Easy Mexican Green Beans with Eggs: Ejotes con Huevos
Mexican green beans with eggs or ejotes con huevo is an excellent vegetarian main dish when served with refried beans and corn tortillas. It’s also just as delicious when served as a side dish. There’s a vegan option too!
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Huevos con Ejotes
Amigos I’m so excited to share with you one of my childhood favorite dishes, ejotes con huevos or Mexican green beans with eggs.
Ejotes means green beans and huevos means eggs.
This is one of those great recipes (specially Mexican recipes) that requires so little effort with just a few ingredients. It doesn’t take long to cook but will still pack on incredibly delicious flavors every time.
For me, every time I cook ejotes it brings memories of my mother. It’s like when I see fresh green beans the light bulb goes off in my head to make Mexican green beans with egg.
My mom often made it for us growing up and it was always one of my faves. So you can understand the memories.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Amigos one of the things I love most about this simple recipe is that it uses healthy ingredients. You should be able to find everything you’ll need no matter where you live.
- Ejotes or Green Beans: My first choice is fresh green beans – specially when in season. But I’ve also tested this recipe with frozen and canned green beans with great results. See recipe notes for special instructions.
Please notice that some Hispanics call green beans alubias verdes, or habichuelas verdes.
- Onion & Garlic: Use fresh if possible for optimal flavor. I use white onion or brown onion will also do.
- Green Chiles: I use serrano when I want it spicier or jalapeños for a mild-spicy dish. But if you don’t eat spicy feel free to omit the chile, or for a spicier version add more chile.
- Tomato: Roma tomatoes are best. In a pinch you could use tomato sauce.
- Eggs: Just regular eggs or for a fully vegan version check below.
- Seasonings: These are kept quite simple with usually just salt and ground black pepper. Occasionally I’ll also use some ground cumin for a smoky flavor.
- Oil: I like to use olive oil but you can use vegetable oil instead.
Vegan Green Beans and Eggs
The simple ingredients in this Mexican style green beans dish can absolutely be made vegan. It’s so easy!
The only change we are going to make is to swap out the eggs for silken firm tofu.
With the tofu and other veggies (except the ejotes) we’re going to be making a tofu scramble to then combine with the green beans. Check the instructions in the recipe card below.
How to Make Mexican Green Beans with Eggs
To make this easy, fantastic dish, make sure you have all of your ingredients ready to go because the dish cooks fast.
Step 1: For fresh green beans rinse and cut off their ends. Chop into smaller pieces. Now you can blanch then in boiling water for 5 minutes. This will help the cooking process go quicker.
(For frozen green beans, thaw out in the microwave or overnight. For canned green beans simply drain)
Step 2: Over medium-high heat , add the oil to a large nonstick skillet. Once hot add the onion with a pinch of salt. Sauté until soft.
Step 3: Add the chile, garlic, green beans and tomato. Sprinkle in the seasonings. Cook until tender.
Step 4: Mix in the lightly beaten egg until well combined. Cook, stirring now and then, until the eggs are set. Serve as desired!
How to Serve
This delicious recipe makes a mouthwatering Mexican dinner. Simply serve alongside refried beans and tortillas.
You can also serve it as a healthy breakfast just the same as you would dinner or lunch. This dish just makes flavorful light meal.
I also like to serve these ejotes as a side dish. It’s really up to you how you want to enjoy these Mexican green beans.
- refried pinto beans
- refried black beans
- Mexican white rice
- flour tortillas
- salsa verde (for serving)
- easy blender tomato salsa
How to Store
Leftovers can be stored in the fridge for up to 3 days. Longer and the tomato mixture starts to taste a bit off.
I don’t suggest freezing for this dish.
Mexican Green Beans with Eggs (Ejotes con Huevo)
Ingredients
- 500 g or 1 lb. fresh green beans* cut into even size pieces
- 1 small white onion finely chopped
- 1 whole green chiles finely chopped, serrano or jalapeno
- 3 whole garlic cloves minced
- 1 medium roma tomato finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon sea salt adjust to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper adjust to taste
- 1.5 Tablespoons olive oil more if needed
- 4 medium eggs lightly beaten
Instructions
- For fresh green beans rinse and cut off their ends. Chop into smaller pieces. Now you can blanch then in boiling water for 5 minutes. This will help the cooking process go quicker.
- Over medium-high heat , add the oil to a large nonstick skillet. Once hot add the onion with a pinch of salt. Sauté until soft.
- Add the chile, garlic, green beans and tomato. Sprinkle in the seasonings. Cook until tender.
- Mix in the lightly beaten egg until well combined. Cook, stirring now and then, until the eggs are set. Serve as desired!
Video
Notes
Swap out the eggs with 1 pack of silken firm tofu – I like to use silken but you can use regular as well.
Also decrease the green beans to 2/3 lb. and the rest of the ingredients remain the same. Sauté the onion and garlic until soft. Then add in the drained, and crumbled tofu to the pan. Add a sprinkle of turmeric powder to the tofu and stir until well combined. For the salt you can use black salt to give it that “eggy” flavor. Then add the green beans and tomatoes and cook until tender. Serve as desired.
Nutrition
Nancy Lopez is a food blogger and author of the cookbook Mexican Tamales Made Meatless. Born in Mexico, raised in the US, and currently living in Southern Mexico, she has followed a meatless diet for almost 10 years. It is her passion and mission to share all she has learned about vegan Mexican cooking and vegetarian Mexican recipes. Mexican Made Meatless is a blog dedicated to preserving the authentic flavors of Mexican cuisine just without the meat. It’s a place to celebrate Mexican culture and all it’s delightfully delicious traditional foods. Read more…
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!