Fresh out of cooking school, I started working in one of the kitchens of a large PC clone manufacturer in Austin. I say "one of the kitchens" because each facility had at least one cafeteria. The one where I learned the most was the main fabrication facility. The others were fine, but I much preferred cooking for factory workers over yuppie scum.

Let me explain that.

Before I started cooking for this manufacturer, I did contract design work for them. Back then, Austin was something of a one-trick pony—a glorified factory town in the '80s and '90s, no matter what anyone tells you. I can't speak to what it was like before or after, but that's how it was in my experience.

Anyway, my first kitchen posting was in one of their corporate facilities, and I ended up serving people I used to work with. It was there that I learned if you really want to know someone, watch how they treat "the help."

I was working the wok station during the lunch rush, which was essentially a made-to-order Chinese food setup with a long line. In order for everyone to get their food quickly and get back to work, there couldn’t be any special requests. It was a system designed to give the illusion of choice rather than actual choice—much like our political system.

This guy I used to work fairly closely with came through the line. Nice enough in cube world, but a total jerk when it came to service staff. He didn’t just want options; he demanded them. I had to jump through hoops to get him exactly what he wanted on the fly, and he was a complete ass about it. I’d never seen that side of him. And what’s more, he didn’t seem to recognize me at all. Put on a chef's jacket and toque, and suddenly you're just an NPC for some people to treat like dirt.

For a while, I thought he did recognize me and that it was personal, but after observing how he treated my coworkers, I realized he was just a jerk in general. Some people are like that. Luckily, I was soon transferred to lead the kitchen at the factory.

In a factory cafeteria, your top priority is managing food costs. If I have a "specialty," it’s making the most of leftovers. Chef Andre drilled that into me: “If you want to be successful in this business, sell a chicken at least three times.” That mindset made me ideal for the factory kitchen.

The best part about cooking for factory workers, as opposed to the corporate crowd, was that they didn’t care about status. They treated everyone in the kitchen as equals. Sure, you’d get the occasional person who acted a little high and mighty, but they never lasted long. Plus, factory workers were easier to cook for—just give them homestyle food, and plenty of it.

I was responsible for breakfast and lunch. I’ll never stop loving breakfast shifts. You come in before the world is awake, and it’s just you and your kitchen. It’s dead silent, except for the hum of convection ovens full of bacon. Once the coffee kicks in, you’re moving at warp speed, getting everything prepped before the line cooks start rolling in. I’ve always preferred working alone, and I still do.

One of my daily tasks was making "picadillo," which I was told was a staple Mexican breakfast dish. It’s incredibly simple: ground beef, leftover fried potatoes from the previous day’s breakfast, tomato paste, Rotel, garlic, salt, pepper, and a little chili powder. And cumin—tons of cumin. You let it simmer in its own shiny red grease until the meat starts to break down, and there you go. It turns out that almost every Latin American culture has its own version, most of which are more complex and flavorful than the one I used to make.

I didn’t realize how important this basic dish was to my diners until the day I didn’t make it. There’d been some kind of “safety incident” that morning, so we all had to evacuate to the parking lot, and I was running behind. From that day forward, picadillo became my first priority.

I didn’t really get the appeal until I started eating it myself. There’s something about the cumin—it gets into your brain, and suddenly you need it every morning. Maybe it’s the potatoes, soft and flavorful, or maybe it’s just the whole savory breakfast vibe. All I know is that even years later, I still crave it.

These days, I’m always on the hunt for it, stopping by different taco stands, but I can never find the right version. One place gets close, but they use something other than ground beef, the seasoning is off, and the potatoes are never fully cooked. This week, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I started by focusing on the potatoes. I’ve always loved them, but after a decade of dieting, my love has become a bit of an obsession. So I went all in, making crispy chili potato breakfast tacos (with egg), and while they were good, they still weren’t quite there. Then, I had a flash of inspiration from my wife’s spaghetti sauce.

I’m no stranger to turning spaghetti sauce (the American kind) into chili. I’m a re-purposing sonofabitch, and this wasn’t my first rodeo. But there were some surprises. One of the jars my wife uses has cheese in it, and somehow the sauce had turned really tart in the fridge.

The cheese wasn’t a big deal—it probably wasn’t real cheese anyway—but that tartness was unwelcome in chili, and definitely not in picadillo. Luckily, I had a bit of Everclear and some baking soda. Just a little of each took the edge off the tomatoes. I then added a hefty amount of chili powder and cumin, reduced the sauce, and mixed it with some leftover potatoes—and there it was. Passable picadillo, Austin PC manufacturer style.

Of course there’s no recipe. It’s leftover utilization. If I had it to do over, I’d probably use less of the spachili sauce, but other than that I was very satisfied. Served on toasted flour tortillas and God help me, topped with ranch flavored sour cream. Soooo white trash, but soooo good.

Go cook something.