Huevos rotos
A Madrid tavern classic whose name means broken eggs — and the breaking is the point: fried eggs go onto potatoes and are cut at the table so the runny yolk soaks into the potatoes like a sauce. Two parts must be done well. The potatoes are first confited in oil over low heat, then crisped. The eggs fry in very hot oil so the whites get crisp, lacy edges.
Your own work in that: 2 min.
- Potatoes in oil 25 min
- Fried eggs 5 min
- Breaking 2 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneCut and dry the potatoes
Peel the potatoes and cut into uneven slices and batons 5 mm thick, as for tortilla. Rinse and dry thoroughly with a cloth. Wet potatoes spit in hot oil and cook in their own steam.
Ingredients: 600 g potatoes · 400 ml olive oil · 3 cloves garlic · 1 tsp coarse salt
Confit the potatoes in oil
Put the potatoes and garlic into the oil over medium-low heat and cook 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until tender but uncoloured. This is confit — the potatoes cook through in the fat rather than frying.
Ingredients: 600 g potatoes · 400 ml olive oil · 3 cloves garlic · 1 tsp coarse salt
A quarter hour in warm oil — tender, still pale.Crisp them over high heat
Raise the heat and fry 5 minutes, until the edges turn golden and crisp. Two-stage frying gives potatoes soft inside and crisp at the edges, rather than scorched outside and raw within.
Ingredients: 600 g potatoes · 400 ml olive oil · 3 cloves garlic · 1 tsp coarse salt
Drain and salt while hot
Lift the potatoes out with a slotted spoon, salt them at once with coarse salt and arrange on serving plates. Salt sticks only to hot fat — sprinkled on cold potatoes it falls onto the plate.
Ingredients: 600 g potatoes · 400 ml olive oil · 3 cloves garlic · 1 tsp coarse salt
Heat the oil hard for the eggs
Pour off some oil, leaving a layer about 5 mm deep in the pan, and heat it very hot, almost to smoking. Eggs cracked into hot oil puff at once and the white turns lacy and crisp at the edges — the Spanish way.
Ingredients: 4 pcs eggs · 80 g serrano ham · ½ tsp smoked paprika
Fry the eggs, basting with oil
Slide the eggs in one at a time from a cup and fry each for 60–90 seconds, spooning hot oil over the white but not the yolk — one or two at a time, about 5 minutes in all. The white should set completely and the yolk stay runny and glossy.
Ingredients: 4 pcs eggs · 80 g serrano ham · ½ tsp smoked paprika
Baste the white, not the yolk — it must stay runny.Lay the eggs on the potatoes with ham
Set the eggs on the potatoes, drape over the ham and dust with a pinch of smoked paprika. The ham should be at room temperature — the heat of the eggs and potatoes melts its fat.
Ingredients: 4 pcs eggs · 80 g serrano ham · ½ tsp smoked paprika
Break the eggs at the table
Serve, and at the table break the eggs with two forks, mixing them into the potatoes so the yolk coats everything. That gesture gives the dish its name. Eat at once.
Ingredients: 4 pcs eggs · 80 g serrano ham · ½ tsp smoked paprika
Two forks and yolk over everything — hence the name.
Before you start
Keep the oil
The oil used to confit the potatoes is garlic-scented and excellent for the next fry. Strain it, discard the garlic and keep it in a closed jar in the fridge for up to a week — garlic-scented oil should not be kept at room temperature, as it can harbour botulism. That changes the arithmetic — you are not using it up, you are laying it in.
With chorizo instead of ham
Madrid also serves huevos rotos with chorizo, padrón peppers or morcilla. The base — potatoes and broken eggs — stays; only what sits on top changes.
Eat it straight away
A dish of one moment: after five minutes the yolk sets, the potatoes soften and the point is gone. You can confit the potatoes ahead and just crisp them before serving.
