6 recipes
Breakfast
A breakfast burrito is three small jobs, crisp potatoes, browned sausage and soft eggs, timed to land in a warm tortilla together. It teaches you to run two pans at once and to roll a burrito that holds, and it freezes well, so one batch can cover the week.
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Brunch
Eggs Benedict is a lesson in timing as much as cooking: a warm butter sauce, poached eggs, browned Canadian bacon and toasted muffins, all landing on the plate hot at the same moment. The hollandaise here cooks its yolks to temperature first, then takes the butter, which makes it steadier to hold while you poach.
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Breakfast
French toast turns bread that's a day past its prime into breakfast. It teaches two things you'll use far beyond this dish: making a simple custard, and cooking something egg-rich gently enough that the center sets before the outside burns.
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Eggs
A frittata is an open-faced omelet that sets slowly instead of being folded, so it forgives you in ways an omelet won't. It happily takes whatever vegetables and cheese are in the refrigerator, and it teaches two things every egg dish depends on: getting the water out of the filling, and setting eggs with gentle heat.
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Breakfast
Fried eggs on warm corn tortillas, with creamy beans underneath and a cooked tomato and chile sauce spooned around them. Everything here is simple on its own; the dish comes together because each part is seasoned and hot at the same moment. It teaches charring vegetables for a salsa, frying the salsa to deepen it, and cooking eggs under a lid.
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Pies
A crisp, buttery shell holding a barely set custard studded with bacon. Most of the time is the dough chilling and the quiche baking and resting, so it's a good weekend project that also works a day ahead. It teaches flaky pastry, blind baking so the bottom stays crisp, and baking a custard low so it stays silky.
View recipe · 4 servings