Machaca de Camarón Seco con Huevo Sinaloense

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy 10-inch cast iron skillet or carbon-steel comal
• •Volcanic stone molcajete or sharp chef's knife for shredding the shrimp
• •Wooden spoon or spatula for folding the eggs
• •Cloth-lined basket for keeping sobaqueras warm at the table

Instructions

1. 1

   Soak the camarón seco

   Place the dried shrimp in a bowl and cover with the warm water. Let them sit for 15 minutes. They will plump and the water will turn the color of weak tea, salty and oceanic. Save half a cup of that soaking water. The rest you discard. The shrimp themselves are already heavily salted from the sun-curing process, so the water will tell you everything about how aggressive the salt is in the batch you bought.

   Taste the soaking water before you discard it. If it tastes like the sea on a hot day, your shrimp will salt the dish on their own. Do not add salt until the very end, and even then, taste first. Most home cooks ruin this dish by treating the shrimp like raw protein. They are not raw. They are a seasoning.
2. 2

   Prepare the shrimp

   Drain the soaked shrimp and pat them dry on a clean cotton cloth. Pull the heads off if your batch has them, and peel the shells from the larger pieces. Smaller dried shrimp can stay whole, shells and all, the shells soften and disappear into the egg. Chop or pulse the shrimp coarsely with a knife or in a molcajete until they look shredded, like fine machaca de res. Not a paste. A shred. That texture is what gives this dish its name.

3. 3

   Build the sofrito

   Heat the manteca de cerdo in a heavy skillet or comal over medium heat until it shimmers. Add the diced onion and cook for about three minutes, until translucent and soft. Add the garlic and the chopped serrano. Cook another minute, until you smell the chile waking up. Then add the diced tomato. Let it cook down for four to five minutes, stirring, until the tomato breaks apart and releases its juice and the whole pan looks glossy. La manteca es el sabor. This is your base.

4. 4

   Add the shredded shrimp

   Stir the shredded camarón seco into the sofrito. Cook for two to three minutes over medium heat, letting the shrimp toast lightly in the fat and absorb the tomato. The kitchen will smell like a Mazatlán marisquería at dawn. If the pan looks dry, add two tablespoons of the reserved soaking water, no more. You want the mixture loose but not wet.

5. 5

   Scramble in the eggs

   Crack the eggs directly into the pan. Do not beat them ahead of time. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to break the yolks and fold the eggs into the shrimp mixture as they set. Cook over medium-low heat, folding gently, for two to three minutes. The eggs should be soft and just barely set, with the orange and red of the sofrito streaking through the curds. Asi se hace y punto. Overcook them and you have rubber. Pull the pan off the heat the moment the eggs look almost done, the residual heat finishes them.

   Cracking the eggs into the pan instead of beating them first is how the cooks in Sinaloa do it at home. The yolks streak through the whites and through the shrimp instead of homogenizing into a flat yellow scramble. The dish should look marbled, not uniform.
6. 6

   Taste and finish

   Now taste. Now decide on salt. Most batches of camarón seco need none at all. If yours is mild, add a small pinch. Crack black pepper over the top. Scatter the chopped cilantro across the surface. Serve immediately, while the eggs are still soft, with warm sobaqueras at the table for tearing and scooping. This is breakfast on the Sinaloa coast: direct, salty, hot enough to wake you up.

Chef Tips

• •Buy your camarón seco at a Mexican mercado or a serious Latino grocery, not online. You want to see the shrimp before you buy them. They should be bright orange to deep coral, dry but not brittle, and they should smell like the ocean, not like ammonia. Sinaloa-sourced is best when you can find it. The Asian dried shrimp sold in some markets is a different product entirely, smaller, often sweeter, and not what this dish wants.
• •If your camarón seco has heads attached, you can leave them on the smaller pieces and pull them off the larger ones. The heads carry intense flavor and they soften completely once they cook in the fat. They are not a flaw, they are concentrate.
• •Do not skip the manteca. Sinaloa cooks fry the sofrito in lard because the dried shrimp release their flavor into fat better than into oil. La manteca es el sabor. If you cannot eat pork, use a neutral animal fat or a high-quality unrefined coconut oil. Do not use canola. The dish will taste hollow.
• •Salsa de chiltepín on the side is the regional move. Chiltepín is the wild bird's-eye chile of the Sonoran desert, tiny, round, and ferociously hot in a clean, fast way that fades quickly. Crush a few in a wooden chiltepinero with salt and lime. It belongs on this plate the way habanero belongs on cochinita pibil.

Advance Preparation

• •The camarón seco can be soaked, drained, and shredded one day ahead. Hold refrigerated in a covered container.
• •The sofrito of onion, garlic, serrano, and tomato can be made up to two days ahead and refrigerated. Reheat in lard before adding the shrimp and eggs.
• •The eggs themselves go in last and should never be made ahead. Scrambled eggs reheated are scrambled eggs ruined.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 200g)