Breakfast Burrito
Everything cooled slightly before it is rolled, and the tortilla warmed until it is pliable. A hot wet filling steams the wrap into a bag that splits.
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- Cereals containing gluten
- Eggs
- Milk
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Filling
To build
Method
Filling
Toss the diced potato with the oil, paprika and half the salt and roast at 200C fan for 25 minutes, until crisp at the edges.
Fry the bacon until crisp and drain it on a rack.
Beat the eggs with the remaining salt.
Melt the butter in a non-stick pan over LOW heat, add the eggs and stir slowly and constantly with a spatula.
Take them off the heat while they still look slightly underdone and wet. They will carry on cooking in the pan and again inside the burrito, and eggs cooked to perfection in the pan are rubbery by the time they are eaten.
To build
Warm each tortilla in a dry pan for 20 seconds a side until soft and pliable.
A cold tortilla cracks along the fold. Twenty seconds of heat makes it bend instead.
Let the potatoes and eggs sit for two minutes before rolling. Steam trapped in a burrito condenses and turns the tortilla into wet paper.
Lay a quarter of the filling in a line across the lower third of each tortilla, leaving a clear border at both ends: potatoes, eggs, bacon, cheese, avocado, salsa, coriander.
Fold the two short sides in over the filling, then roll from the bottom, pulling back to tighten as you go.
Sit each burrito seam side down in a dry hot pan for a minute to seal it, then cut in half on the diagonal.
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What to expect
- Taste
Savoury and comforting, with smoked paprika running through the potatoes, salt from the bacon and cheese, and heat and acid from the salsa cutting it. The eggs are the soft, mild centre.
- Aroma
Bacon and paprika.
- Texture
Crisp potato edges against soft egg, with the tortilla holding it all. If the tortilla is wet, the whole thing fails on texture.
- Sound
The seam sealing in the dry pan.
- How the flavour moves
Salt and smoke first, then the eggs, then the salsa arriving at the end.
- Serve it
Hot through, with cold avocado inside providing contrast.
- Goes with
Hot sauce, more coffee. Nothing else.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Beginner, with a rolling technique worth learning.
- Cost
Low.
- Equipment
A roasting tray, a non-stick pan and a dry pan for the tortillas.
- When to make it
A weekend, or a Sunday spent filling a freezer.
- Best season
None.
- You know it is done when
The eggs should look glossy and slightly wet when they leave the pan. The finished burrito should have a sealed, lightly browned seam.
- And it feels like
A tortilla that holds together and a filling that is not wet.
- Food safety
Eggs cooked soft are fine for most people; anyone pregnant, very young, elderly or immunocompromised should use British Lion eggs or cook them firm. Nothing else unusual.
- Where it goes wrong
- Rolling while everything is still steaming, which soaks the tortilla.
- A cold tortilla, which cracks along the fold.
- Overcooked eggs, which are rubbery by the time they are eaten.
- Overfilling, which is the other reason burritos split.
- Not folding the ends in first, so the filling comes out of the sides.
- A tortilla smaller than 25cm, which cannot be rolled with this much in it.
- If it does go wrong
Split: too full, or the tortilla was cold. Soggy: it was rolled hot. Falling apart in the hand: the seam was not sealed in the pan. Bland: salt, and more salsa.
- Making it ahead
Made and frozen individually in foil, they are one of the better freezer meals here.
- Keeping it
Rolled burritos keep two days in the fridge, wrapped in foil.
- Reheating
In a dry pan, turning, or in an oven at 180C for 15 minutes. A microwave makes the tortilla soft and the filling hot, which is a trade.
- Freezing
They freeze well wrapped individually in foil for two months, which is the reason a lot of people make them. Reheat from frozen in a 180C oven for 30 minutes.
- Leftovers
It is designed to be one.
- Scaling it
Doubles easily; roast the potatoes on two trays rather than one crowded one.
- Substitutions
Flour tortillas are required — corn ones crack and are the wrong size. 25cm is the smallest that rolls comfortably with this much filling.
- Dietary swaps
Contains gluten from the tortilla, eggs, and milk from the butter and cheese. Vegetarian without the bacon, using black beans, which is a genuinely good version. Nut free.
- Shopping for it
Nothing unusual. Large flour tortillas are in most supermarkets.
- Keeping the cost down
Cheap, and cheaper still with black beans instead of bacon.
- Sustainability
The bacon is the only meat and six rashers spread across four burritos is a small amount. The black bean version suggested above is not a compromise here — beans, potato, egg and cheese make a genuinely good burrito, and pulses are among the lowest-impact protein sources there is. The freezer point matters too: a batch made once, frozen and reheated over a month is considerably less wasteful than four separate cooked breakfasts.
- Nutrition
Substantial and reasonably balanced, with a lot of potato.
- Worth it?
Two minutes of doing nothing before you roll it. That is the whole difference between a burrito and a wet bag.
Where it comes from
- Origin
New Mexico and the American southwest.
- Also called
Breakfast burrito.
- Said out loud
boo-REE-toh.
- What the name means
Burrito means 'little donkey' in Spanish, and the reason for the name is not settled — the usual explanations involve bedrolls or packs carried by donkeys, and neither is documented.
- History
The burrito is northern Mexican and depends on the wheat flour tortilla, which belongs to the wheat-growing north rather than the corn-growing centre and south of the country. The breakfast version is American and specifically southwestern; Tia Sophia's in Santa Fe claims to have coined the term on a menu in the 1970s, which is the usual attribution and is a claim by the restaurant rather than independently established. In New Mexico it is typically smothered in red or green chile rather than eaten by hand.
- Why it matters
A genuine regional staple in New Mexico and a national American breakfast item since fast food adopted it.
- When it is eaten
Weekend breakfast, and a freezer standby for weekdays.
- The traditional way
Rolling, which is a real technique — fold the ends in first, then roll from the bottom pulling back to tighten.
- How it changed
It became handheld and portable outside New Mexico, where it is often served on a plate under chile sauce.
- Regional variations
The New Mexican smothered version, which is eaten with a knife and fork. Californian versions are enormous and include hash browns.
- How this version differs
The two-minute stand before rolling and the sealed seam, neither of which is usually written down and both of which decide whether it holds together.
- Sources and credit
Tia Sophia's in Santa Fe for the term, by their own account.
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