Chipotle Yam Breakfast Burritos with Swiss and Spinach

I’m not a real cook or a real photographer, but I’m a real vegetarian. Or at least I think I am, as long as that doesn’t mean “made out of vegetables.” I don’t measure my recipes, so take my measurements with a grain of salt. But don’t really add salt to all the ingredients, that would be too salty.

Today’s nice Saturday morning recipe is: Chipotle Yam Breakfast Burritos!

Breakfast burritos are Father Guido’s and my favorite food group, and we live in the center of the breakfast burrito universe – just off Federal Boulevard in Denver. However, these delicious breakfast burritos we get in restaurants around here are obesifying and questionably “vegetarian” when you order them “vegetarian.” Here are some that I made this morning that are much more healthy. Yes, they are total guera breakfast burritos. I guess I couldn’t help but unleash my inner guera.

I chose swiss over pepper jack or one of the more obvious choices because melted swiss always surprises me in how amazing it is. It gives everything a more buttery, decadent taste. Mixed with spinach, it’s always good, and then add in smoky chipotle with carmelized yams and red onions – I’m a genius! But I could see cotija or even feta being amazing in this too.

Ingredients:

- 2 medium yams. I used only one, but it was a GIGANTOR yam, like a footlong.

- 1/3 diced red onion

- 1/2 diced shallot

- 3 slices of fake bacon (Morningstar or whatevs. If you are a meatatarian, you could add REAL bacon here!)

- 2 cups of fresh spinach

- 1 cup grated swiss (you can use less if you’re not insane like us)

- However many tortillas as people who are eating

- 1/2 cup of chipotle salsa. I have a rule about cooking salsas vs. dipping salsas. For dipping we get the good stuff – Sadie’s or Roberto’s. But for COOKING, I get any old cheap stuff in bulk. When you throw it into a breakfast burrito, it doesn’t make as much of a difference, and we can make it hotter by adding hot sauce. However, we got the cheap Safeway brand chipotle salsa thinking it would be cheapo blah cooking salsa, and it’s actually pretty tasty! It’s sweet and smokey.

This makes about four servings? I don’t know, we eat like eight actual “servings” of everything so I have no idea.

Directions:

Preheat the over to 400 degrees. Cut the yam into quarter-inch cubes and put them on a baking sheet, tossing them in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Throw those puppies in the oven for about 20 minutes, checking them periodically.

While the yams are baking, dice the onion and shallot and start sauteeing them in olive oil on a griddle, skillet, or non-stick pan on medium/medium-low heat – you know your stove best. You want some nice, almost bubbly sautee action going on, but not burning. Once they’re starting to get transparent, add three strips of fake bacon, diced. Let them crisp up for a minute or two, not too long. It’s not real bacon!!!!!

For some reason, this whole sauteeing deal took me an entire 20 minutes, so my yams were ready at the perfect time! If yours are still baking, you might want to take the pan off the heat until they’re done. Once they’re out of the oven, throw the yams on the griddle with the onions, facon, and shallots for a couple minutes to get a nice carmelized business going on. Turn the heat down to low. Now might be a good time to taste it and see if it needs more salt and pepper.

And then fold in the spinach. Let it wilt just a little bit, for a couple of minutes. At this point I had turned my heat completely off, because the griddle tends to get really hot and stay really hot.

Now it’s time to add the cheese! That’s my favorite time. We accidentally grated an indecent amount of cheese – it seemed like there was more cheese than anything else in this dish – and it was a very, very happy accident. I’d suggest you do the same.

Before and after…

Then crack three eggs onto the mix and scramble them in! You could easily add more eggs, but Father Guido thinks eggs are icky, so I keep them to an almost unnoticeable minimum. Then finish it off by topping it with chipotle salsa right there in the pan.

So now you’re set. Mix it up! Warm up those tortillas! Fill them with deliciousness! Roll them up! I like to keep more chipotle salsa and sriracha on the side, for unexpected dipping desires.

Right after I finished this recipe, I found the kitties snuggling with the clean laundry and holding hands. I considered it a sign of great things!