Huevos Rancheros

One thing we've really tried to commit to this year is to waste less food. It took some time to get into the groove of meal planning and figuring out exactly how much food we would eat in a week to make sure we don't buy too much, and we're still working on it. Not doing a good job of tracking "best by" dates while running around this summer meant we ended up with a Costco-sized package of queso fresco in the fridge that we had a little over a week to use. Oops.

So I went on a mission to figure out what I could throw queso fresco into other than variations on the ensalada de choclo or just topping tacos with it. When looking around, I stumbled on this recipe for huevos rancheros. We had all the ingredients already (another pantry meal!), so adapting that seemed like the perfect choice.

To make this variation of huevos rancheros, we used:

- 10 oz can diced tomatoes with jalapeños, undrained ($0.68)

- 10 oz can red enchilada sauce ($0.70)

- 1/3 bunch of cilantro, chopped ($0.40)

- 1 tbsp lime juice ($0.10)

- 16 oz can black refried beans ($0.75)

- 3 green onions ($0.30)

- cooking spray ($0.05)

- 4 large eggs ($0.80)

- 3 tortillas ($0.75)

- 1 cup crumbled queso fresco ($2)

For about $6.50 total, we each got 2 plates of huevos rancheros (my second one was sans tortilla, but that's because I ate that at a previous lunch and forgot to buy more) and there was still extra stuff left. I was pretty stuffed after that meal. Lots of food.

Each component of dinner was easy to make on its own, but I'm still trying to get better at juggling four or five different things at once and prepping during the cooking process. I liked how straightforward this was. It made for a good weeknight meal.

The first step is to start the sauce since that takes the longest. Combine the canned tomatoes and the enchilada sauce in a saucepan, bring it to a boil, and then lower the heat and simmer it until thick. The recipe said 5 minutes, but I definitely let it go much longer than that. 

Once the sauce is as thick as you want it, remove from the heat and add the cilantro and lime juice.

While the sauce is in progress, there's a bunch of other steps to take care of. Chopping scallions and cilantro for garnish (in addition to the cilantro for the sauce). Crumbling the queso fresco. Heating up the refried beans.

Also heating up the tortillas and frying the eggs. Most of those steps were easy and not that labor intensive, other than chopping garnish and frying the eggs, but still another thing to check off the list. 

Then, after the sauce and eggs are ready (whichever finishes last), it's time to assemble. Tortilla, topped with the refried beans spread like a paste, egg, sauce, crumbled queso fresco, garnishes.

We really liked this dish and would definitely make this for dinner again. The sauce by itself had quite a bit of kick to it and was a little acidic, but combined with the beans, cheese, and egg, it was nicely balanced out. The original recipe I followed didn't include scallions, but I thought they would make a good garnish and they definitely did. I was also quite proud that (other than the one egg where I clearly broke the yolk) I greatly improved on my fried egg performance from last time, since it proves I've learned things from these challenges. Overall, we were pretty happy with this and would definitely do this again.