Who doesn’t like brinner (breakfast for dinner)? Especially since most mornings, I am out of the house in 20 minutes and I don’t eat my breakfast til I get to work. So that leaves the weekends for taking the time to cook a nice breakfast….except I wake up starving and barely can stand to wait any longer than it takes to scramble a few eggs and toast a couple slices of bread.
Plus there’s the detail that Scott prefers sweet and I’m all about the savory. So even if I had all the time in the world…we would never agree on what to eat. But brinner is different. It’s dinner, so you want the more savory stuff anyway. And I have time to actually cook and enjoy it! So the other night we had brinner and I wondered why we don’t do this more often!
Scott’s dad has a friend who has thirty — 30! — chickens and therefore a fairly constant egg supply. I, of course, jumped at the chance for some fresh, homegrown eggs from happy little chickens just across town. I knew I didn’t just want to scramble them up or use them in a batter — I wanted them to be the star!
With a few sweet potatoes already at home, I decided to make fried eggs and hash browns. But to make the dish extra decadent…I cooked the potato in duck fat. Yum. I julienned the potato into matchsticks (because I couldn’t find the grating disk for my food processor…) though next time I will definitely grate the sweet potato (found it while putting away dishes of course). I added in some extra veggies (red onion and red pepper) and sauteed the potatoes.
Then I made four little wells in the potatoes and added an egg to each. After a minute I popped a lid on to help set the topside of the eggs. They tasted fantastic, so rich and flavorful! A little feta, rosemary and sage on top was amazing.
Fried Eggs and Sweet Potato Hash
Serves 2. Time: 45 minutes (though should be faster with grated potato)- 1 large sweet potato, grated
- 1/2 onion, sliced thin
- 1/2 red bell pepper, sliced thin
- 4 large eggs (the fresher the better!)
- duck fat (you can use butter or oil)
- salt & pepper
- 1/4 cup feta cheese
- 1 tbsp each fresh rosemary and sage, minced
- Grate the sweet potato. Soak in cool water for about ten minutes. Drain and press out as much water as possible.
- Preheat a large cast-iron skillet (I used a 12″) over medium heat and add a tablespoon or so of fat. Add potatoes and toss to coat. Season with S&P. Cook, stirring every few minutes, until potatoes are almost tender. Add onion and pepper, cook about five more minutes.
- Turn heat up to medium high, add another tablespoon of fat. Allow potatoes to cook a few minutes to develop a crust, gently flip and cook a few more minutes on the other side.
- Create four wells in the potato. Crack an egg into a small dish and then pour into a hole. Repeat with the remaining 3 eggs. Let cook for about 2 mins, then turn off the heat and place a lid gently on top (not a tight-fitting one) and cook until the whites are set. The yolks will still be runny.
- Top with feta, rosemary, and sage. Gently lift the eggs out onto your plate and add a pile of hash browns. Enjoy!
I like that word “brinner”. I’ll eat breakfast round the clock.