The New State of Chilaquiles in Austin, Texas (or, what a long, strange trip it's been).

150+ plates of chilaquiles in Austin, Texas. © Ryan Schierling

As a lot of you know, we've been on a epic, epicurean quest – a grand gustatory gamble with breaking the fast deep in the heart of Texas.

We've been scouring Austin for the very best chilaquiles it has to offer. We've torn apart the town, top to bottom, for almost fifteen years sampling both highbrow and humble versions of this traditional Mexican dish. 

There are no shortage of restaurants offering up their take on what shouldn't really be more than crisp fresh-fried tortilla chips (totopos) simmered with a red or green sauce until just slightly softened, crowned with a pair of properly-cooked eggs. With such a simple preparation, you'd think it would be difficult to screw up this classic.

We weren't looking for haute cuisine a la Mexicana, we just wanted an honest, reliable, simple Sunday morning comfort-food breakfast at a joint where everyone might eventually know us (and our broken Spanish).

There were standouts, certainly, but just as often there were store-bought chips, soggy and swimming in sub-par sauces, eggs that were under-cooked, over-cooked or not even offered as an option. There were some surprises, and there were some disappointments. 

There were also some stunningly brilliant breakfasts. 

If a restaurant presented only one salsa option for chilaquiles, Julie and I would typically order the same dish. If a restaurant had both verdes (green) and rojos (red), we'd order one of each. The majority of the time, we'd order eggs over-easy. If we knew the eggs were hopefully going to be happy eggs (see $14-plus chilaquiles), I'd go for sunny-side-up. Beans, potatoes and accoutrements (if available) were taken into consideration, as was the coffee or aguas frescas. The overall experience was key, but really, it all came down to the chilaquiles. 

After eating 150-plus different restaurant and food truck plates of chilaquiles, I can say we've done our due diligence, and now, we humbly present to you establishments that Julie and I both agreed have the finest chilaquiles in Austin. These are our favorites, the places we return to time and time again. 

These chilaquiles are Austin's best of the best. 

The 'New' State of Chilaquiles in Austin, Texas.

100 plates of chilaquiles. © Ryan Schierling

(FGHD editor's note: Originally updated March 2016 for the AFBA City Guide with 100 plates of chilaquiles.)

As a lot of you know, we've been on a epic, epicurean quest – a grand gustatory gamble with breaking the fast deep in the heart of Texas.

We've been scouring Austin for the very best chilaquiles it has to offer. We've torn apart the town, top to bottom, for more than two years sampling both highbrow and humble versions of this traditional Mexican dish. 

There are no shortage of restaurants offering up their take on what shouldn't really be more than crisp fresh-fried tortilla chips (totopos) simmered with a red or green sauce until just slightly softened, crowned with a pair of properly-cooked eggs. With such a simple preparation, you'd think it would be difficult to screw up this classic.

We weren't looking for haute cuisine a la Mexicana, we just wanted an honest, reliable, simple Sunday morning comfort-food breakfast at a joint where everyone might eventually know us (and our broken Spanish).

There were standouts, certainly, but just as often there were store-bought chips, soggy and swimming in sub-par sauces, eggs that were under-cooked, over-cooked or not even offered as an option. There were some surprises, and there were some disappointments. 

There were also some stunningly brilliant breakfasts. 

If a restaurant presented only one sauce option for chilaquiles, Julie and I would typically order the same dish. If a restaurant had both verdes (green) and rojos (red), we'd order one of each. The majority of the time, we'd order eggs over-easy. If we knew the eggs were going to be happy eggs (see $9 chilaquiles), I'd go for sunny-side-up. Beans, potatoes and accoutrements (if available) were taken into consideration, as was the coffee or aguas frescas. The overall experience was key, but really, it all came down to the chilaquiles. 

After eating 100 different plates of chilaquiles, we've done our due diligence, and now, we humbly present to you ten establishments that Julie and I both agreed have the finest chilaquiles in Austin. These are our favorites, the places we return to time and time again. 

These chilaquiles are the best of the best. 

Sweet, hot, pickled, beer-battered bliss.

(L) Sweet, habanero pickled onions. (R) Fried, sweet, habanero pickled onions. © Ryan Schierling

Ultimately, this all started on a clearance table at our local grocer with a Texas brand of hot, sweet, pickled onions being blown out at 50-cents a jar. Regularly $5.99 each, we bought four, and were surprised at the simplicity of the sweet, spicy, clean and crisp flavors. They worked on all kinds of sandwiches, were divine in deviled eggs, great grilled, fabulous on top of steak, and they shined in salads. We were a bit distressed that this product wasn't popular enough for the store to keep around and we were afraid we'd never see it again. It's not the first time this has happened with something we really liked (but found out about a little late), so we figured we'd better reverse-imagineer it. 

There were six ingredients – onions, vinegar, sugar, habanero peppers, salt and citric acid. Based on percentages of sodium, carbohydrates, sugar and vitamin C on the label, we were able to approximate salt, sugar and citric acid components per serving, and per jar. Taste-testing got us pretty spot on with the pickling liquid, though we weren't sure if the onions were originally white, yellow or sweet, so we went with white based on what we had on hand. Of course we didn't hold back on the habanero, because we roll caliente, and they were goooood. 

We tried them quick-pickled, then left those in the fridge for a two-week pickle to see how to texture and flavors would change. Later, we did them properly canned in a hot water bath for longer-term storage. The longer the jars sit, the more the flavors and the heat intensify.

But I couldn't leave well enough alone. I kept thinking about deep-fried pickled things, and how these onions might taste if we beer-battered them using a spicy pilsner and took them to the hot oil-filled cast iron. The result was surprising, but not terribly unexpected – they were ridiculously good. 

Sauceless, these are amazing onion rings. They are crispy, tangy, spicy, sweet and salty without ever seeing a swipe of Ranch or buttermilk dressing, or ketchup/catsup, honey mustard or whatever other crazy things you dip your onion rings in. We made a two-pepper ketchup just in case, and it paired perfectly with the hot little ringlets.

King Ranch Salmon.

King Ranch Smoked Salmon Casserole. © Ryan Schierling

I've been threatening to do this casserole recipe for a while now, and I'm kind of surprised there's nothing like it out there on the whole wide world of internets. Searches for King Ranch Salmon turned up lots of hits for "King Salmon," "Used F-150 King Ranch edition in Salmon, Idaho," and "Carole King's ranch on the Salmon River for sale." The internet – insultingly enough – even asked me "Did you mean King Ranch Chicken?"

King Ranch Chicken is the only casserole that matters in Texas and there are rules. There may be as many subtle individual adaptations and family variations as there are Junior League cookbooks, but most will concur this is a dish best kept simple – with shredded chicken, cans of cream of this-or-that soups and Ro*Tel®, corn tortillas and a ton of cheese. 

This, however, is not King Ranch Chicken.

There is no condensed soup, no Cheese Whiz, no crushed-up nacho-flavored tortilla chips or tins of tomato and green chile. There is no chicken. This is the king of Texas casseroles meets the king of all cold-water fish. It is SXNW. It is smoky, creamy, rich, and as satisfying as comfort food gets. Great Republic purists will inevitably call this just another sensationalist bastardization of a classic Texas dish, but they can go put a sockeye in it. 

This is my King Ranch Salmon.

Bonus Enchiladas – Green Chicka Green Green

Green chile enchiladas redux. © Ryan Schierling

This one is inspired by that perennial layered "green chile enchilada" casserole recipe that many of us grew up with. Tasty as it may be, it's probably more heart-attack inducing than the Velveeta in enchiladas Dan Jenkins – what with all the cheese and that obligatory can of Cream of Something soup involved.

Our family recipe (included below in all its quantity unspecific glory, and strictly for educational purposes, of course), was made with Cream of Mushroom soup. But I understand that the non-vegetarians among us would quite often add chicken to this dish and even use Cream of Chicken soup on occasion. So, perhaps a little more protein there, but still not a dish that's going to get any healthy-living bonus points. You see, while there was something of an attempt to eat a "nutritious" meatless diet, our family was also a product of its time – a time when we all fell victim in some form or other to the put-a-can of Campbell's-in-it school of cooking that was all the suburban cultural rage.

These days we like to think we're a little more sophisticated in our preparation of food and sourcing of ingredients. What I remember loving best about this layered casserole was the saltiness of the olives (I've always loved olives) with the flavor of the green chiles. Plus, there was something distinctive about the copious addition of cheddar cheese that also went into that baking dish. Contemplating this childhood favorite in light of our recent "5 days, 5 ways" foray into enchiladas started me thinking about how I might be able to enjoy that flavorful goodness in a lighter, more traditional enchilada form.

Enchiladas Dan Jenkins.

Eat these with an over-easy egg and say your prayers. © Ryan Schierling

When I was a kid, the whole seatbelt thing was something folks were just warming up to. I don't know the reason the moment stands out in my memory so, but one day as we piled in to the back of our family station wagon, I was a little slow to put my seatbelt on. My younger brother took it upon himself to harass me about my lack of safety precautions. Finally, in exasperation, he exclaimed, "Do you want to die?!" 

The feeling I had when he said that is kinda the same one I have when I eat these enchiladas. They are stupid to eat, but there's a liberation in the ridiculousness of it all. Between the gooey, salty, Velveeta, the bright tang of onions on the tooth, and that river of enchilada sauce – it seems like the food equivalent of what the free-lovin' 60's must have been like. Drape an over easy egg over the top and you just did it on acid, man....

Our first introduction to this hard-core Tex-Mex standard was at Dart Bowl in Austin. This recipe is from Texas culinary historian-curator-troublemaker Robb Walsh's Texas Eats: The New Lone Star Heritage Cookbook. There are two sauce options in the book – chili con carne sauce or original chili gravy – one with meat and one without. I rather prefer the smoother, meatless style (looking at you vegetarians who care not a hoot about your arteries this week), but there's a fairly narrow margin of difference between the two.

You'll be all set for a stiff drink and a nap when you're done. And, you know, we kinda had to make up for all those light enchilada recipes we've posted this week some way or another... but you'll only get lame apologies for that until you've tried these.

Recipe not included below because it's not our recipe to offer, and we make it exactly as it was written with no adaptations. Go buy a copy of Texas Eats, turn to pages 112-113 and fold the pages back until the book's spine breaks. It will now always open to this dish. It's worth it. 

Well, at least once a year, or until your cardiologist finds out.

Enchiladas de la tierra.

Sweet potato, potato, back bean and roasted corn enchiladas. © Ryan Schierling

Once upon a time, I came across a taco joint in a northwestern town that served a veggie burrito which included sweet potato. It's a rare item to see featured as a vegetable in most Mexican restaurants, and I thought it was downright delightful. The filling for this enchilada recipe was born from that inspiration and my love for simple black bean and corn enchiladas. Nothing fried here, just a hearty mix of colorful goodness with a tasty homemade red chile enchilada sauce.

Can we just have a word here about red enchilada sauces? Somehow I got hung up on this topic at an early age. My mother was raised in Southern California and somewhere along the line developed some very strong opinions about a certain few ingredients. She always insisted that "Las Palmas" brand red enchilada sauce was the real deal – the gold standard in a can. A little label reading in later years proved her point. Most commercial red enchilada sauces are made with a pureed tomato base. Apparently, as far as Mom is concerned, authentic enchilada sauce is made with only red chiles, not tomatoes. As it can still be a little tricky to find the chile-only variety in the average supermarket, I completely understand her brand loyalty. There is definitely an important difference in both flavor and texture, and if you choose to go the canned-sauce route for these enchiladas, I implore you to do a little label reading of your own before making that purchase.

Homemade enchilada sauce is an easy thing to make if you have a good blender and can source the dried chiles. I like the flavor of the New Mexico or California chiles with the Pasilla chiles, as the combination has more of the "enchilada sauce" flavor profile I grew up with. The Arbol chiles give it a friendly touch of heat. However, you can substitute some of the dried chiles to suit your taste. Many traditional recipes recommend using a combination of  guajillo and ancho chiles – which happen to be two of my favorites in other contexts for their particular richness and depth of flavor.

Forgive me, but the proportion of filling to sauce between these recipes are not very well aligned. The enchilada sauce recipe will be just about right (maybe a tad bit extra) for a 7x11 pan of 8 enchiladas. The filling you will definitely find yourself with plenty extra. I suggest either making a double batch of enchilada sauce, or plan on using the extra filling for tacos or burritos in the next couple of days.

Krab enchiladas.

Krab enchiladas – do not attempt without proper supervision. © Ryan Schierling

I have a few favorite, revered dishes from when I was a kid. This one is kind of a geographical anomaly, as growing up in Kansas was as far away from any coastal waters containing crab could possibly be. Billboards advertised "Beef, it's what's for dinner!" (But if you want crustacean, it's probably going to be spelled with a "K.")

And so it was. Krab (aka Sea Legs or Ocean Sticks) – constructed primarily from Alaska pollock, egg white, crab flavoring and red food coloring – was what we got at the grocer in Emporia, Kansas. Mom made these enchiladas with flour tortillas, jack cheese and a white sauce. Think enchiladas suizas, middle-of-the-midwest-style. 

I don't make them exactly the way mom did. I've tried lump crab meat and cod, and both taste a little fancier than they should for this preparation. This is, in a sense, modern day depression-era cooking – trying to make something elaborate out of an amalgam. The cream cheese tempers the whole dish well, adding a perceived richness that the faux crab doesn't provide on its own. Kind of like pulling up to Red Lobster for senior prom in a limo that you really can't afford. 

So I did switch up the filling up a little and bossed-out the garnish, but had to stay true to the shockingly-red Krab sticks, which are a little like sweet, sweet crabby-flavored string cheese. Don't hate me for loving these. 

Mole mushroom melee.

Enchiladas with mushroom and caramelized onion. © Ryan Schierling

When most of us consider sautéed mushrooms and caramelized onions, we don't immediately think "Oh, Mexican food!" First inclinations might turn to a pizza topping, a side for steak and potatoes, or a stroganoff staple. 

Not around here.

One of our longtime-favorite enchiladas is this simple en mole recipe. The mushrooms lend a meaty texture and the sweetness of the gently-caramelized onions – with an added kick of heat from some chopped jalapeños – make for a very satisfying and well-balanced filling. A good mole sauce with all its chile pepper bravado, nutty complexity and hint of sweetness, is the perfect compliment. Mole sauce is usually served with chicken, and all too often that chicken is boiled, beaten and barren – dry as the desert. It is rare to find a meatless alternative that is savory enough to stand up to the richness of mole sauce, and this one works rather splendidly.

All this talk of mole – I don't want anyone thinking they have to either reach for a grocery store jar or make one of those 47-ingredient recipes that take three days to prepare. There is a happy medium, and it isn't the least bit difficult. Some version of this recipe has been floating about the inter-webs for years, and for enchiladas, it is perfect. Do be careful with the addition of nut butters, though. While peanut butter is likely in your pantry, and is perfectly acceptable to use, be cautious with the quantity, or it may taste a little too much like peanut sauce. Alternate nut butters such as almond or hazelnut impart a nice nutty flavor without being quite so distinctive. You can also play around with the use of seed butters such as sesame (tahini) or pepitas for a twist on the complexity the nut butters provide. If you're really, truly desperate, you can use those six-month-old Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from your Halloween candy stash. (I can neither confirm nor deny that this has been attempted in our household, by Ryan, on at least one occasion.)

Enchiladas del alma.

Chicken enchiladas with mustard greens and sweet potato mash. © Ryan Schierling

The problem with most enchiladas is that they’re unimaginative. Pick your protein, pick your sauce, cover with yellow cheese – casserole dish it up and stick it in the oven. We don’t even bother ordering enchiladas if we dine out, because most of these "pick two" formulas are terribly boring and a little pedestrian. 

What we’re doing here is offering you some other options. This version of “five days, five ways” is going to be four non-traditional enchiladas and one very traditional Tex-Mex enchilada that no one outside of Texas seems to know about but definitely should. There are no exotic elements or weird sauces, no strange fillings or garnishes, just really solid combinations that are tried and true. 

None of these are strict recipes in a controlled sense, where you take an exact amount of this and add a precise amount of that. These are just ingredients that have worked well enough together that we’ve added them to our regular rotation. We've made them so many times that they are now considered “family” preparations. 

This first recipe came out of Christmas dinner soul-food leftovers. We’d had an incredible roasted chicken, some tangy, cider vinegar-soused mustard greens and a light, fluffy sweet potato mash. The flavors mingled so perfectly together that we decided to roll it all up in a corn tortilla and give it a nice mild green sauce mixed with cream. We've since recreated that lovely Christmas dinner a number of times just to have leftovers for these enchiladas. As the filling was bits and pieces from a previous meal, there are no real quantities for a proper recipe, but I’ll walk you through it.

Hot meat dip.

Hot meat dip - queso with smoked beef brisket. © Ryan Schierling

You've all certainly heard of the Great Velveeta Shortage of 2014 by now. "Increased seasonal demand" and a shifting of production lines from one plant to another led to a shortage of the famous pasteurized prepared cheese product, especially the more moderately-sized eight- and sixteen-ounce loaves. Moderately-sized... how cute. Your Super Bowl party is screwed. 

Thankfully, here in Texas, every grocer worth their inflated sodium content has a year-round endcap with nothing but #10 cans of Ro*Tel and five-pound chubs of Velveeta. No man, woman or child will ever go without queso here because, in The Great Republic of Texas, queso is a birthright. 

Back in the Ghetto Melrose days of Seattle, hot meat dip mysteriously became a party staple. I'm not sure how it all started, but browned ground beef, Velveeta, a tin of tomatoes with green chiles and a secret mix of spices would bubble away in an ancient, volcanic crock pot next to a gigantic bowl of tortilla chips. It was easy, and it was always a hit. 

Tex-Mex Loco Moco.

Tex-Mex meets broke da mout'. © Ryan Schierling

It's been just long enough that I'm starting to yearn for a little island time again.

There were only a few places on our must-eat list when Julie and I first visited Oahu. We had to get malasadas at Leonard's on Kapahulu, try shaved ice at Matsumoto's Shave Ice in Hale'iwa. There would be poke at Tamashiro Market, shrimp trucks on the North Shore, and a stop for plate lunch at Rainbow Drive-In. A bit touristy, as all first visits are, but a good introduction to some solid Hawaiian culinary building blocks. 

At Rainbow Drive-In, the plate lunch of mahi mahi, steamed white rice and that wonderfully-simple, mayonaisse-drenched macaroni salad, was nicely satisfying, but I couldn't leave without trying the loco moco. The crazy wha….? Isn't "moco" Spanish for "snot?"

One scoop rice, one hamburger patty, one over-easy egg, smothered in brown gravy and served in a bowl for three bucks. It was brilliant. 

Now, like any other fabled regional dish with a long history steeped in island culture, stories vary about the origins of the loco moco. Some say it was a guy on the Lincoln Wreckers barefoot football team nicknamed "Crazy" that asked for the combination at Hilo's Lincoln Grill in 1949.  

Others say Lincoln Grill owners Nancy and Richard Inouye put the dish together for the hungry (and usually broke) Wreckers players and only charged them 25 cents.They say when Nancy wrote it up on the butcher paper menu, she asked husband Richard what it should be named.

"The kids are crazy. Call it a loco moco." 

There are variations – Spam, teriaki beef or chicken, mahi-mahi, wieners, chili, ham steak, bacon – but for me, none compares to the original with a hamburger patty.