This Spicy Meat Is The Key To A Seriously Good Mexican-Style Breakfast Pizza

The space that pizza for breakfast filled in our minds may once have referred primarily to the practice of scooping up a cold slice left over from the dinner the night before, but these days it is something entirely different. Really, it makes sense that pizza could and should be a breakfast dish, at least in the loose way we use the term "pizza." Warm, freshly baked dough topped with all the trappings of a traditional morning meal is a great way to break your fast. But for the ideal breakfast pizza experience, you may want to look for inspiration south of the border, and add some Mexican chorizo to the mix.

Mexican-style chorizo is a deep red, heavily-seasoned fresh sausage typically made with pork — though sometimes other proteins like beef, chicken, or soy are used. The sausage draws its vibrant color and rich flavor from an abundance of ingredients like chiles, garlic, and vinegar. Browned and crumbled, it is as good with breakfast as it is in a taco, adding sumptuous flavor to any dish or plate.

To use chorizo in a breakfast pizza, treat it just like you would Italian sausage. It needs to be cooked beforehand, but once it's fried up, you can simply sprinkle over as much or as little as you like — as in this Mexican breakfast pizza recipe. In that recipe, the chorizo is cooked with onions and spread on the dough over eggs and salsa before being topped with cheese and baked. But there are plenty of different ways to incorporate chorizo into a Mexican-inspired breakfast pizza.

For inspiration on how to use chorizo in a breakfast pizza, all you have to do is look at how it's used in Mexican cuisine. Chorizo and potatoes are a common pairing in tacos, for example. Cubes of potato coated in the bright red grease become tender, delicious morsels that spread the rich flavor of chorizo beautifully. This is just as true on a pizza as it is in a taco.

Refried beans are also excellent with chorizo, and the beans fill a similar role to potatoes, providing a creamy vessel to extend the flavor of the sausage throughout an entire plate. You can consider your breakfast pizza to be almost like a plate of huevos rancheros, or a chorizo, egg, and cheese breakfast torta, with the interplay of beans, chorizo, and eggs gracing every slice.

Another option is to take the culinary cross-pollination a touch further and make a chorizo sausage gravy to serve as the sauce on your pizza. Sausage gravy breakfast pizza is a great way to get chorizo in every bite while also keeping the overall flavor profile of the dish strictly breakfast-focused.

Once the pizza is baked, finish it like you would an excellent chorizo taco. You can sprinkle diced onion and cilantro over the top, and a drizzle of hot sauce and crema would surely be delicious as well. Aged cotija is similar to Parmesan cheese and would be excellent crumbled over the whole pie. Finally, both breakfast plates and tacos are a great place for avocado, so don't miss the opportunity to add avocado to your breakfast pizza as well. With a bit of creativity as well as a nod to tradition, there's no way your Mexican-inspired breakfast pizza won't be just excellent.