Chilaquiles are a top-tier breakfast dish. I would eat them every day if I could. The trick to leveling up your vegan chilaquiles is scrambling up tofu as an egg substitute instead of just omitting it.

As always, if you dig the recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram so I can personally tell you I love and respect you.

Jackfruit chilaquiles. They are crispy, smoky, gooey and at least six other adjectives.

JACKFRUIT CHILAQUILES

prep time: 20 minutes
cook time: 30 minutes

Chilaquiles are the perfect breakfast food but you’re an adult, you pay taxes and you can eat breakfast whenever you damn well please.

First order of business is pressing your tofu and jackfruit. In due time, I’ll put together a little blurb on basic stuff like prepping tofu and jackfruit, that would be kinda cool.

What you’ll need:

extra firm tofu
jackfruit (canned)
some towels
a cast iron or some kind of heavy object

Drain your tofu and wrap it in paper towels. Put a cast iron (or something else) on top to drain it of liquid.

Open your jackfruit, rinse them off in a strainer and then add them to another paper towel. Wrap that paper towel in a regular towel and press down and try to shred the jackfruit to the best of your ability. Remove the seeds if you want.

While those two things dry off, you can prepare your salsa.

What you’ll need:

dried chilies (ancho, guajillo and de arbol)
garlic
onion
lime
salt
pepper
cumin
olive oil
vinegar

Remove the seeds from your dried chiles. You can cut the stems off with scissors and they usually fall right out pretty easily. I leave a couple of the seeds just for heat sake but that’s entirely up to you.

Cut up an onion and some garlic. You don’t have to mince them because they’re eventually getting blended. Use as much garlic as you want too. I always use a lethal amount of garlic, but you can add as much as you’d like.

In a small pot, heat up some oil on a medium flame and add your salsa ingredients. Stir them and add salt, pepper, cumin and the juice of half a lime. Then add a splash of vinegar.

Once your kitchen smells like chiles and garlic, add half a cup of water to the pot and bring the temperature up a little more. Turn off the flame after simmering the pot for a few minutes and transfer the contents to a blender. Blend until smooth and let it cool down a little bit. If it’s too thick and getting caked on the blades, add a little bit more water.

Take your jackfruit from earlier and put it into a container and add the salsa directly onto the jackfruit.

Now that your prep is done, we can get into the main components of the dish. First you will start with the tofu. The tofu will function as a scrambled egg.

What you’ll need

pressed tofu
vegan butter
salt
pepper
kala namak (black salt)
nutritional yeast
vegan cheese shreds
olive oil

Oil a pan and bring it up to medium heat. Crumble your tofu directly into the pan.

Add salt, pepper and a big ol’ heaping scoop of nutritional yeast to your tofu. Stir, stir, stir.

Add a tablespoon of vegan butter into the pan along with a fistful of vegan cheese shreds. These two items will bring on more of a scramble-like consistency and alter the color some. Add a big pinch of kala namak to the tofu. This adds a sulfuric element to the tofu to give it more of an egg-like taste.

Now your tofu has more of a gooey, eggy consistency rather than being dry and crumbly.

Once your tofu is cooked, set it aside for now. Next you will get your tortillas ready and toppings ready. When your pan isn’t so hot, give it a quick wipe.

What you’ll need:

corn tortillas
olive oil
red onion
cilantro
vegan sour cream
vegan block of cheese (I used violife parm)
avocado (optional)
salt
adobo

Stack your tortillas up and cut them into quarters.

Don’t be tempted to eat them dry. Maybe just one. It’s not gonna be great though.

Heat up some oil and throw in a few tortillas at a time so they can cook. Flip them and continue to add more. Once they are cooked, set them on a paper towel on a plate to dry. I used about six tortillas for this part.

While your tortillas cool off, rinse off some cilantro and chop it up. Use some of your red onion and chop that up too. Diced this time unlike the salsa. Put some vegan sour cream into a dish. Vegan sour cream has a weird consistency but I’ve found if you take some in a dish and microwave it for ten seconds, it becomes much easier to whip. Cut up some limes and get out your block of vegan cheese. I used the brick of violife parm. I don’t know if vegan cojita exists yet.

Grate down the cheese into another dish.

Now that everything for your chilaquiles is ready to go, bring it all together. Take your jackfruit/marinade and toss it into the pan with a little bit of olive oil. Season with a little bit of salt and adobo.

Let the jackfruit cook more a little bit. You want a little bit of char.

When your jackfruit is cooked, add your tortillas directly into the pan. Mix them up evenly with the jackfruit until everything in the pan is red.

Now add all your tofu into the pan. Stir everything up evenly!

Let those things cook in the pan together for a minute and then you can transfer to a plate. Garnish with the toppings from earlier and EAT!

You earned every last bite of these chilaquiles.