How To Make Slow Cooker Breakfast Burrito Bowls

A good breakfast burrito is proof that it’s what’s on the inside that really counts. The classic combination of fluffy potatoes, seasoned sausage, creamy beans, and eggs bathed in salsa and chiles will always get all our attention, so let’s remove the distractions and get straight to the filling. And better yet — let’s give ourselves every opportunity to enjoy a hearty breakfast without playing short-order cook.

Here’s the plan: Scan this ingredient list before you head to the grocery store and find 30 minutes after dinner this week for a little prep. With some help from the slow cooker, you’ll turn your dream of hot, homemade breakfast burrito bowls into a totally attainable reality.

This recipe will teach you how to make the filling for breakfast burritos in your slow cooker. After all, it’s the filling, with so many components, that’s responsible for relegating a from-scratch breakfast burrito to weekends or drive-thru pick-up only. With the slow cooker, you can cook the browned sausage, potatoes, beans, and salsa overnight and wake up to a ready-to-serve filling you can eat by the bowl with a sunny egg to top.

• This recipe is cooked in a four-quart slow cooker and makes enough to feed six to eight with eggs. If you need to double the recipe, move up to a larger slow cooker.
• The potato-sausage base of these breakfast burrito bowls cooks on low heat for six to eight hours but can cook for up to 10 hours if you need the extra time for important things like sleeping in.

• Brown the sausage. Browning the sausage before it goes in the slow cooker makes for a much tastier finished bowl. This is pretty much the most work you’ll do in this recipe, so don’t skip it.
• Rely on some canned staples. Here canned pinto beans, salsa, and chiles make up the bulk of the bowls. If you have any cooked beans on hand — pinto, black beans, or otherwise — feel free to use them instead of the canned ones. Choose a salsa you love because it’s going to do the heavy lifting when it comes to seasoning this dish.
• Use up odds and ends. As long as you have at least a cup of salsa, you can swap out any of the other ingredients for others so that you can make these bowls from odds and ends in the kitchen. Don’t have Yukon golds? Use peeled russets or sweet potatoes. Swap the pinto beans for black beans or kidney beans. This was made to be flexible, remember.
• Cook the eggs as needed. Eggs cooked directly in the slow cooker have their place, but in order for this recipe to really have our back, it needed to have a generous cook time. For that reason we left the eggs out. When it’s time to dish up breakfast, cook the eggs just how you like them, just how you need them.

This recipe is flexible because it wants you to live your best breakfast life. So if you’re a person who lives by the tortilla, by all means, grab one and roll yourself a burrito. Nevertheless, there’s a sort of magic that happens when tortilla chips are tucked under the saucy potato-sausage mixture. They soften a bit and you’ll probably sigh with delight after each bite. Top the finished bowls with avocado, yogurt, or queso fresco as desired and keep the hot sauce close!