This Mexican migas recipe with a twist makes a ‘Migas tortilla’ made with homemade crispy tortilla chips. In Mexico, migas is a scrambled eggs dish that uses up stale corn tortilla or wheat flour tortillas made into crispy tortilla chips. For this week’s Weekend Eggs breakfast recipe, we created a migas tortilla inspired by the Spanish tortilla.
Our inauthentic Mexican migas recipe makes a ‘Migas tortilla’. Instead of scrambled eggs with homemade crispy tortilla chips, the eggs are set into a form that more closely resembles a Spanish potato tortilla or Italian frittata. We could have called it a Mexican-style frittata.
This is the latest recipe in our Weekend Eggs series. If you haven’t dropped by in a while, we revived our Weekend Eggs series on quintessential breakfast eggs dishes from around the world, which we first launched with Grantourismo over a decade ago.
Recipes published in the rebooted series include our fried eggs breakfast taco with chorizo, crunchy potatoes and spicy chorizo oil, classic avocado toast recipe with poached eggs, 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, pesto scrambled eggs, Japanese rolled omelette recipe for tamagoyaki, 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.
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Mexican Migas Recipe with a Twist – Meet the ‘Migas Tortilla’ Made with Homemade Crispy Tortilla Chips
Our Mexican migas recipe with a twist makes a deliciously inauthentic Mexican migas. Those of you who know the breakfast eggs dish migas might be wondering why we didn’t call it a Tex-Mex migas then?
Well, Tex-Mex food may not be authentic Mexican food or even authentic Mexican-American food (and we obviously appreciate how loaded the notion of ‘authentic’ and ‘authenticity’ are), but it is an authentic American-Mexican fusion cuisine. And Tex-Mex has its own version of migas that are typically made with store-bought corn chips rather than homemade tortilla chips.
Mexico’s migas, on the other hand, is a breakfast dish that was invented to use up stale leftover corn tortillas or wheat flour tortillas that are made into crispy tortilla chips, which is why our inauthentic Mexican migas recipe is based on the Mexican dish and not the Tex-Mex dish. Because if you follow our Weekend Eggs series, you would have noticed we’ve published a few recipes made with wheat flour tortillas in recent weeks.
If you’ve travelled in Portugal and Spain, you might also have come across migas there, where migas is made with leftover bread. You definitely would have eaten a Spanish tortilla on your tapa bar crawls, typically made with potato, which could be said to be a cousin of the Italian frittata or French quiche.
I guess we could have called this a Mexican frittata, but the Spanish tortilla was my inspiration for our inauthentic Mexican migas that we’re calling a ‘Migas tortilla’. Now let me give you tips to making this Mexican migas recipe with a twist.
Tips to Making this Mexican Migas Recipe with a Twist for a Migas Tortilla
First up, don’t be tempted by recipes that add a whole vegetable shelf of ingredients such as bell pepper, fresh and sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, and cheeses such as Mozzarella. None of these are essential, nor desirable, and Mexicans don’t use Mozzarella, in Mexico they use a crumbly white cheese called cotija. This is not a freelance take on a frittata.
Typically migas is a messy dish, which is why the Tex-Mex migas is often served in tortillas. That’s fine, but we’re making this to use up old tortillas that have probably been sitting in the fridge for a few days, so you’re either buying fresh tortillas or eating it out of stale ones. My version is more like a tortilla – stay with me – a Spanish tortilla!
I prefer to use corn tortillas but we’re in lockdown so heading out to source corn tortillas is not an option and we already some wheat flour tortillas in the fridge that work fine. Note that the reason I call them wheat flour tortillas is that corn tortillas are made from flour as well, it’s just corn flour and it’s called Masa Harina.
Deep frying these tortillas is not a task for those with an attention deficit. As soon as they turn golden they will burn quickly if not removed from the oil. So why not cook them at a lower temperature? They will become soggy – and we want that crispy texture of the tortilla pieces in every bite.
If you can’t get hold of Mexican cotija cheese (it’s available on Amazon), use a crumbly white cheese, such as a Danish cheese, or a feta cheese that is not too salty.
The spring onions in the egg mixture is optional, but I find it adds flavour and colour to our migas tortilla.
Lastly, we sprinkle the finished dish with fresh coriander (cilantro), white cheese, and pico de gallo – a simple salsa of finely chopped tomato, onion, green chillies, and coriander – and serve with hot sauces, such as Tapatio and Cholula which are a couple of our favourites.
Mexican Migas Recipe for a ‘Migas Tortilla’
Ingredients
- 2 tortillas corn or wheat flour
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- 4 eggs
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp pepper
- ¼ cup spring onions green part only
Tomato Salsa (Pico De Gallo)
- 1 tomato medium to large, ripe
- 1 tbsp white onion finely chopped
- 1 green chilli fresh, hot & destemmed
- ½ bunch coriander chopped finely
- 1 lime fresh for juice to taste
- ½ tsp salt or to taste
Garnish
- ¼ cup crumbled queso fresca or mild feta
- 1 tbsp hot sauce Mexican preferably
- ½ avocado sliced (optional)
Instructions
- Heat oil in a deep saucepan to 175°C.
- Tear the tortillas into bite-sized pieces.
- Have an oven rack lined with paper towels ready beside the stove.
- Cook the tortilla pieces in batches until they are golden brown.
- Break the eggs into a bowl, mix and season. Add the spring onions.
- Spread the tortilla pieces over the base of a wide saucepan brushed with some vegetable oil. This will help stop the eggs sticking.
- With the saucepan over medium heat, pour in the egg mixture, making sure to cover all the gaps between the tortilla strips.
- Cook until the tortilla is set. If the centre is still undercooked, swirl the pan around to distribute the wet egg mixture.
- When cooked to your liking, run a silicone spatula around the tortilla to make sure it will slide out of the pan.
- Slide the tortilla onto a serving plate and garnish with the salsa, cheese, hot sauce and avocado (if using).
Nutrition
Please do let us know if you make our Mexican migas recipe with a twist for a Migas tortilla as we’d love to know how it turns out for you.
This turned out to be a great alternative to the normal migas, which is kinda messy to eat! Even just sharing it it looks like a nachos gone wrong. I had leftover locally-made fresh corn tortillas so the kitchen had the aromas of Mexico City in the morning. Thanks for the recipe!
Hi Jim, we’re so pleased you enjoyed it! Terence’s idea to do a tortilla take on migas, I can’t take credit for that. Thanks so much for taking the time to drop by and leave feedback. Much appreciated.