Our best breakfast burrito recipe makes a burrito with scrambled eggs, shredded chicken, melted cheese, charred corn, and pico de gallo. While that might seem like a loaded breakfast burrito, it’s actually a light healthy breakfast burrito compared to most takeout breakfast burritos, which is why you need to make your own burritos for breakfast at home.
We’re giving you a break from breakfast tacos and breakfast banh mi this week and sharing our best breakfast burrito recipe for a toasted burrito filled with creamy scrambled eggs, shredded chicken, gooey melted cheese, charred sweet corn, and zingy pico de gallo.
Our best breakfast burrito recipe is this week’s recipe in our Weekend Eggs series on recipes for quintessential breakfast eggs dishes around the world, which we launched with Grantourismo well over a decade ago and re-booted earlier this year.
If you haven’t visited us in a while, recipes published in our revived breakfast eggs series include a classic Mexican huevos rancheros, a Mexican migas recipe with a twist for a ‘Migas tortilla’, fried eggs breakfast taco with chorizo, crunchy potatoes and spicy chorizo oil, scrambled eggs breakfast taco recipe with avocado and chorizo, Basque fried eggs with chorizo and potatoes recipe for ‘messy eggs’, Mexico City-inspired chorizo eggs, Thai fried egg salad recipe for yam khai dao, and pesto scrambled eggs, and a Japanese rolled omelette recipe for tamagoyaki.
We’ve also published recipes for scrambled eggs with sauteed mushrooms on sourdough, soft scrambled eggs with Chinese pork and chives, Indian egg bhurji, Chinese marbled tea eggs, corn fritter breakfast burgers, Russian devilled eggs, Turkish çılbır poached eggs and menemen scrambled eggs, Calabria’s take on ‘eggs in purgatory’ with ’nduja, Thai son-in-law eggs, Thai omelette kai jiaw, Cambodian steamed eggs, and Malaysia and Singapore’s half-boiled eggs with kaya jam and toast.
Before I tell you more about our best breakfast burrito recipe, we have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve cooked our recipes and enjoyed them, please consider supporting Grantourismo by using our links to buy travel insurance, rent a car or campervan or motorhome, book accommodation, or book a tour on Klook or Get Your Guide. You could also browse our Grantourismo store for gifts for food lovers, including food-themed reusable cloth face masks designed with my images.
Best Breakfast Burrito Recipe with Scrambled Eggs, Shredded Chicken, Cheese and Pico de Gallo
We were far more familiar with authentic Mexican food and Mexican tacos having travelled widely across Mexico before we went to the USA and discovered burritos and breakfast burritos in Austin, Texas, on the global grand tour that launched Grantourismo in 2010.
However, once we tried our first breakfast burrito, we were hooked. We don’t make them nearly enough, as we much prefer a more authentic Mexican style breakfast taco or Mexican-American breakfast taco, made with soft tortillas, but when we do travel more north of the border and make Tex-Mex, it’s fun to make breakfast burritos.
This is a lighter breakfast burrito than most breakfast burrito recipes you’ll come across, which tend to only exist as hangover cures – not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, if you don’t want a too-filling burrito that’s not going to make you want to sit in front of the TV all day, this lighter, fresher breakfast burrito is for you.
Breakfast burritos tend to go heavy on the potatoes (frozen hash browns? no thanks) and bacon, but there are lighter versions that we found when we visited Austin. Judging by the number of people lining up for lighter burritos to start off the day, we’re pretty sure people were off to do something active after their burrito and a smoothie.
Tips for Making our Best Breakfast Burrito Recipe with Scrambled Eggs, Shredded Chicken, Cheese and Pico de Gallo
This is a simple recipe, as long as you know how to scramble eggs, however, one of the hardest things to get right with this recipe is the cooking of the chicken.
Chicken breasts are easily overcooked, so it’s best to use a meat thermometer that we covered in our post on the best meat thermometers to check on the chicken as it slowly cooks.
Note that you don’t have to add the chicken stock to the water, but for us it gives the chicken more flavour.
While you can make this as a wrap, to keep everything together while you eat the burrito fold is the best. Make sure that if you’re using packet tortillas that you heat them in a dry skillet first and wrap then in a warm, moist towel until you’re ready to roll. A dried out tortilla will crack and break rather than fold.
If you’ve never made a burrito and find it hard to follow written instructions, watch this quick burrito folding video from Mission Foods.
While you can use a store-bought salsa, or even our own version of homemade salsa for your burritos, we prefer pico de gallo because it’s fresher tasting and less of a sauce – which means your burrito will not get soggy halfway through eating it.
Serve these with hot sauces, such as Tapatio and Cholula which are a couple of our favourites. If you’re a real hot sauce fan, you can squeeze a little along the length of the filling before you fold up your burrito.
Breakfast Burrito Recipe with Scrambled Eggs, Shredded Chicken, Cheese and Pico de Gallo
Ingredients
- 4 large eggs - lightly whisked
- 1 chicken breast - (175 g, 6 oz) boneless, skin off
- 2 tortillas - fresh, corn or wheat flour
- ¾ cup Asadero cheese - shredded
- ½ cup corn - grilled
Fresh Tomato Salsa (Pico de Gallo)
- 1 tomato medium to large - ripe, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp white onion finely chopped
- 1 green chilli fresh - hot & de-stemmed, finely chopped
- ½ bunch coriander - finely chopped
- 1 lime fresh for juice to taste
- ½ tsp salt - more to taste
To Serve
- hot sauce
Instructions
- With the chicken breast at room temperature, place it in a saucepan filled with water and a pinch of salt. We like to add a tbsp of chicken stock.
- Heat the water until it simmers. Turn the water down to low. We want a final temperature at the centre of the breast to reach 74°C (165°F). This can take up to 15 minutes depending on your stove. Remove the chicken from the pan and rest before shredding it with two forks or very clean hands.
- Make your pico de gallo by mixing all the ingredients in a bowl and adjusting the seasoning with salt.
- Make your scrambled eggs by placing some vegetable oil in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat and add a tbsp of the pico de gallo and cook until fragrant. Add the eggs and scramble, taking the eggs on and off the heat as necessary. We like the eggs to be moist and slightly undercooked as the tortilla with the eggs will go under the grill.
- Heat the tortillas and place on serving plates. Add the scrambled eggs in a line on one half of the tortilla.
- Add the shredded chicken in a line on top of the eggs.
- Add a sprinkling of corn on this and top with the cheese. Place under a grill until the cheese has melted. Top with some pico de gallo.
- To roll the burrito, fold over each side of the tortilla to the centre. Then make a fold at the bottom of the tortilla and begin to roll away from you, keeping the sides of the tortilla tucked in until all the filling is covered and you've reached the other end of the tortilla.
- Takeaway burrito joints will wrap the burrito in aluminium foil and a paper napkin, but you can chop the burrito in half as we do in the photos and add your favourite hot sauce.
Nutrition
Please do let us know if you make our best breakfast burrito recipe with scrambled eggs, shredded chicken, cheese and pico de gallo, as we’d love to know how it turns out for you.
Love this much more than the super heavy (and huge) burritos I remember from my last visit to the States. I guess maybe Austin is a little more health conscious than Houston!
Great tip on cooking chicken breasts. We usually use thighs more than breasts as they dry out so quickly, but using the thermometer and chicken stock worked out perfectly – so moist!
Thanks for this recipe.
Hi Patricia, thank you! That’s what we love to hear! And thank you so much for taking the time to visit and leave a comment. Appreciated :)