Chef Lupita
Chilaquiles Yucatecos en Chiltomate
Yucatan's slow Sunday almuerzo: tortilla triangles fried in manteca and bathed in chiltomate, the peninsula's charred tomato salsa, crowned with crema, grated queso de bola, and a lace-edged fried egg.
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Huevos Tirados con Frijol Colado
Created by
Veracruz's Mayan-rooted breakfast of strained black beans, epazote, and eggs cooked together in pork lard until the curds run dark and glossy. Economy and depth in one pan.
Breakfast & Brunch
Mexican
Weeknight
Quick Meal
Budget Friendly
15 min
Active Time
25 min cook•40 min total
Yield4 servings
This dish lives in Veracruz, in the southern stretch that brushes up against Tabasco and Campeche, where the Mayan kitchen never left and the black bean still runs the breakfast table. You will find huevos tirados in jarocho fondas from the port of Veracruz down through Los Tuxtlas and Catemaco, served before the heat of the day with a stack of hand-pressed tortillas and a bowl of salsa de chile habanero. This is not a Mexico City dish. This is a southeastern dish, and the bean tells you so.
Frijol colado is the key. You cook the black beans soft, blend them with epazote, and strain out the skins through a fine sieve until what is left is a dark, silky puree, almost the consistency of a thick atole. That straining is what separates a Mayan-rooted bean preparation from a generic refried bean. The texture has to be smooth enough that when you pour the beaten eggs into it, they fold through in long soft curds. The eggs are not scrambled separately and topped with beans. They are thrown into the beans, tirados, and cooked together until the black and the yellow live in the same spoonful.
The fat is manteca. Not oil, not butter. The epazote is fresh, not dried, because dried epazote loses the medicinal green note that makes this dish taste like Veracruz and not like a beige version of itself. If you cannot find fresh epazote, ask at any mercado with a good herb vendor or grow it on a windowsill. It is a weed. It survives anything. My mother kept a pot of it by the back door in Colonia Roma and never lost a sprig in thirty years.
This is a weekday breakfast. It costs almost nothing. It feeds four people from a pot of beans you already had in the refrigerator. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and a cook who can turn yesterday's beans and today's eggs into this dish is never going to go hungry.
Huevos tirados belongs to the broader frijol colado tradition of southeastern Mexico, a Mayan technique of straining cooked black beans through cloth or fine sieve to remove the skins, documented in colonial-era accounts of Yucatecan and Tabascan cooking and still practiced from Campeche down through the Petexbatun region. The pairing with eggs is a post-conquest development tied to the introduction of European chickens, which spread through the Maya lowlands in the 16th and 17th centuries and were absorbed into the existing bean-and-epazote breakfast format. The verb tirar, to throw, gives the dish its name in Veracruzano Spanish and refers specifically to the technique of pouring beaten eggs directly into the simmering bean puree rather than cooking the two components separately, a distinction that local cooks defend as the only correct method.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
cooked black beans (frijoles negros)
Quantity
2 cups
with about 1 cup of their cooking liquid reserved
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
3 tablespoons
small white onion
Quantity
1/2
finely chopped
garlic cloves
Quantity
2
finely chopped
fresh epazote sprigs
Quantity
2
leaves only, roughly chopped
fresh chile serrano (optional)
Quantity
1
finely chopped
kosher salt
Quantity
1 teaspoon, plus more to taste
large eggs
Quantity
6
lightly beaten
hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)
Quantity
for serving
warmed
crumbled queso fresco (optional)
Quantity
for serving
salsa de chile habanero or salsa verde (optional)
Quantity
for serving
ripe plantain fried in lard (optional)
Quantity
for serving
sliced
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| cooked black beans (frijoles negros)with about 1 cup of their cooking liquid reserved | 2 cups |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard) | 3 tablespoons |
| small white onionfinely chopped | 1/2 |
| garlic clovesfinely chopped | 2 |
| fresh epazote sprigsleaves only, roughly chopped | 2 |
| fresh chile serrano (optional)finely chopped | 1 |
| kosher salt | 1 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| large eggslightly beaten | 6 |
| hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)warmed | for serving |
| crumbled queso fresco (optional) | for serving |
| salsa de chile habanero or salsa verde (optional) | for serving |
| ripe plantain fried in lard (optional)sliced | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •High-powered blender
- •Fine-mesh strainer
- •Wide clay cazuela or heavy 10-inch skillet
- •Wooden spoon
Instructions
- 1
Strain the beans
Place the cooked black beans and their cooking liquid in a blender. Add a sprig of the epazote. Blend on high until completely smooth, about a minute. Pour the puree through a fine-mesh strainer set over a bowl, pressing on the solids with the back of a wooden spoon until only the dry skins remain. Discard the skins. This is the frijol colado. The straining is the dish. Skip it and you have refried beans, which is something else entirely.
The puree should pour like a thick atole, not stand up like a paste. If it is too thick to strain, thin it with a few tablespoons of bean broth or hot water before you push it through. - 2
Build the base in lard
Melt the manteca in a wide cazuela or heavy skillet over medium heat. The lard should shimmer but not smoke. Add the chopped onion and cook for three to four minutes, until it turns translucent and the edges start to gold. Add the garlic and the chile serrano if you are using it. Stir for thirty seconds, just until you can smell the garlic. Do not let it brown. La manteca es el sabor and you do not want to bury it under burned garlic.
- 3
Cook down the frijol colado
Pour the strained bean puree into the cazuela. It will sputter and hiss. Add the rest of the chopped epazote and the salt. Lower the heat to medium-low. Cook for eight to ten minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom often. The puree will darken and thicken and start to pull away from the sides of the pan when you drag the spoon through it. That is the texture you want. Taste for salt now. Beans need more salt than people think.
- 4
Tirar los huevos
Lower the heat to low. Pour the beaten eggs directly into the bean base. This is the move that names the dish: tirar means to throw, and you are throwing the eggs into the beans, not the other way around. Stir slowly and steadily with the wooden spoon, working from the edges to the center, so the eggs cook in long soft folds through the beans. Do not scramble them hard. You want tender curds, glossy with the bean fat, the black and yellow visible in the same spoonful.
If the heat is too high the eggs will tighten and squeak. Pull the pan off the burner for a few seconds if you feel them getting away from you. Low and slow gives you the silk. - 5
Finish and serve
Cook for two to three minutes more, until the eggs are just set but still moist. They will keep cooking from the heat of the pan, so pull them a little before you think they are done. Slide the huevos tirados onto a warm plate or serve straight from the cazuela. Crumble queso fresco over the top. Set warm tortillas, salsa de habanero, and fried plantain on the table. Eat with your hands and a tortilla folded into a spoon. Asi se hace y punto.
Chef Tips
- •Cook your black beans with a sprig of epazote, half an onion, and a clove of garlic. Salt them at the end. If you start with good pot beans, the frijol colado writes itself. If you start with canned beans, the dish will be flatter, but rinse them well and add a little extra epazote to make up for it. A compromise, not an upgrade.
- •Fresh epazote is not optional. The flavor is sharp, herbal, faintly mineral, and there is no real substitute. Dried epazote will give you about thirty percent of the aroma and none of the green. If your mercado does not carry it, ask. Most Mexican grocers will get it for you on request.
- •The eggs go in at low heat. This is the part inexperienced cooks rush. High heat gives you rubbery scrambled eggs sitting on top of beans, which is not the dish. Low heat with constant slow stirring gives you the glossy folded texture that makes huevos tirados what it is.
- •Serve with fried sweet plantain on the side if you want the full jarocho breakfast. The sweetness against the salty beans and the heat of the habanero salsa is the balance the people of Veracruz built this meal around.
Advance Preparation
- •The frijol colado can be made one or two days ahead and refrigerated. Reheat gently with a splash of water or bean broth to loosen it before adding the eggs.
- •Cooked black beans freeze well. Keep a quart in the freezer and this breakfast is fifteen minutes away on any morning.
- •Do not add the eggs ahead of time. Huevos tirados is finished and eaten immediately. Reheated eggs turn rubbery and the dish loses its silk.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 365g)
Calories
580 calories
Total Fat
28 g
Saturated Fat
11 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
16 g
Cholesterol
305 mg
Sodium
870 mg
Total Carbohydrates
50 g
Dietary Fiber
11 g
Sugars
3 g
Protein
26 g
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