Ahh breakfast, the most important meal of the day.
I am definitely a savory breakfast gal and often make myself breakfast tacos (scrambled eggs, flour tortillas, and lots of random things I scrounge for in my fridge). Eric See, head chef and owner at Ursula in Brooklyn, specializes in breakfast burritos. Having grown up in New Mexico, Eric is passionate about and knows a thing or two about how to make a proper breakfast burrito.
According to Eric (AKA the King of Breakfast Burritos), New Mexican-style breakfast burritos require a few things: flour tortillas, scrambled eggs, cheese, and red or green chiles. If you want to add protein, he suggests bacon, sausage, or carne adovada.
Last year, Eric hosted a popup at Ursula with four different chefs, each collaborating with Eric on a burrito inspired by their backgrounds, which is basically what we did, inspired heavily by my Iranian background.
Eric made the tortillas ahead of time, incorporating turmeric and hing (the root-derived resin of the ferula foetida or giant fennel, often used in Punjabi cuisine) into the dough. According to Priya Krishna, “When used properly, a pinch of hing supercharges every other spice in the pan, like salt but in a funkier way (and without any sodium).”
We also made herby scrambled eggs (loaded with CURLY parsley, scallions, and dill), a cilantro-yogurt-pepper sauce (inspired by zhoug, but with the addition of yogurt), slices of pickled peppers from the MUNCHIES roopftop garden (RIP) that I’d pickled a couple of seasons ago using my mom’s vinegar pepper recipe (maybe — MAYBE — I’ll share that with you one day), plus hash browns.
The hash browns are a really important element to a New Mexican-style burrito. I’m not going to lie, I tried to convince Eric that we should make cubed potatoes because I’m lazy and didn’t want to grate a potato (lol), HOWEVER I relented bc Eric’s the boss and the KING of BBs (breakfast burritos) and who am I to argue with royalty?
We cooked the hash browns in a Calabrian chile oil and seasoned them with a spice blend called Pérxican, a really savory mix of cumin, fenugreek, parsley, black pepper, turmeric, smoked paprika, sumac, and ancho chile powder. It’s incredibly flavorful; Eric left me with his bottle and I plan on using it in everything.
I’m not giving you a recipe for the burrito that we made today because, well, Eric and I kind of threw this together and had fun and I didn’t really think it was necessary. HOWEVER, if you’ve watched the video and are now craving a bfast burrito, Eric’s recipe is on Bon Appetit, so check that out here.
ALL HAIL THE KING OF BREAKFAST BURRITOS.
ALSO: Special shout-out to my friend Will Tilghman for helping with sound and miscellaneous things on this video!!
Breakfast Burritos!