Easy Mexican Breakfast: Chilaquiles

Chilaquiles (Chee-lah-key-lehs) are a super easy dish to make, especially if you like hot & spicy breakfast dishes. They're basically fried tortillas chips cooked in a chile sauce along with onion. This is my mom's recipe for RED Chilaquiles, hailing from Michoacan, Mexico.

You'll need:

• 3 chiles Guajillo
• 2 chiles California
• 2 chiles de Arbol (caution, these are very hot. 2 usually do the trick for us)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 roma tomatoes
• 1 whole onion, chopped in coarse squares
• 15-20 tortillas cut into squares, triangles, any shape (for better results, leave tortillas out a day before so they can lose moisture)
• 3 tsp of salt
• about 1.5 cups of vegetable oil

In a sauce pan, add about 2 cups of water and put in the garlic, tomatoes, guajillo, california, and arbol chiles. Cover and bring to a boil, boil for 10 mins covered. Remove stems from the chiles and add all the contents in a blender. However, only add about 3/4 cup of the water used to boil the contents. Blend the tomatoes, garlic, chiles, and salt until they are liquefied. Taste and check if it has enough salt... & that's all for the red sauce.

Now, heat your pan and add the 1.5 cups of oil. Have your tortillas cut in pieces already, and once oil is hot, fry the tortillas in batches. You want them to be light golden brown, not dark brown. Once your chips are done, sautee your chopped onion with 1 tbs of oil in another pan for a few minutes until it's translucent. Keeping the flame on medium, add the tortilla chips and the chile sauce to the pan with the onion and toss everything together. Let them cook for about 3-5 mins, depending on how soft/crunchy you want your chilaquiles to be.

Serve with queso fresco and some Mexican crema on top & enjoy!

bon appetit