Eggs-periment day 19: Huevos rancheros

Whenever I think of huevos rancheros, I think of Austin. Austinians drink beer with their huevos rancheros. I like people who drink beer with breakfast.

There are all kinds of complicated recipes for huevos rancheros, which is why I never made them before last night. This is what happens when you have 8 cartons of eggs in your refrigerator at all times — you end up never going grocery shopping and end up eating eggs morning, noon and night. It’s pretty disgusting, really.)

I didn’t feel like following some fancy-pants recipe, so we ended up putting together our own version of whatever ingredients we had lying around. Think of this as the Rachael Ray approach to making huevos rancheros:

The fundamentals:

• corn tortillas

• fried eggs

• black or refried beans

• salsa

• queso fresco

To make, we first pan fried the tortillas in a little hot oil for 3 seconds each side, then warmed them in an oven set to 200 degrees. Meanwhile, we heated a can of beans in a sauce pan, and gussied it up with all sorts of seasonings — oregano, s&p, a little chile powder. Next, we fried four eggs, and served two eggs each atop one warmed tortilla. Add a large spoonful of beans to the eggs, drizzle with lots of hot salsa and top with crumbled queso fresco, chopped cilantro and scallions. Hearty, hot, eggy and delicious. And no stinking “EVOO.”