4 keys to making a perfect breakfast burrito

Welcome to Clubhouse Eats, where we celebrate the game’s most delectable food and drink. Hope you brought your appetite.

***

Breakfast burritos seem simple enough, right?

Well, yes and no.

In theory, a breakfast burrito is simple. In execution, it can be complicated; but that’s only if you lose your focus on a few key steps along the way.

At Phoenix Country Club, Alejandro Martinez, the director of culinary operations, creates member-favorite morning burritos that marry green chile pork with scrambled eggs and pepper jack cheese — all of which is served inside a flour tortilla that’s wrapped, grilled, and finally drizzled with lime crema.

Food

Fortunately, you don’t need to recreate all of those components to concoct a delectable breakfast burrito at home. But you do need to adhere to a few rules and pay attention to a handful of very important details. We asked Martinez to guide us through the steps necessary to make an excellent breakfast burrito, no matter the ingredients.

It Starts with the Tortilla

With burritos, it’s easy to get distracted by the fun and exotic ingredients that go inside of them, but therein lies the biggest pitfall that derails most amateur cooks. As Martinez acknowledges, there is one ingredient that is absolutely key for making a successful burrito, and it’s the outer casing that you’ll hold onto as you eat it.

“You need a good tortilla that is tender, pliable, but resistant so it can hold ingredients that are moist and warm,” he explains. “As much as I like the flavor of corn tortillas, they don’t hold much moisture before they break and is extremely hard to close and seal them. So flour tortillas are best.”

Protein Power

While Martinez showcases green chile pork in his breakfast burritos at the club, you don’t need anything quite as exotic or involved. In fact, the more attention that you pay to the meat, the more you’ll be overlooking a much more important ingredient (more on this in a moment).

“Any meat that you would eat for breakfast on a plate can go inside a burrito,” he says. Just make sure that you cut the meat into smaller bite-sized pieces ahead of time.

Enough said.

Say Cheese!

Much like with the meat, the cheese of a breakfast burrito is important, but only in so much that it’s present and you don’t make the mistake of choosing the wrong type. More specifically, Martinez avoids using overly soft cheeses or those that become cream-like when they’re heated. As you might expect, they only make the burrito difficult to eat.

Also, he likes to work with cheeses that boast a relatively mild flavor profile. “Unless they’re the star of the show,” he says, “try to find cheeses that don’t overpower the rest of the components.”

The Egg Comes First

All of that brings us to the most important ingredient — save for the tortilla, itself — and that’s the eggs. In Martinez’s opinion, the eggs are, “the soul of the burrito that marries all other components.” Think of it this way: when the eggs are cooked as they should be, you may or may not notice them. But when they’re not, that’s the only thing you’ll be able focus on. “The difference between a burrito with soft and creamy eggs and a burrito with dry and rubbery eggs,” Martinez says, “can spoil the start of your day.”

So take your egg cookery seriously. Martinez recommends scrambling them, but he adds that they should be scrambled soft and creamy.

To achieve that texture, he suggests adding a splash of milk or heavy cream — or, if you prefer, a dollop of sour cream or creme fraiche — to the mix, which helps to break down the proteins in the egg whites and creates a more tender finished product. Also, cook them over a low heat and give them constant attention. “Stir, stir, stir,” he says. “You want to break the curdles into small pieces. That will make your eggs soft and creamy.”