Traditonal Spanish Migas recipe
“Migas” (literally breadcrumbs in Spanish) are the perfect traditional dish for a cold, wintry day. Fulling, comforting and flavourful, this recipe is an incredible option to make the most of stale bread. We love preparing it with some chorizo, bacon, red peppers, garlic and grapes, but the options are endless.
Let’s prepare them together.
Migas (Breadcrums)
Originally conceived as a dish for shepherds, the recipe for "migas" varies quite a lot throughout Spain. We love preparing this version that has a little bit of everything, resulting in a dish with a lot of contrasts. You'll see there's no easier recipe than this one.
Ingredients
- 400 g of bread (preferably hard/stale bread)
- 75 g of pork unsmoked bacon or pancetta
- 220 g of chorizo
- 4 cloves of garlic
- Water
- Paprika (preferably mild Spanish pimentón)
- Olive oil
- Salt to taste
- 20 sweet grapes (optional)
Instructions
- Firstly, we chop the bacon, and pepper in small squares and place everything alongside the chorizo (whole) in a pan at low heat with just a little bit of olive oil. The goal is to melt the bacon and chorizo fat as much as possible so that the rest of the ingredients absorb all that flavor.
- Whilst the meat and peppers are cooking in the pan, we are going to prepare the breadcrumbs. In small batches, we place pieces of bread in a food processor and break it in small pulses until we get a texture like the one in the picture. The obtained breadcrumbs shouldn't become a fine dust nor stay very big. However, we really like to have a mixture of sizes to get a more interesting end texture. If you don't want to use a food processor, you can definitely use a grater, but it will take you longer.
- Once the bacon and chorizo have rendered enough liquid, we raise the heat level to high and fry everything, mixing from time to time to avoid burning. Once we achieve a light brown color, we remove the chorizo, bacon and pepper and reserve. We leave the oil in the pan since we are going to use it to cook other ingredients straight away.
- Now it is time to cook the breadcrumbs and garlic cloves. We add them into the pan and mix very well with the remaining oil. Then, we stir a tablespoon of salt in a glass filled with water and incorporate half of that liquid into the pan, and mix very well. If we see that some breadcrumbs haven't absorbed any water with salt, we add some more of the mixed liquid.
- This step is just about letting everything cook and lose all the water (the diluted salt in it will stay in the interior of the bread). For this, we set the heat at medium and stir from time to time. This process can take between 30 and 45 minutes.
- In the meantime, we can prepare what's left:– Regarding the grapes, we just wash, dry and reserve them.– In a small bowl, we mix 3 tablespoons of olive oil with half a tablespoon of paprika and reserve the mixture.– We cut the chorizo in bite-size pieces and reserve.
- Once the breadcrumbs have lost all the water and have acquired a golden brown color, they are ready. Hence, we pour the oil and paprika mixture into the pan and stir very well. Then, we add the bacon, chorizo and pimentón. Mix very well and adjust the salt level to taste.
- Finally, turn the heat off and add the grapes if you want to add some sweet contrast. Now our Spanish migas are ready!
Notes
- If you want, you can top your migas with a fried egg (one per person).
