Lightened Breakfast Burritos

I used to hate breakfast. Back in school, I’d hardly ever ate breakfast, which of course, made me eat like crazy in the afternoons. It was fairly stupid, and I learned my lesson in the real world, especially when meetings would go beyond my normal lunch time. Grumbling stomach noises aren’t very professional, so breakfast definitely became a necessity.

Now, when it comes to cooking in the morning, I’m just not doing it. I’m the type of person who wakes up as early as absolutely necessary. I love my sleep, y’all. Most mornings, I’m up 30 minutes before I leave for work. Cute hair? Perfect make-up? Ain’t nobody got time for that!  😛 I make it to where I have enough time to feed the dog, take her out, get dressed, brush my hair, brush my teeth and watch the morning traffic news. I’m lazy like that.

When I get to work, I usually just grab a scrambled egg with toast & cheese in the cafeteria. They cook it on a griddle, so I know it’s not bathed in butter or anything. Sometimes if I’m feeling dangerous, I go for bacon too. 😛 However, that started adding up a bit, and I decided to look into making a bunch of breakfast items on the weekends that I could heat up during the week at work.

Enter breakfast burritos.

I saw this recipe on Pioneer Woman’s blog, and while I’m sure her recipe is perfect, I figured it probably needed a little lightening up to fit my calorie counting lifestyle. Simple substitutions like turkey sausage vs. regular sausage and egg whites vs. eggs help tremendously with the calorie count here. I also omitted the cheese for the cooking portion (since it sort of disappears anyway once it cooks down) and just sprinkle a little reduced fat cheddar in after microwaving the burrito. 🙂 I found making 10 of these at a time didn’t take very long, and with a little bit of salsa, they are truly great! According to MyFitnessPal, they are only 280 calories each, and they are super filling!

Lightened Breakfast Burritos
adapted from Pioneer Woman

Ingredients:

• 14 oz. turkey sausage
• 3 cups frozen Ore-Ida Potatoes O’Brien
• 10 egg whites (this was a small carton of egg whites)
• 10 whole wheat tortillas
• salt and pepper, to taste
• reduced fat cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Brown the turkey sausage in a large saute pan or dutch oven. Once that is done cooking, place the turkey sausage on a plate lined with paper towels to drain the extra fat, making sure to leave a little (maybe a tbsp.) in the saute pan for the potatoes. Place the potatoes in the saute pan with some salt and pepper and cook them down for 15-20 minutes until the potatoes are soft and thoroughly cooked.
2. Add the turkey sausage back in the saute pan with the potatoes, along with the 10 egg whites, as well as some salt and pepper. Scramble everything together, until the eggs are fully cooked. Taste the mixture to make sure it’s well-seasoned.
3. Once it’s done, place the 10 tortillas on a large baking sheet, and place 1/10th of the egg/sausage/potato mixture in the middle of each tortilla. Roll each burrito by first pulling in the sides, and then rolling the tortilla until it’s closed.
4. To prepare for freezing, saran wrap each burrito separately, and place the saran wrapped burritos in a gallon freezer bag, making sure to push excess air out of the bag before sealing. To reheat, take the burrito out of the saran wrap and instead wrap in a paper towel, heating on 40% power until done. Optional: once heated, open the tortilla slightly and sprinkle in some reduced fat cheese. (I calculated the calories assuming that each burrito had 1/10 cup cheese added.)