On the Go With Breakfast Burritos

Breakfast burritos are a fantastic way to have a hot, savory breakfast. They’re also a neat, compact way to take breakfast on the go, which is unfortunately how most of us usually eat breakfast.

While you can pick up a breakfast burrito in the drive-thru or from a food truck, we think it’s even better to make your own. Set aside an hour this weekend to whip up a couple dozen homemade breakfast burritos. Then freeze them, so you can have a hot breakfast regardless of how much time you don’t have to spare.

Breakfast Burrito Tips and Tricks

With homemade breakfast burritos, you can fill them with whatever ingredients you like. You can go light on the potatoes, heavy on the meat. Or skip the meat entirely and make bean burritos instead. Add extra peppers and onions, or leave them out to make more room for eggs. Your only limitations are the size of your tortillas, and a few ingredients that don’t freeze well.

What shouldn’t you put in your breakfast burritos if you want to freeze them? Avocados don’t freeze well. Add avocado slices after you’ve thawed and warmed your burrito. Do the same with guacamole and sour cream. These ingredients are tastier when chilled, so you wouldn’t want to microwave them anyway.

Speaking of that handy kitchen appliance, a microwave is the fastest way to warm up homemade breakfast burritos. You can also heat some oil in a skillet, and then crisp the outside of your burrito after you’ve thawed it in the microwave.

Along with your choice of ingredients, you can also choose how to freeze your burritos. One option is to wrap them individually in plastic or foil. This method is helpful when you have a variety of ingredients. Labels make it clear whether burritos are filled with bacon or sausage, or if they are vegetarian. Use a Sharpie or stickers.

You can freeze your make-ahead breakfast burritos without wrapping them individually, but it will take more space. Place them in a single layer on a baking sheet. Make sure they aren’t touching each other, or they will freeze together. Once they are frozen solid, toss them in a freezer bag for storage.

Breakfast Burrito Recipes to Try

Although you can fill breakfast burritos with pretty much any ingredients you like, it can be helpful to refer to a recipe. These two recipes will help you gauge how many eggs and tortillas to have on hand, along with your other personal favorites. When in doubt, buy extra tortillas. Then you can keep wrapping and freezing until you’ve used up all of your fillings.

In this recipe from Gimme Some Oven, Ali combines scrambled eggs with breakfast hash and shredded cheese. The hash is where you can get creative. Her ingredients include diced potatoes, red pepper, onions, and black beans, along with green chiles, cumin, and garlic for zip. She offers a bunch of options for customizing your burritos too. But the key quantities to keep in mind are a dozen large eggs and 16 burrito-size tortillas.

For a different twist, check out this recipe from Chungah at Damn Delicious. It calls for tater tots instead of diced potatoes, which sounds like a good swap to us. She also cooks the sausage first, then scrambles the eggs in a tablespoon of the sausage drippings. What a great way to add more flavor to the eggs. Instead of mixing the beans into the filling, spread refried beans on the tortilla and then top it with eggs, potatoes, and other ingredients. As for quantities, this recipe includes eight eggs and eight tortillas. However, we’d plan to have a few extra tortillas on hand, given all the fillings in the list of ingredients.

Both of these recipes are meant to be frozen, though they differ on how long the burritos will keep. The first recipe claims the burritos will stay good for three months, while the second recipe says one month. We’d err on the side of caution and go with the one month expiration date. But both recipes sound so good to us, we bet the freezer will be empty long before the month is out.