Huevos Rancheros

[Steve Plotnicki]

Yvonne - You're almost there. All we have to do is get you to stop liking pie  .

I actually love the concept of huevos rancheros but have to admit that I never had a version that was much good. Mexican restaurants ( I mean ones run by real Mexicans) cook the eggs in lard, which I think gives it a funny flavor. And I have yet to understand the appeal of beans and eggs? Eggs cooked in butter, doesn't really go with salsa and the rest of the condiments. I also think that tortillas (made from either grain) are not the most complimentary texture for the eggs. Something like a breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs and fixin's ain't bad. Or Mexican scrambled eggs with cheese, onion , jalapeno etc. salsa can be done well occassionaly. Doidge's on Union Street in San Francisco (my favorite breakfast place in the country) does a good version. And there's a place in Amagansett, a little grocery store called Chiquita Latino that makes good scrambled egg with salsa in a tortilla.

[Rachel Perlow]

I remember the best huevos rancheros a local bar & grill at college. A recent return trip to the area proved that local joint had been overimproved and hence the food had gone way down hill.

[Wilfrid]

Of course, of course.  

So whacky.  

[phaelon56]

The best ones I had (huevos rancheros that is... ) were at the Prospector Cafe in Gold Hill CO.  It may have been the eating outdoors in winter (yet stilll being warm enough due to the altitude and sun) or the fact that I was many years younger with an undeveloped palate. The version I had in Austin TX last summer was primo - the eggs were not greasy - may have been fried but were very light, beans were sort of stewed in sauce rather than refried, and the tortillas were incredibly fresh. Had to make do with hot sauce rather than salsa but all told it was a very good breakfast. Weird as it may be, I actually like the contrasts in that dish.

[Rachel Perlow]

This sounds like it veering towards a topic that would be better off on the Cooking or General forums. Anyone care to start the new topic? (just do it, don't reply here)

[Jaymes]

What prompted my original post in part was a recent trip to Belize where "huevos rancheros" are really just scramble eggs with some other stuff mixed in.

Boy, I probably shouldn't say this...  should take a cue from P-56 and keep my trap shut, or keyboard inactive, but here goes anyway....

I've been to a lot of countries and the only one where I really thought the food was pretty bad is Belize and I've been there many times.  For some reason, it seems to me, they are big on opening "tins" (British heritage you remember) of this and that.  The first time I went, I was really looking forward to it...imagining in my mind, flavors of Mexco...the Yucatán, Caribbean...all of it.  

There are some good fruits, some seafood...a particularly good lobster dinner in San Pedro one night... but outside of the big resorts, expensive exclusive hotels, and tourist restaurants... pretty bleak pickings, I thought.  Just the opposite of most locales where one tries to avoid the "touristy" areas.

[tommy]

I've been to a lot of countries and the only one where I really thought the food was pretty bad is Belize and I've been there many times

belize offers a sufficiently disgusting version of this dish.

[Jaymes]

I've been to a lot of countries and the only one where I really thought the food was pretty bad is Belize and I've been there many times

belize offers a sufficiently disgusting version of this dish.

Thanks for backing me up, Tommy.  I knew I could count on The Tomster.

[phaelon56]

Jaymes -  I'm more than less in agreement with you on this one although there were some exceptions on my trip. Will you be kind enough to carry this conversation over to the Central America forum? I posted a Belizian food trip report there and have had some views but no responses yet. I would like to pursue the topic but might as well do it there since the thread's already started.

[Wilfrid]

For some reason, it seems to me, they are big on opening "tins" (British heritage you remember) of this and that.  

There you go.  "Tins", or "cans" if you will.  What's so "British heritage" about that?

[Steve Plotnicki]

I was biting my tongue on that one. Figure Wilfrid had to bring it up and couldn't let it die. Now I'm going to have to say something about boiled food that is all grey.

[Wilfrid]

Just so long as everyone knows that canning was invented in France and that it revolutionized food distribution in the United States in particular.  Guy called Heinz springs to mind.

But I am definitely in the wrong forum for this.

[Jaymes]

For some reason, it seems to me, they are big on opening "tins" (British heritage you remember) of this and that.  

There you go.  "Tins", or "cans" if you will.  What's so "British heritage" about that?

I did not mean to imply that the propensity to open metal containers of processed food for one's meals is British in origin.  First of all, I don't believe that's the case and, secondly, even if I did, I certainly wouldn't have said so here.

As a matter of fact, every time I've been to England, I've enjoyed what I believed to be pretty good fare.  I was always on a trip wherein we were tightly herded from place to place, however, so didn't have time to wander far afield.

My point (obviously very poorly and ambiguously written, now that I read it myself) was much simpler: that while in Belize, it was my observation that the natives, when referring to the metal containers in question, most often called them "tins" rather than "cans."  And that "tins" is, in my experience, a term more often used by Brits than Americans.