Easy Chorizo Breakfast Quesadillas

With just 6 ingredients, these chorizo, egg, and potato breakfast quesadillas are super easy to make and great for meal prep. The recipe makes 10 hungry-size chorizo quesadillas with 24 grams of protein and only 290 calories each. If you love a savory breakfast, these quesadillas are for you.

Ingredients for Chorizo Breakfast Quesadillas

Here’s everything you’ll need:

• lean chorizo
• canned diced potatoes
• diced poblano or bell pepper
• liquid egg whites
• shredded cheese
• flour tortillas (or Counter’s Protein Tortillas for a protein boost)

Chorizo

For the chorizo, I used Apco from HEB. It has 6g of fat and 11g of protein per 2 oz serving, for comparison. If you have trouble finding a lean chorizo option, you could use my healthy ground chicken chorizo recipe.

Tortillas

I used the same Carb Balance flour tortillas from Mission that I used for my black bean quesadillas and ground chicken bacon ranch quesadillas. You’re welcome to use any flour tortilla you’d like, but I’ve found these tortillas are the perfect middle ground of true flour tortilla and macro friendly.

Canned Diced Potatoes

If you’re wondering about the canned potatoes, you’re reading that right. Canned diced potatoes are a great way to speed up the cook time. Because they’re already diced and softened in the liquid, they’re basically ready to rock right after you rinse them off. If you wanted to use fresh potatoes, that’s perfectly fine, but you’ll need to cook them a bit longer.

You could also use something like the diced radishes I used for my low carb breakfast skillet or the veggie smorgasbord from my breakfast tostadas.

Egg Whites

If you wanted to use whole eggs, you’ll need around 8-10 large eggs. There’s really no messing these breakfast quesadillas up, other than maybe having too much filling for 10 quesadillas.

If you have any additional ingredient questions, drop them in the comments at the bottom of the post.

Making the Chorizo Breakfast Quesadillas

This recipe is an easy one! You can prep everything for your breakfast quesadillas in one pan, or you can pull out a few extra pans to speed things up. We’ll get to that in a second.

Step 1: Cook chorizo before adding diced potatoes and peppers to the pan.

The bigger than pan, the better. You want the potatoes and peppers to pick up some of the remaining fat and flavor from the chorizo as they cook. You’re not after a ton of color here, just softening. That said, a little browning is perfectly fine.

Step 2: Set the cooked chorizo and veggies aside and cook egg whites in the same pan.

I mentioned speeding things up with a second pan. While the egg whites will pick up a little flavor cooking in the chorizo skillet, you could cook them in a separate pan all the same. Everything will end up together and the flavors should have plenty of time to get to know one another.

Why not cook the egg whites in the pan with everything else? You’re more than welcome to, but I’ve found going this route tends to make everything a little soggy and mushy. If you want your breakfast quesadillas to have some texture to them, cook the egg whites separately.

Step 3: Set the filling aside and place tortillas in the skillet or on a griddle. Top with cheese and the chorizo quesadilla filling.

You’ll want to keep the heat on the lower end of the spectrum and work quickly. Have your cheese ready to go on as soon as the tortilla hits the heat. You want to have the cheese mostly melted and chorizo quesadilla filling on with plenty of time to fold the tortilla in half. If you take too long, the tortilla will turn into a cracker-like shell that cracks when folded.

Start low and increase the heat once folded if your breakfast quesadillas are taking too long to turn golden brown.

Step 4: Fold the quesadilla over and press to seal. Cook until both sides are golden brown.

With recipes like my Instant Pot ground turkey tacos or shredded Mexican chicken, you have some extra juices to throw on the griddle for extra golden brown tortillas. These breakfast quesadillas, on the other hand, won’t have much as the eggs and veggies soak up most of the fat from the chorizo.

So, you’ll need to resort to things like cooking spray or oil for the extra golden brown crust. OR, you always have the option of throwing some cheese down on the bottom of the tortilla. It’s hard to replicate the crispy texture and flavor of toasted cheese. Just be careful not to burn it!

Side note: For a quick alternative cook method, you could use my air fried quesadillas recipe to make these.

Ques Closed

And that’s about all I have to say about the chorizo breakfast quesadillas. I will, however, mention using something like my turkey breakfast sausage skillet as another breakfast quesadilla flavor option. You could prepare everything the same, though I’d dice the potatoes and peppers in that recipe a bit smaller for quesadillas. If you’re feeling adventurous, you could even mix some cream cheese in for an extra creamy quesadilla.

Have fun! If you love this recipe, I always appreciate recipe reviews. And again, if you have a question I didn’t cover, leave it in the comments below.