Huevos de Tortugas

Huevos de Tortugas

     Huevos de Tortugas? What are those? you maybe asking yourself. Maybe your Spanish is a bit rusty. Or maybe for some reason, you thought it would be handy to take French when you were back in school (how’d that work out for you, BTW?) Huevos de tortugas is Spanish for turtle eggs. Maybe you remember our post on Turtle Eggs? Turtle Eggs are a simple yet delicious appetizer. Perfect for munching on while watching the game.

     This past weekend, while we were down at the Guadalupe, I thought I would make up a batch of turtle eggs for our friends Mr. and Mrs. O to try. Mrs. O was watching me form the eggs, when all of a sudden she exclaimed, “We should put some chorizo in them!” And that, my friends, is how Huevos de Tortugas came about.

The filling for our Huevos de Tortugas

     Unfortunately, we don’t have an exact recipe for you to follow in making these. Close, but not exact. We kind of just kept adding chorizo until it looked like there was enough. You might have to play around with it until you find out just how much chorizo you like.

Ingredients

• 1 lb Jimmy Dean Sage Breakfast Sausage, cut into 8-10 slices
• San Miguel chorizo (or other Mexican chorizo if not available, but Mrs. O claims this one is the best)
• 1/2 cup whipped cream cheese with chives
• 1/2 cup shredded colby-jack cheese
• 2 jalapeno chile, de-seeded and finely diced
• Your favorite BBQ rub (divided)

Mrs. G forming the Huevos de Tortugas

Instructions

1.  Preheat a charcoal grill set up for indirect heat to 350F.  Add a chunk or two of cherry, hickory or whatever smoking woods that you have on hand.
2. Remove chorizo from casings and fry up in a skillet
3. Mix the cream cheese, cheese, jalapeno, chorizo and 1/2 tsp of BBQ rub together.
4. Place about 1 tsp of the cheese mixture on each slice of sausage.  Pull up the edges of the sausage and seal, forming it into a round, golf ball sized “egg”.  
5. Season your “eggs” with the remaining 1 tsp of BBQ rub.
6. Smoke the “eggs” until the sausage reaches 160F.

As Mr. O said, “If you can’t chill out here, you can’t chill out anywhere.” Just look at that view of the river.

     This was one of those weekends were there was no set agenda, didn’t have anything to do at any certain time. Football was on the TV and the beer were on ice. As such, I didn’t quite get a time for how long these took to cook. In the past, I’ve cooked these at 250F for about 90 minutes. This time I cooked them at 350F, so obviously they took less than that. Just cook to temp, not to time and you will be fine. You want the sausage to hit 160.

Just about done, bet you want to try one right now, don’t you?

     I’m only going to warn you once. Resist the temptation to take a bite of these immediately after they come off the grill. I know how hard it is, but that filling in the middle is going to be a molten hot lava of cheese and you will burn yourself. Give them a few minutes to cool off before diving in.

Molten Lava of Cheese

     If you are familiar with Turtle Eggs, you might notice that the filling in these look different. My guess is that the grease from the chorizo turned them orange. Not that that matters. What matters is the taste. We thought that these were even BETTER than Turtle Eggs. The chorizo just adds another dimension to it, another flavor profile. It takes Turtle Eggs and puts a Mexican twist on them. If you like Mexican food and you like chorizo, you are going to love these. You might never make Turtle Eggs again. This has gotten my brain spinning. I wonder what they would taste like with some Italian sausage, maybe change the cheese out and throw in some parsley. Do you have any ideas for putting a different spin on Turtle Eggs?