Name: Perico - Colombian Eggs with Tomatoes & Peppers
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 15 min
Ingredients: 8 large eggs; pinch salt (plus more to taste); 1 tbsp olive oil; 4 scallions (whites and light green portions, thinly sliced (see note)); 2 medium bell peppers ((any color) seeded and diced); 2 medium tomatoes (seeded and diced); 2 cloves garlic

Perico - Colombian/Venezuelan scrambled eggs with peppers, tomatoes, and onions, served in a shallow white bowl

Perico

Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes, Peppers, & Onions

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This post is the second in a series of awesome egg recipes for 2018 brought to you in collaboration with BC Egg.
All opinions are my own.

Breakfast and I have a weird thing going on. It's kind of an all-or-nothing relationship. I try to make myself eat something in the morning, but more often than not my 'breakfast' consists of a two-shot Americano. I know I should eat more, but the problem is that what I WANT to eat is usually a full-on meal. I don't really want cereal or toast (though if we have proper Montreal-style bagels I'm all over them), and I just can't get excited about oatmeal. What I want is something hot and filling. I want a big ol' breakfast, preferably with eggs. What I want, I've come to realize, is food like perico.

Perico. It means 'parakeet,' a name that most likely references the beautiful and vibrant colours of the dish, though nobody's 100% certain. It's basically a light and veggie-loaded South American take on scrambled eggs, and it hits that sweet spot in the Venn diagram of tasty, filling, and easy to make. The dish hails from Colombia and Venezuela (collectively part of the historical "Gran Colombia" region of South America) where it's a popular breakfast meal. As you'd expect from something so simple, there are regional variations in ingredients, and my version is a little more typically Colombian thanks to the use of scallions (green onions) in place of regular onions.

Perico is wonderful on its own, but (and this is definitely my 'all-or-nothing' approach to breakfast talking) it's truly spectacular as part of a full-on Colombian breakfast. I decided early on that I wanted to really do it right for this recipe so that I'd have a bit more to photograph, and BOY am I glad that I did. I served my perico with black beans, cheese, arepas, and hot chocolate - a fairly classic Colombian breakfast spread. That's right folks, hot chocolate for breakfast. I think Colombia is on to something. Every one of the sides was made from scratch, and I'm planning to get a few complimentary recipes up here on Diversivore soon. I hope you'll give them all a try, but I'm especially hopeful that you'll try your hand at arepas. They're simple, filling little cornmeal cakes that are delightfully easy to make and irresistible when stuffed with all of the other ingredients.

Recipe Notes

Perico is wonderfully (even shockingly) easy to make. The accompanying dishes are likewise surprisingly easy, so if you've got the time, I highly recommend going all out and making arepas, beans, etc. I mean it when I say it's easy too - my kitchen sink decided to break the day before I made this, and yet I made the perico, arepas, beans, and hot chocolate quite easily nonetheless.

The notes here focus on the perico themselves. To learn more about the accompanying sides please refer the end of this section.

Eggs, Done Right

It can't get much more classic than eggs for breakfast. But while scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and omelettes are among the most popular and well-known of breakfast foods, they're perennially over-cooked. If you don't believe me then watch this video of Chef Jacques Pepin making an omelette. You can see just how careful and attentive he is to the details, and how important it is to get the eggs just right (and not cooked to perdition). Of course eggs are a somewhat personal thing, with everyone preferring a different level of doneness. I spent the first thirty or so years of my life ordering eggs fried quite hard, though I've since become a medium-set-yolk kind of guy. My dad, bless his heart, likes his eggs poached to the degree that the restaurant we went to when I was a kid called them "hockey pucks."

But when talk turns to 'bad' scrambled eggs, the word 'rubbery' comes up pretty regularly. There's not one correct stopping point when it comes to cooking scrambled eggs, with some people liking them soft and nearly runny, with others (like me) preferring something a bit more set. Regardless, scrambled eggs should be light, soft, and wonderfully airy, and not rubbery little lumps. The key to success with scrambled eggs is air. You want to get a lot of air into your eggs before you start cooking them, and then you want to keep your stirring gentle once they're in the pan. Get a whisk out and really go to town on mixing up the eggs - the more air you incorporate in them the better. After all, a fried egg isn't fluffy, and scrambled eggs without air are basically just big ol' fried eggs. Don't overdo it on the heat either, as a scalding pan with brown and crisp up the eggs. I love crispy edges on my fried eggs, but that's not what we're going for here. Stir the eggs just enough to keep them moving in the pan. If you, like me, like your scrambled eggs just-set, wait until they look just a tiny bit underdone (i.e. they jiggle in the pan and still look just a bit wet), then transfer them to a warm plate. They'll finish cooking and set just a bit more thanks to the residual heat in them.

Cooking Tomatoes

I could simply say to read the instructions below carefully, as there's everything you need to know about cook times there, but I thought I'd take a moment to talk about cooking tomatoes.

Perico is distinctive from many other egg and scrambled egg dishes because it includes cooked tomato. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but in the West, we tend to take our tomatoes in one of two forms: raw, or cooked to perdition. It's not terribly common to see them cooked in the same manner as, say, peppers. But to do this, you want to prep your tomatoes carefully and pay close attention to them while they cook. I used good hot-house roma tomatoes. They're solid and meaty, with easily removed seeds and thick walls. Texturally, they're surprisingly close to peppers, and they hold up well to cooking. If you can't get roma tomatoes, choose the densest, meatiest tomato you can find. If you only have softer tomatoes, make sure to seed them very well and reduce the cooking time for them slightly.

Onions vs Scallions, Variations

Scallions are the typical onion of choice in Colombian perico, while conventional onions are used more in Venezuela. Feel free to adapt to whatever you prefer or have on hand.

There are plenty of variations possible depending on personal tastes and available ingredients. Many recipes will include a little annatto, cilantro, or hot pepper (though spicy food is considerably less common in Colombia than it is in, say, Mexico). The choice of peppers used isn't terribly important, though I personally recommend using at least a little green pepper for both the added colour and the distinctive flavour.

Perico served in arepas with black beans on a colourful rectangular plate

Serving and Sides

No matter how you eat it, perico is delicious. But if you want to put together a full-on Colombian/Venezuelan breakfast, there are some simple accompaniments that I wholeheartedly recommend.

First and foremost: arepas. These simple little corn-flour patties are a cornerstone of Colombian and Venezuelan cooking. Made from a type of pre-cooked ground maize dough called masarepa, they're fried (sometimes grilled or baked), then split open and filled with all kinds of different foods. In this case, a little perico, some beans, and some salty cheese.

For the cheese, I like Mexican cotija. It's tangy and salty, making it a nice contrast to the other ingredients. If you want to replicate that flavour to some degree but can't find cotija, try a good quality feta. A simple fresh cheese would be nice as well.

I made black beans from scratch for this recipe (something that's ridiculously easy with an electric pressure cooker), but you could use canned black beans, ideally perked up with some herbs and a bit of onion and garlic.

And hot chocolate. I mean, why not? It's delicious and simple. I make mine with a good milk chocolate and a pinch of cinnamon. It's fantastic, and a great way to round out the meal. Enjoy.

Nutritional information is shown for an individual serving (1/6th of the total amount) without any sides.

Nutrition Facts

Perico - Colombian Eggs with Tomatoes & Peppers

Amount Per Serving

Calories 149 Calories from Fat 90

% Daily Value*

Fat 10g15%

Saturated Fat 3g19%

Polyunsaturated Fat 1g

Monounsaturated Fat 5g

Cholesterol 317mg106%

Sodium 208mg9%

Potassium 271mg8%

Carbohydrates 5g2%

Fiber 1g4%

Sugar 3g3%

Protein 10g20%

Vitamin A 1900IU38%

Vitamin C 111.4mg135%

Calcium 50mg5%

Iron 1.6mg9%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

Nutritional Summary

The nutritional information shown is for an individual serving (1/6th of the total amount) without any sides.

GOOD NEWS:Low in calories, high in veggies and vitamins, and overall a very healthy meal.

BAD NEWS:This is mostly eggs, so the cholesterol is high. Bear in mind that it doesn't include any of the sides or accompaniments.

TRIM IT DOWN:The eggs themselves are already quite light, though you could omit an egg yolk or two if you wanted. If you want to keep the entire meal lighter, serve the perico as-is or with beans and some fresh cilantro or parsley.

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5 from 15 votes