Letter of Recommendation: Huevos Rancheros

I remember my mom making this dish for us for breakfast on the weekends more often than she made any other New Mexican dish growing up, and that’s probably because it’s so quick to make. Technically, it’s named for a sauce my mom never actually used because ranchero sauce contains both tomatoes and onions, two things she became increasingly intolerant to as I grew up. She made it with red chile molido instead, which is also how I made it for years. But there is something magical that happens when you get tomatoes and eggs together–cf. shakshuka, menemen, etc. So, the next time you need a quick meal and have an egg, a corn tortilla, some random salsa, and some random cheese in your frig, huevos rancheros is your huckleberry. Most of the restaurants where I grew up do a red or green chile (with tomato) sauce instead of ranchero sauce and add pinto beans (sometimes fried potatoes as well). But that’s gilding the lily. I eat huevos rancheros at least once a week on average. When I was a kid I ate the eggs only over-hard, but now I like them over easy or over-medium, which is how they should be, so the creamy yolk smoothes out the acid from the tomato salsa. Just like tiny skillet enchiladas, you can make this in one pan, and it takes even less time: just fry your tortilla on both sides and drain it, fry your egg in the remaining olive oil, pick it up and slide the tortilla back under, cover the whole thing liberally with salsa and cheese, and throw under the broiler for a minute. Done.