Huevos con chorizo or scrambled eggs with chorizo is my favourite breakfast eggs dish ever. Our huevos con chorizo recipe for this edition of Weekend Eggs from Jerez deviates from the classic Mexican huevos revueltos con chorizo that we first fell in love with at Cafe El Popular in Mexico City years ago. For starters, we’re using Spanish chorizo.
Choosing last fortnight’s Weekend Eggs Morocco edition recipe, the third in our recipe series on quintessential breakfast eggs dishes from around the world, which I cooked in our riad in Marrakech, was easy. We chose a recipe for chakchouka, which is cooked and eaten in Morocco, neighbouring North African countries, and the Levant.
Selecting a Weekend Eggs dish from Jerez here in Spain has been more difficult. As Jerez is home to a rich flamenco scene – we’ve been heading out to see live flamenco dance and music, and I also had some flamenco guitar lessons – I wanted to make huevos a la flamenca.
However, huevos a la flamenca is a baked egg dish with tomatoes and ham that’s served in a cazuela, the clay individual serving dish that’s like a flatter ramekin and very popular in Spain. But unfortunately we don’t have an oven here in the Jerez apartment.
Plan B was to try some of the local egg dishes we come across in Jerez cafes, restaurants and tapas bars and develop a recipe based on those, but unfortunately the egg dishes here have not really been something we’ve warmed to – they’re either cooked in loads of oil or just overcooked.
Plan C was to do one of my favourite breakfast dishes ever — huevos con chorizo. I was always planning to make this dish somewhere on the Grand Tour, either in Mexico or Spain, but I already have a couple of other ideas for Mexico, where they make the best breakfast eggs in the world. So Plan C it is…but this isn’t your average huevos con chorizo recipe.
Huevos con Chorizo Recipe for Scrambled Eggs with Spanish Chorizo – Weekend Eggs, the Jerez Edition
The chorizo in southern Spain is infinitely better for the scrambled eggs I’m making for this recipe. The Spanish chorizo sausage we’ve spotted here at the Jerez market is a spicy, fatty, pork sausage seasoned with pimentón (smoky paprika).
It is very different to the chorizo that they use in Mexico for the scrambled eggs with chorizo dish called huevos revueltos con chorizo. In Mexico the chorizo sausage is taken out of the skin and used like minced meat.
The dish is very fatty and often the eggs are cooked in plenty of oil as well. We adore that dish, but this version I make has only a very slight resemblance to that dish.
There are so many different types of chorizo, that there’s really not enough room to elaborate on chorizo in this post. I’ll save that for a future post.
But for this dish, you’ll need Spanish chorizo that’s soft. The hard chorizo is generally eaten like salami, in thin or thick slices.
The soft chorizo sausage is typically smaller in diameter as well, usually less than one inch or 2.5cm wide.
Note that many soft chorizos are ‘fresh’ and have to be cooked and can’t be eaten like salami, while some can. Know what you’re buying and how it should be cooked and eaten.
Tips for Making this Huevos con Chorizo Recipe for Scrambled Eggs with Spanish Chorizo
The secret to my version of this huevos con chorizo recipe – if there is one – is that I cook the chorizo first, releasing the fat and pimentón, making a delicious oil that we then cook the onions in. These onions are to die for, trust me!
The scrambled eggs are as per the cooking method used in our Dubai Weekend Eggs dish. You just can’t beat that method for creamy, moist scrambled eggs.
For serving these scrambled eggs with chorizo, while you can eat these on their own, we’ve often defaulted to the Mexican way of having some tortillas with the eggs – flour, not corn, as the corn flavour can overwhelm the eggs.
You can use these scrambled eggs to create breakfast wraps or burritos if you like (pictured), but we prefer serving the tortillas on the side and let everyone put as much or as little scrambled eggs into each tortilla.
A hard cheese such as Parmesan or the Spanish hard cheese called queso curado de oveja viejo sprinkled over the top of the scrambled eggs really rounds out this dish.
I made these eggs again today, and as we had some leftover Spanish fried potatoes, we had those on the side. A perfect match!
Update 23 July 2021: if you like this dish, you might also enjoy our chorizo eggs recipe for fried eggs with chorizo, chorizo and chilli oil, and spring onions on sourdough toast.
Huevos con Chorizo Recipe for Scrambled Eggs with Spanish Chorizo
Ingredients
- 1 medium onion or the equivalent in shallots
- 100 g of ‘soft’ chorizo
- 1 good knob of butter
- 4 large eggs
- A sprinkling of Parmesan or a Spanish hard cheese
- 4 medium-sized tortillas corn or flour
Instructions
- Cut the chorizo into 4 pieces for every round, as shown in the photo.
- Over medium-high heat cook the chorizo and dice the onion or shallots.
- After a few minutes you should have enough oil from the chorizo to fry the onion or shallots in.
- Remove the chorizo leaving the oil in the pan. Turn the heat down to low-medium and cook the onion/shallots until they are soft and take on good colour from the chorizo oil. If the pan starts to dry out just add some olive oil.
- If you’re having tortillas, cook or warm them now, and keep them warm.
- In a saucepan over medium heat, add the butter and eggs.
- Stir constantly with a spatula until you start to see little lumps of cooked eggs form. Remove from the heat occasionally so that the eggs don’t overcook.
- As the eggs are cooking combine the chorizo and the onion/shallots and keep warm.
- When the eggs are almost done, stir in a dollop of cream (or sour cream) to help stop the cooking process and then add the chorizo and the onion/shallots. Taste for seasoning.
- Serve on warmed plates, add the cheese, and jazz up with some coriander (cilantro) or some sliced eschallots.
- You can turn these into burritos (see the photo) which are great as finger food if you have a lot of guests.
Nutrition
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make our huevos con chorizo recipe for scrambled eggs with Spanish chorizo as we’d love to know how it turns out for you.
Mmm will have to raid my mother-in-law’s fridge for chorizo and try this.
So…I’m guessing you’ll side with my hubby in wanting eggs a little undone. I like them cooked all the way through! Just saw Bobby Flay in a breakfast throw down in Kentucky. Both chefs like their eggs underdone too. She added french fried onions and did her ham like you’re describing the chorizo…mmmm….(AND BEAT BOBBY!)
Thanks for your comments! Let me know if you’d like some more detail/less detail more background/less background for each dish.
Hi Heather – make sure it’s not the super-cured kind of chorizo, it goes really firm. The best is the chorizo labelled ‘fresco’, which is meant to be cooked.
Lisa, I guess your underdone is my perfect ;-) If you try the scrambled eggs the way that I described in the Dubai post, they’re actually ‘cooked’ by the time they hit the table – they’re just not dried out or brown. The first time I saw scrambled eggs cooked like the way I now do them was at my friend’s restaurant where I was working and he made some to order during dinner service for a ‘regular’. I thought it looked unappealing, but then the taste! Never ever cooked scrambled eggs any other way. I’ve *never* had that watery protein nonsense, never had dried eggs and never had a complaint!