Chef Lupita
Arroz a la Oaxaqueña
Oaxaca's red rice, stained with tomato and fried in lard, steamed with carrots, ejotes, black beans, and epazote. The side that anchors a Oaxacan family meal and earns its place beside the main.
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Ejotes con Huevo Oaxaquenos
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Oaxacan ejotes braised in fried tomato and white onion, then folded into soft scrambled egg with epazote. The plate a Valles Centrales cook makes when the milpa is generous and lunch is in twenty minutes.
Side Dishes
Mexican
Weeknight
Quick Meal
Budget Friendly
15 min
Active Time
20 min cook•35 min total
Yield4 servings
This is a Oaxacan plate. Not the Oaxaca of mole negro and seven complex sauces, the everyday Oaxaca, the Valles Centrales kitchen where a cook walks out to the milpa in the morning, picks what is ready, and figures out lunch by noon. Ejotes con huevo is that kind of dish. Humble, fast, built on what is in front of you.
The ejotes have to be fresh. Snap one in the mercado before you buy. If it bends, walk away. The tomato gets boiled with garlic, white onion, and a chile serrano, then blended and fried in lard until the puree darkens and the fat separates. That frying step is where most cooks fail. Raw tomato sauce tastes flat. Fried tomato sauce tastes like Mexico. La manteca es el sabor and there is no shortcut for that.
Epazote belongs in this dish. Not parsley. Not cilantro. Epazote. It is the herb that grows wild around the milpas of Oaxaca, the one that finishes black beans and folds into squash blossoms. Without it, you have a generic vegetable scramble. With it, you have something with a place on the map.
My mother made a version of this with whatever the corner stall had on Tuesdays, ejotes one week, calabacitas the next, nopales when nopales were good. She would write the variations in pencil in the margin of her notebook: 'mas epazote del que crees.' More epazote than you think. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Ejotes are the immature pods of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), domesticated in Mesoamerica roughly 7,000 years ago and one of the three pillars of the milpa system alongside corn and squash. Eating beans young as a green vegetable, rather than only as a dried pulse, is a regional Mexican practice that runs deepest in Oaxaca, Puebla, and Tlaxcala, where home cooks treat ejotes as a warm-season staple from the same plants that will later yield dried beans for storage. The pairing of ejotes with egg and a fried tomato sofrito reflects the post-conquest integration of European chickens into the milpa economy, producing a dish that is genuinely mestizo: indigenous bean, indigenous tomato, indigenous chile, indigenous epazote, and a colonial egg, all on the same plate.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
fresh ejotes (green beans)
Quantity
1 pound
ends trimmed, cut into 1-inch pieces
ripe Roma tomatoes
Quantity
3 medium
cored
white onion
Quantity
1/2 medium
half left whole, the other half finely diced
garlic cloves
Quantity
2
peeled
fresh chile serrano
Quantity
1
stemmed (use 2 if you want more heat)
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
2 tablespoons
large eggs
Quantity
5
fresh epazote
Quantity
1 sprig
leaves only, roughly chopped
kosher salt
Quantity
1 teaspoon, plus more to taste
freshly ground black pepper
Quantity
to taste
hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)
Quantity
for serving
warmed
salsa de molcajete (optional)
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| fresh ejotes (green beans)ends trimmed, cut into 1-inch pieces | 1 pound |
| ripe Roma tomatoescored | 3 medium |
| white onionhalf left whole, the other half finely diced | 1/2 medium |
| garlic clovespeeled | 2 |
| fresh chile serranostemmed (use 2 if you want more heat) | 1 |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard) | 2 tablespoons |
| large eggs | 5 |
| fresh epazoteleaves only, roughly chopped | 1 sprig |
| kosher salt | 1 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| freshly ground black pepper | to taste |
| hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)warmed | for serving |
| salsa de molcajete (optional) | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Wide clay cazuela or heavy 10-inch skillet
- •Small saucepan for boiling the tomato
- •Blender
- •Wooden spoon for folding the egg
Instructions
- 1
Choose the ejotes carefully
Snap one bean in half before you buy. It should break clean with a small pop and the inside should look bright and damp. Limp beans bend instead of breaking and they will stay tough no matter how long you cook them. Wash, trim the ends, and cut into 1-inch pieces. If you do not know the market, you do not know the kitchen.
Skip the strings. The thin Mexican ejotes you find in most mercados do not need to be stringed. If you are using a thicker variety with a fibrous spine along the seam, run a paring knife down it and pull. - 2
Blanch the beans
Bring a medium pot of water to a boil with a generous pinch of salt. Drop in the ejotes and cook for four minutes, just until they turn bright green and the rawness is gone. They should still have bite. Drain and set aside. Do not shock them in ice water. You want them warm when they hit the tomato.
- 3
Make the tomato base
Place the tomatoes, the whole half-onion, garlic, and the serrano in a small saucepan. Cover with water and simmer for eight minutes, until the tomato skins split and slip off and the chile turns a duller green. Drain. Transfer to a blender with a half teaspoon of salt and blend until smooth but not foamy. This is your base. Asi se hace y punto.
- 4
Fry the salsa
Heat the lard in a wide cazuela or heavy skillet over medium until it shimmers. Pour in the tomato puree. It will sputter and hiss. Step back. Cook for five to seven minutes, stirring now and then, until the puree darkens from bright orange-red to a deeper brick color and the lard starts to separate at the edges. Raw tomato puree tastes thin and metallic. Fried, it tastes like the dish you remember from your tia's stove. La manteca es el sabor.
If the puree threatens to scorch on the bottom, lower the heat. You want a steady simmer that reduces, not a hard boil that splatters and burns. - 5
Add the beans and the diced onion
Stir the diced raw onion into the salsa and cook for two minutes until softened. Add the drained ejotes and the chopped epazote. Toss to coat every bean. Lower the heat to medium-low, cover partially, and braise for six to eight minutes. The beans will drink the salsa and turn glossy. Taste for salt now.
- 6
Beat and add the eggs
Crack the eggs into a bowl. Beat them with a pinch of salt and a few cracks of pepper until the yolks and whites are uniform. Pour them straight into the cazuela with the beans. Do not stir for the first thirty seconds. Let the bottom set. Then drag a wooden spoon across the pan in long, slow folds, lifting the cooked egg from the bottom and letting the wet egg slide underneath.
- 7
Finish soft and serve
Pull the pan off the heat while the egg still looks slightly wet on top. The residual heat will finish it. Overcooked egg turns rubbery and ruins the dish. Serve immediately, family-style, in the cazuela. Set warm corn tortillas and a molcajete of salsa on the table. The egg, the bean, the salsa, all in one taco. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.
Chef Tips
- •Buy ejotes the day you cook them. They lose their snap fast in the refrigerator and a tired bean is the difference between this dish working and not working. If you must store them, wrap in a barely damp cloth and use within two days.
- •Lard is not optional here. The fried tomato salsa is the spine of this dish and oil will not give it the depth that manteca does. If you do not keep lard on hand, render some from pork fat or buy a Mexican brand at the carniceria. La manteca es el sabor.
- •Epazote is sold fresh at most Mexican mercados and Latino grocers. Do not substitute dried epazote, which loses almost all of its character, and do not substitute another herb. If you cannot find it, leave it out and accept that the dish is missing its anchor. A compromise, not an upgrade.
- •If your tomatoes are pale and watery in the off-season, roast them on a comal until the skins blister and char in spots before you blend. Charred winter tomato is closer to ripe summer tomato than raw winter tomato will ever be. Cook with what the mercado is selling today.
Advance Preparation
- •The fried tomato salsa can be made up to two days ahead and refrigerated. Reheat in the cazuela before adding the beans.
- •The ejotes can be blanched and refrigerated for up to one day. Bring them to room temperature before adding to the salsa so they do not seize the egg.
- •Do not cook the egg portion ahead. Egg reheats badly. Finish the dish at the moment of serving.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 290g)
Calories
210 calories
Total Fat
13 g
Saturated Fat
5 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
8 g
Cholesterol
230 mg
Sodium
520 mg
Total Carbohydrates
13 g
Dietary Fiber
5 g
Sugars
6 g
Protein
11 g
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