Breakfast: Refried Beans and First-Fried Egg

I held a Cinco de Mayo dinner back on May 5th, and we had a great time, and all together too much food.  The vegetarian chili was a big hit, and some of it went home with omnivores.  I plan to re-create it for the blog, as I didn’t have time to make measurements of the seasonings, but instead went by taste and aroma.  (It was slow cooked, involved three different beans, canned diced tomato, fresh onion and acorn squash, as well as the usual suspects for chili seasonings and that awesome chili taste.)

Anyhow, I’d opened up 3 cans of vegetarian refried beans, and had heated this up for a serve-yourself-taco bar catering to both omnivores and vegetarians.  With a little over a cup remaining of this, later that week (which was last week) I decided to have it for breakfast.

A hearty refried bean breakfast, topped with fried egg and cheese.

So… this recipe was born for that Wednesday morning.  Oh, for an extra bit of zip, sub the regular refried beans with those black bean refried beans.

Prep Time: 5 – 10 minutes
Cook Time: Egg maybe 5 minutes, refried beans & cheese, 2.5 – 3 minutes if nuked – microwave while the egg cooks.
Rest Time:  You may want it to cool a bit before a bite
Serves:  One, you may want a late lunch…

Egg, Cheese, Refried Beans

• About 1 cup ( about 240 mL) of refried beans (if vegetarian, check the label on your can as some canned refried beans are made with pork lard)
• 1 egg
• A splash of cooking oil (I prefer avocado)
• An ounce (28-30 grams) or so of Monterey Jack, sliced thin (Cheddar or Pepper Jack would be great, too).
• 1/2 teaspoon ground Ancho chili pepper.  (You can punch this up with a hotter chili — but this is breakfast!)
• A wedge’s worth of lime juice. 
• Ground pepper to taste (I used Trader Joe’s Rainbow Peppercorns)
• Cilantro (fresh coriander leaf) for garnish

Lay out the refried beans in a microwaveable dish.  (Or you can do this in an oven-safe dish and do the same procedure in the oven, it will just take longer to cook through.)

Mix in some ancho chili powder.

Lay some thin sliced cheese in a circle on top, making an indentation in the center where the egg will go.

Squeeze on some lime, mainly on the beans.

Fry up an egg in a medium-low heat skillet.  Cook to your preferred style and level of done-ness, but about two minutes before ready, put the beans in the microwave and cook there for 2.5 minutes, on the high setting.

When the egg is done to your liking, remove skillet from heat.

Remove beans from microwave, and gently drape your fried egg in the center of the bowl.  Add ground pepper and cilantro.  Serve and enjoy!

Yeah, I forgot to add the cilantro until I’d started gnoshing… it was sitting out and waiting for me, but I forgot it anyway!  So, it’s not in the photo, but I did use it.  Pays to do the coffee before prepping breakfast!!

NOTE:  to make this for more people, use a casserole dish.  You will probably want to make this an oven dish in that case, so prepare to bake this at 350 F for 20-25 minutes.  You can also cook the egg(s) IN the casserole dish in this case — but for my purposes, the egg comes out overdone on top (I’ve done this in the past).  YMMV.

At any rate, this recipe has been posted at the Fiesta Friday link party, where I’m hosting /helping out this week.  Do drop on by!!  Read, enjoy, share your own recipes should you choose!

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