Crispy Bacon and Egg Breakfast Tacos With Eggs Scrambled in the Bacon Fat
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About 812 calories per serving, estimated from the ingredient list.
It is 7:15 on a Saturday, the bacon is spitting in the skillet, and the smell has reached the bedroom before you have. These bacon and egg breakfast tacos make a very good argument for getting up, and bacon in a hot pan says "come back to the kitchen" better than any text you could send. Eggs, bacon, flour tortillas, cheddar and salsa.
The bacon fat is the seasoning, so keep it in the pan.
Once the bacon is crisp and out, the skillet holds a thin layer of rendered fat that tastes of smoke and salt. Scramble the eggs right in it and they pick up all of that without a single extra ingredient. Warm the tortillas in a second pan while the eggs go, fill, fold and hand them over hot. Two tacos each, and you do not have to pretend you only wanted one.
What you need
- 8 large eggs
- 8 slices bacon strips
- 8 small flour tortillas
- 1 cup shredded cheddar
- ½ cup salsa
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp black pepper
How to make it
- Cook 8 bacon strips in a skillet over medium heat for 8 minutes until crispy, then crumble them.
- Scramble 8 large eggs in the bacon fat over medium heat for 4 minutes until fluffy.
- Warm 8 small flour tortillas in a separate pan for 1 minute per side.
- Fill each tortilla with some scrambled eggs, crumbled bacon, and shredded cheddar.
- Top each taco with salsa and fold closed.
- Serve the tacos hot.
Notes
Cooked leftovers keep three to four days refrigerated, per USDA FSIS. Store the eggs, bacon and tortillas separately rather than as assembled tacos; a filled tortilla goes soft and gummy overnight. Reheat the eggs gently in a skillet with a small knob of butter, crisp the bacon again in a dry pan, and warm the tortillas fresh.
If the bacon leaves a deep pool of fat behind, pour off all but a tablespoon or two before the eggs go in. You want the eggs coated and glossy, not swimming.
Go easy on the salt in the eggs. The bacon is already salty, the cheddar adds more, and the salsa brings its own. Taste a forkful of the finished eggs before adding anything else.
Scatter the cheddar onto the eggs while they are still hot in the tortilla so it melts into them. Cheese added last, on top of the salsa, stays in cold shreds.
Crumble the bacon into pieces about the size of a fingernail. Whole strips pull out of the taco on the first bite and take half the filling with them.
If you swiped these at 1:10 a.m. after a long night out, the agent still remembered the salsa, even if you do not remember swiping. That is what the app is for, and it does not judge.
Swaps that actually work
The crisp bacon is the point of bacon and egg breakfast tacos, and so is its fat. Leave the bacon alone; everything else on the list has room to move.
Turkey bacon works but renders very little fat, so add a small knob of butter to the pan before the eggs go in. Thick-cut pork bacon also works and gives chunkier, meatier crumbles.
Corn tortillas are a good swap if you prefer them. Warm them a little longer until they are soft and spotted with char, and use two per taco so they do not split under the filling.
Cheddar can become Monterey Jack for a softer melt or pepper jack if you want heat in the cheese itself. Any cheese that melts cleanly will do.
The salsa can be red, green or a quick pico de gallo. Red or green is a fair question to ask on a first date, and the answer tells you more than you might expect. Hot sauce also works if the fridge has nothing else.
For a meat-free version, swap the bacon for black beans warmed in butter and use the butter for the eggs. It is a different taco, a good one, but it is not this one.
The swap that costs you the dish is cold tortillas straight from the bag. They crack when you fold them and taste raw, and no amount of filling hides it.
If it goes wrong
The eggs are dry and rubbery. They stayed on the heat too long, and a pan that has just cooked bacon holds plenty of heat. Pull them off while they still look a little wet; they finish on the way to the plate. To rescue a dry batch, fold the cheddar through off the heat and spoon salsa over the top.
The bacon is chewy, not crisp. The pan was crowded or the heat too low, so the strips steamed. Cook them in two batches, give them time until the fat stops foaming, and drain them on paper towels.
The tortillas crack when you fold them. They are cold or overheated and dried out. Warm them until soft and lightly spotted, then stack them under a clean kitchen towel so they steam each other supple.
The tacos go soggy. The salsa is too watery. Drain it in a sieve for a minute before spooning it on, and add it right before you hand the taco over.
What to serve with it
The default is a bottle of hot sauce on the table and a glass of orange juice, and that pairing has earned its reputation.
The better version of the default is sliced avocado and a wedge of lime on each plate. The avocado cools the heat and the lime cuts through the bacon fat.
The thing in the fridge that lifts it is pickled jalapeños, or a spoonful of sour cream thinned with lime juice and drizzled over the top.
As lunch the next day the components reheat well, and these bacon and egg breakfast tacos are just as good at 7 p.m. as at 7 a.m. Breakfast for dinner is a choice you are allowed to make.
Why this one earns its place
These bacon and egg breakfast tacos ask for seven things and two pans, and they taste like something you would happily pay for at a taco truck. There is no special equipment and no technique beyond paying attention to the eggs.
They also make a generous breakfast feel easy. You can feed four people properly from one skillet, set everything out, and let each person build their own. It is hospitality with very little washing up, which is a lovely kind to offer someone you want to see again.
Swipe them into the weekend and the agent shops the bacon and the tortillas; the sizzle and the good impression are yours.
If you love eggs folded into a tortilla, the cheesy scrambled egg quesadilla is the same comfort pressed flat and crisp. For a taco worth a slower Sunday, the birria tacos go all in. And if these end up on a weeknight, quick weeknight dinner ideas has more meals that ask for about this much effort.
More like this: all Mexican recipes in Crave Corner.