An authentic and favorite Mexican green bean recipe, ejotes con huevos or Mexican green beans with eggs. Excellent as a vegetarian meal when served with refried beans, or just as delicious when served as a side dish.
Today I want to share one of my childhood favorite dishes, ejotes con huevos or green beans with eggs. I have not tasted this dish in nearly 12 years or whenever it was that my mom last made it for me. I don’t know how it happened but I had somehow forgotten all about it.
A few weeks ago I was looking for a quicker side dish alternative to refried beans to go with our Mexican dinner. Out of nowhere ejotes con huevos popped into my head. Memories of my mother’s green beans flooded my head and taste buds, and like a light bulb going off in my head I knew I had to make them asap.
Carefully and from memory I put all of the ingredients together and hoped for the best results. As we sat down to dinner I told hubby we were having a new dish from my childhood. After his first bite he blurted out “These are really good! What is it, what’s it called?” I went on to explain that they were one of my most favorite childhood dishes. The next words out of his mouth were something along the lines of feeling cheated that I had never made ejotes for him. He cracks me up!
To say that my husband’s reaction made me happy is an understatement. It’s just such a great feeling sharing a childhood favorite and having the other person love it just as much. Wouldn’t you agree?
The recipe is very simple and you can use either fresh, frozen or canned green beans. Over the past few weeks I’ve tested the recipe with fresh, frozen and canned beans with great results. Also if you don’t eat spicy feel free to omit the chile, or for a spicier version add more chile.
(If you don’t see the video right below this text, view it on our YouTube channel by clicking here.)
Mexican Green Beans with Eggs (Ejotes con Huevo)
Ingredients
- 500 g or 1 lb. fresh green beans* cut into even size pieces
- 1 small onion finely chopped
- 1-2 chiles or as desired finely chopped
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 1 medium tomato finely chopped
- salt and ground black pepper to taste
- 1 tbsp olive oil more if needed
- 4 medium eggs lightly beaten
- refried beans make your own with my recipe**
- corn tortillas
Instructions
- Heat oil in a large pan, once warm saute the onions until soft. Next, add the chiles, cook for 2 minutes then add the garlic and cook another 2 minutes. Add the green beans, tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Cook until green beans are to the desired texture. Once green beans are to desired texture pour the lightly beaten eggs into the pan. Stir and cook until eggs have cooked through. Try not to overcook or burn the eggs, as this will give the dish a bitter taste.
serve
- Serve with refried beans, tortillas and salsa of choice. Additionally, they can be served as a side dish to any Mexican meal.
Video
Notes
Typically the green beans are served alongside refried beans and tortillas, it makes a light vegetarian meal. I also like to serve them as a side dish. However you serve and eat them, I hope this dish will also become one of your favorites too. Provecho!
Scrumptious! That is a lovely combination.
Cheers,
Rosa
Thanks Rosa!
Great write up and lovely photography!!! Great post as usual Nancy 🙂
Thanks Nandita!
I think I will Love this.. Trying it tonight..
I do, so I hope you will too:) Let me know how you like it.
This looks like a healthy recipe!
Yes, it is healthy:)
How fun is that that you remembered one of your favorite childhood dishes? WHat I want to know is: How could you have forgotten about this? ; ) It looks soooo good!!
Haha, you sound like my husband:) Thanks!
Mmmm…these look like total comfort food! Beautiful!!
Yes, definitely comfort food for me. Thank Ali:)
I love recreating childhood dishes. What a delicious blend of flavors!
Thank Laura:)
I’ve had a taste for beans and tortillas and the green beans really make the meal. Yum!
Thanks Sandra, hope you satisfy the craving.
Holy cow.. what a great combination. I would love to try this. 🙂
Thanks Ramona!
I would never have thought of scambled eggs and green beans together. With all those other flavours, this must be a great dish.
It is quite a unique combination that somehow just works.
I’d love to give this a try. Sounds really really good even though I find it hard to imagine how it tastes. I’ll definitely be serving this with a warm soft flour tortilla. And, I’ve had recipes like that too, ones my mom used to make that have me wondering why I’ve not make it in years.
You should make some of your childhood dishes Lea Ann:)
These look like such comfort food. I’ve never seen this combination before–it looks wonderful.
Really Victoria? I thought that people all over Mexico ate this.
A lovely and simple recipe which has been presented to me lots: OMG, I DO wish beans were not the least favourite vegetables in my ‘to do’ lexicon!!! However, I’m
‘peculiar’ me and the receipe can be repeated with other favoured ones for sure!!
Too bad about the liking beans. But yes have fun and recreated it with something else:)
this is perfect and just in time for green bean season!
Thanks Anna! Yes, I have been taking full advantage of green bean season with this recipe.
As soon as I saw the egg, this green bean dish became comfort food to me. What an interesting combination that I never thought of! Thanks for sharing your childhood favorite – it’s fun to know what a foodie loves to eat growing up. And thank you for including my recipe in this post – very sweet of you. 🙂
Hi Nami! It’s funny but when I saw your dish it reminded me so much of mine that I had to included it. Green beans are comfort food for me too:)
Thanks so much for this recipe! I love easy authentic Mexican dishes and this is perfect and looks so good.
I always forget about traditional Passover foods like matzo ball soup and matzo brei. mmmmmmm I think I may need to make some matzo brei soon. You’ve inspired me.
My pleasure Holly. Yum! I hope you make the matzo soon:)
I recently made a Persian quiche-like omelette with green beans. Not spicy like this Mexican version. I prefer the addition of the chiles. It’s amazing all the memories we have buried in our heads and how they randomly pop up!
Hi Laura,
Your Persian quiche-like omelette sound delicious!
This is not a dish I am familiar with at all, but I can totally get on board with it. Gorgeous photos as always!
Thanks, and hope you give it a try.
This was delicious, and a perfect dish for our beans which desperately needed to be used. We made homemade refried beans accompany it, and were blown away. My husband’s response: “You can definitely make this whenever you want.” For a non-vegetarian couple, this meal completely filled us with moderate portions. Thank you so much for sharing!
By the way, I forgot to rate it. Definitely 5 stars.
Thank you Elise:)
Hi Elise,
I’m so happy to hear that you and your husband really enjoyed the recipe. It is surprising how filling and satisfying a simple dish like this can be. Thanks for letting me know you enjoyed it:)
Hi Nancy! What a tasty green bean dish, thank goodness you remembered it;-)
Thanks again for mentioning my recipe, very kind of you!
Thanks Patty, my pleasure:)
I am going to have to try these, wow! I do love the spice so I would want to keep that, and I would have not problem having this as a meal! I can see that it makes a nice change as a side as well…lovely 🙂
The dish is really satisfying and it makes a great meal.
Wow. My mom made this when I was growing up too. What a great memory, I love it.
The same with my mom and it’s always nice to relieve childhood food memories. Thanks Jeannette!
I love green beans with green chile, but I’ve never had it with eggs. What an interesting and delicious recipe!
I hope you can try it sometime, MJ. Thank you.
Oh my does this sound good! I have lots of Mexican cookbooks, but have never come across this recipe. By the way, I made your spicy baked panela cheese and I can’t wait till it posts! Needless to say, we loved it!
I’m not sure why this dish isn’t very well known, it’s so simple but so delicous. Thank you Mimi, glad to hear you enjoyed the baked cheese.
I’ve made this probably 30-40 times at this point. It is (a) yummy, (b) healthy, and (c) cheap. That is the holy trinity of cooking as far as I’m concerned.
I always do 5 cloves of garlic and 2-3 serrano chiles instead of the 3 cloves of garlic and 1-2 chiles the recipe calls for. I also recommend 1.5 tsp. of salt and 1/2 tsp of black pepper. Took me a while of tinkering with the seasoning to taste to figure out consistently good amounts.
Note: if you’re going to eat it all immediately after you cook it, then it’s nice to go a little heavy on the tomato. I do two tomatoes-on-the-vine in these instances, and it makes the onion/garlic/peppers/egg/tomato combine into a very pleasant sauce-like consistency. However, if you’re going to refrigerate this dish and eat later, do just one tomato as the recipe dictates. Two makes things kind of oddly watery when you microwave it later.
Nancy, have you ever tried batch-cooking and freezing this? Wondering how well that would work out.
Hi Jill,
Thank you for the feedback and happy that you found a balance in the recipe that satisfy your taste — that’s what cooking is all about.
I have not tried freezing this dish. Do you think the eggs would freeze well? I’ve actually never frozen anything with eggs. Hummm definitely worth and experiment.
So I tried freezing this. The green beans got gross and soggy, but everything else (so, the sauce + eggs) froze and reheated very nicely. I could see making & freezing this without the green beans and then using it to top all sorts of veggies.
I had no idea eggs froze well, thanks for sharing that. Enjoy!