This eggs potatoes and chorizo breakfast skillet recipe makes our take on the classic American country skillet breakfast made in a cast iron skillet that’s also called a cowboy skillet breakfast or farmer’s skillet breakfast. Instead of bacon or ham, we make this hearty breakfast with spicy chorizo sausage and specifically soft Mexican-style chorizo.
It’s not surprising that we’re all seeking food that comforts right now, in the form of warming soups, hearty stews, spicy curries, filling pastas, and big country breakfasts, such as this eggs potatoes and chorizo breakfast skillet, our first Weekend Eggs recipe for the year.
We’re bringing Weekend Eggs back for another year of breakfast egg recipes from around the world, after a short break. If you’re visiting us for the first time, we launched Weekend Eggs back in 2010 when we launched Grantourismo with a yearlong global grand tour aimed at promoting slow, local and experiential travel. We spent two weeks in each destination, staying in apartment rentals and holiday homes to get an insight into how locals lived their lives.
In each place we settled into, we explored the local food, connected with local cooks and chefs, and learnt to cook local specialties, which we shared in a series called The Dish, for which Terence learnt to cook a quintessential dish of each place, and our Weekend Eggs series, which we rebooted early last year.
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And if you’re looking for more cooking inspiration, we have many hundreds of recipes from around the world in our archives from places we’ve lived, travelled and loved. Note that you can save your favourites by clicking on the heart on the right of any post to create your own private account. Now let’s tell you about this eggs potatoes and chorizo breakfast skillet recipe.
Eggs Potatoes and Chorizo Breakfast Skillet Recipe for a Twist on the Classic American Country Skillet Breakfast
This eggs potatoes and chorizo breakfast skillet recipe makes our favourite take on an American breakfast classic, the country skillet breakfast – also known as the cowboy skillet breakfast or farmer’s skillet breakfast – which is cooked in a cast iron skillet.
Although there’s an infinite array of variations on the traditional breakfast skillet recipe – additions include anything from bell peppers to kidney beans – the essential ingredients of the classic skillet breakfast are eggs, potatoes, onions, cheese, and bacon or ham.
We prefer to make this hearty American breakfast with spicy chorizo sausage instead of bacon and ham, and specifically the Mexican-style soft chorizo sausage rather than the harder Spanish-style chorizo.
We love chorizo – who doesn’t? – and we especially love the combination of chorizo, eggs and potatoes, hence this traditional Spanish potato omelette recipe with chorizo, this Basque-style ‘messy eggs’ recipe for fried eggs with chorizo and potatoes, and our breakfast taco recipe with fried eggs, chorizo and crunchy potatoes.
This eggs potatoes and chorizo breakfast skillet recipe has its origins in the hearty ‘cowboy skillet breakfasts’ of the ‘Old West’ and American frontier on the cattle herding trails of the 1860s, when cowboys needed a big filling breakfast to sustain them through the day.
Breakfast was baked in enormous cast iron pots over an open fire and typically consisted of big pots of spicy beans and biscuits doused in gravy – ‘biscuits’ being something more akin to what Australians, New Zealanders and British call ‘scones’, rather than what we call ‘biscuits’, which are ‘cookies’ to our American readers.
The cowboy breakfast typically featured beans, maize, chillies, and other indigenous ingredients and specialties of the Mexican cowboys and the Mexican cooks who operated the mobile kitchens or ‘chuck wagons’ that were a key fixture on the often weeks- and even months-long cattle drives.
These included pan de campo or country bread, which was cooked on the skillet, and the ‘son of a gun stew’, made with offally bits such as liver, tripe and heart, which was essentially Mexican menudo.
The evolution of those early cowboy skillet breakfasts into what’s now considered the classic breakfast skillet was thought to have happened in the ranch kitchen – hence ‘farmers skillet breakfast’ and ‘country skillet breakfast’ – where ingredients such as eggs and bacon were on hand and in abundance.
Just a few tips from Terence on how to make this eggs potatoes and chorizo breakfast skillet recipe.
Tips to Making this Eggs Potatoes and Chorizo Breakfast Skillet Recipe
I only have a few tips to making this eggs potatoes and chorizo breakfast skillet recipe. My best tip is to use a 25cm (10″) cast iron skillet. A cast iron skillet heats evenly and is also oven safe, which is important, as we need to melt the cheese under a grill.
The potatoes need to be cooked enough so that a skewer meets a little resistance when testing the potatoes, but the potatoes must remain firm enough to stay in one piece when diced.
I like to cook the potatoes skin on, let them cool down, peel them, and put them in the fridge overnight to firm up more.
Like our other chorizo breakfast dishes, you want to use the soft Mexican chorizo, which has to be cooked before eating. The firm Spanish-style chorizo can also be used, but take care not to over-cook it as it tends to go hard.
Monterey Jack cheese is a must, otherwise a young cheddar cheese will work. For the hot sauce, our avourites are Tapatio Salsa Picante and Cholula Original Hot Sauce.
Eggs Potatoes and Chorizo Breakfast Skillet Recipe
Equipment
Ingredients
- 300 g potatoes - par-boiled and sliced into 1.5cm (0.6 inches) cubes
- 80 g chorizo - fresh, skin removed, cut into rounds and quartered
- 50 g shallots - sliced finely
- 4 eggs - extra large
- 50 g Monterey Jack cheese - grated
- 2 tbsp olive oil
To Serve
- 2 tbsp chopped spring onions
- 1 tbsp Hot sauce
Instructions
- In an oven-safe 25cm (10") skillet over medium-high heat, add the chorizo and cook until the fat melts from the chorizo and you have a nice pool of oil in the skillet.
- Remove the chorizo, leaving the oil in the skillet. Add a drizzle of the olive oil to the skillet and reduce the heat to medium. Add the shallots and cook until softened and translucent.
- Remove from the skillet and add the rest of the olive oil. Add the potatoes and cook, turning occasionally, until lightly coloured. Heat up the grill section of your oven.
- With the potatoes making a nice layer in the bottom of the skillet, spread the shallots over the potatoes. Sprinkle over the cheese and place under the grill until melted.
- Put the skillet back on the stove over medium heat. Make four divots in the potato mixture for the eggs. Crack the eggs into the divots and cook until the whites are just set.
- Sprinkle the chorizo pieces over the potatoes and eggs and top with spring onions to serve.
- Carefully plate the potato and eggs, season to taste and add a dash of your favourite hot sauce.
Nutrition
Planning on making breakfast skillet this weekend? We’ve got more ideas for what to cook this weekend here.
Please do let us know in the comments below if you cook our egg potatoes and chorizo breakfast skillet recipe as we’d love to know how it turns out for you.
As soon as I saw these eggs in the Dutch oven I knew I had to make it last weekend.
We ended up serving it with warm tortillas. It was delicious!
Cheers.
Hi Alex, that’s great to hear! Thanks for dropping by to let us know :)