How to Construct the Best Breakfast Tortilla Sandwich

This isn’t really a recipe, more like a guide to assembling and folding a breakfast tortilla sandwich that makes the most sense. It’s not the prettiest of sandwiches, but after one bite, you won’t care.

Tortilla sandwiches flew around social media a few years ago, and I was intrigued. I love quesadillas, but this was different. A cut was made on the radius of a large tortilla (from the outside edge to the center, if you’ve forgotten geometry). Different ingredients were placed onto the four quadrants of the tortilla, and then each quarter was folded onto the next.

There was a problem, though: the first fold always resulted in a mess, because the food on the bottom of the first fold spilled as it was folded up.

Another problem was that I didn’t want all of the parts of my breakfast sandwich piping hot. When I make a breakfast burrito, I put the hot ingredients inside, and the cold ingredients on top. This keeps the temps relatively separate, but I have to eat these with a knife and fork. I like to be on my computer during breakfast, so a one-handed meal is ideal.

So, I figured out a better way to fold my tortilla sandwiches. It’s really simple. You start cooking your hash brown patty first, because that takes about twenty minutes. You can use home fries if that’s what you have, but I prefer the crunch of a patty.

If you’re using meat, you cook or heat up your meat. The meat and potatoes going into the sandwich have to be cooked first, or heated up if left over (this is a great way to use up leftovers!).

When that’s about five minutes from being done, you make the cut on the tortilla and put it in a very lightly-oiled pan over low heat. You sprinkle cheese onto the tortilla to give it a chance to melt, then cook up your eggs and beans and gather the cold ingredients. You add the hot ingredients, saving the cold ingredients until the last minute so that they don’t get too warm.

Finally, you fold the tortilla in a way that keeps the “juicier” ingredients (salsa, sour cream, and other condiments) in the most protected pocket of the sandwich.

The result is a compact one-handed sandwich absolutely packed with deliciousness!

When I’m going to be eating this alone, I spread the messier ingredients almost right to the edges of the tortilla. Not gonna lie, this can still get a little drippy! I don’t care if I’m by myself, but if I’m making this for other people I usually keep those ingredients more centered in each quarter of the tortilla. They will spread out when the sandwich gets folded.

You can absolutely do this with other ingredients. You could make a BLT, a grilled cheese with tomato, a pizza tortilla, basically any sandwich that you want to eat hot on a tortilla. But I think it lends itself best to a breakfast sandwich. You can put in whatever ingredients you want, like omelette ingredients (mushrooms, peppers, onions, cubed ham, etc.). I’m a vegetarian, so I keep mine pretty simple.

A couple notes about the eggs, which are the star of the show here. First, if you’re using black beans, you’ll find that they stay in the sandwich much better if you cook them in the eggs. Second, if you don’t rinse the beans really well, they will turn the eggs a very ugly shade of brown. The eggs will still taste great, but the presentation might look a little weird.

Last, you want to make the eggs as last-minute as possible. You want everything to be ready for them, so that they don’t sit around waiting. I’ve found that one egg fits well inside of a jumbo tortilla.

When you’re eating the sandwich, tip it towards the folded side and away from the open side, so that the salsa and sour cream will stay inside better.

That’s it! Experiment with ingredients, and please report back if you develop something unique.