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Machaca con huevo
Northern Mexico's dried shredded beef scrambled with egg, tomato and chilli
Monterrey and Sonora both claim machaca, the dried, pounded beef that once let ranchers carry meat across the desert. At breakfast it is fried with onion, tomato and green chilli, then scrambled with eggs and rolled into soft flour tortillas, and it turns up in every lonchería and roadside café in the north. The beef is savoury, salty and chewy against the soft egg. Proper machaca is hard to find outside Mexico; shredded leftover roast beef or brisket, dried out in the pan until crisp, makes a good substitute, as does unsweetened beef jerky pounded into shreds. Chef's tip: fry the machaca on its own first until the edges crackle, which brings back the toasty flavour before anything wet goes in.
- Total time
- 25 min
- Difficulty
- easy
- Serves
- 4
Ingredients
To serve
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Method
0/6 doneStep 1: Heat 2 tbsp vegetable oil in a large frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add 4 oz machaca (dried shredded beef) and fry, stirring, until it crackles and the edges darken. If you are using shredded cooked beef, keep going until it is dry and crisp at the edges.
4 minStep 2: Add ½ white onion and 2 serrano chillies and fry until the onion is soft and translucent.
3 minStep 3: Stir in 2 tomatoes and cook until they collapse and most of their juice has bubbled away, so the mixture looks moist but not wet.
4 minStep 4: Lower the heat to medium and pour in 6 eggs. Stir slowly with a spatula, folding the set egg over the beef. Don't take it off the heat while the eggs are still runny: cook until there is no liquid egg left and the curds are fully set but still soft.
3 minStep 5: Taste and add ¼ tsp salt only if it needs it.
Step 6: Warm 8 flour tortillas one at a time in a dry pan for 20 seconds a side until soft and lightly freckled, then fill with the machaca and serve at once.
3 min
Nutrition per serving
- Calories
- 430 kcal
- Protein
- 30 g
- Carbs
- 32 g
- Fat
- 20 g
- Fibre
- 2 g
Nutrition values are estimates.
KrazyBadal
Good to know
- How long does machaca con huevo take?
- About 25 minutes in total: 10 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook.
- How many people does it serve?
- 4 as written. Change the servings above the ingredients and every amount scales to match.
- What can I use instead of white onion?
- 2 shallots per onion.
- What can I use instead of tomatoes?
- Tinned chopped tomatoes: a 400g tin for about 6 tomatoes (in cooked dishes, not salads).
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