Here's a darn satisfying brinner — that's breakfast for dinner. Home fries with a bunch
of peppers and an over-easy egg. This recipe is so fast and efficient that I had to set up
multiple cameras, because I won't have time to re-set for every shot. It goes that fast.
First thing is to get the potato par-boiling. I've tried this with tons of potatoes — a russet comes
out on top, every time. That's a floury variety. This big one will feed at least two people,
and I'm not peeling it. The skins are quite tasty when you fry them up crisp, as we shall.
"Home fries" are traditionally cuboid, not long bars. And you could do bigger chunks than these,
but smaller ones cook faster and I'm all about speed today.
Drop them in some water. Boiling home fries before you fry them makes them cook
way faster — the outsides come out crispier, the insides fluffier.
Heat on high, and a common trick is to put a little vinegar in the water. Just
a touch. This slows the breakdown of pectin in the potatoes and helps
them hold their shape when you fry them later.
While we wait we can slice our vegetables. Love peppers in home fries,
and I've been loving this trick where you hold a bell pepper by it's stem and and
fillet it like a fish. Ooo, this one had some baby peppers inside, you MONSTER.
Then you can just mow each of these segments into thin slices and you
get these really pretty little pieces that cook really fast, and they're really easy
to eat on the plate. Speaking of fast, green onions — the most convenient form of onion?
All I'm doing is rinsing them and peeling off any outer layers that seem dry and tattered
or decayed and slimy. Take it over here, trim off the roots, then I'll cut the whites into
big chunks that seem like they'll cook in the same time as my pepper slices.
Once I get up into the greens, I'll set those aside for later. Oh,
one more pepper — a serrano. Thin slices, with the ribs intact,
just for a little heat. If you don't want it spicy, don't do this.
Ah, potatoes are boiling now. If you put a ton of vinegar in the water,
the trick works a little too well. They take forever to cook. Just splash works fine.
This meal is possible in a well-seasoned cast iron, but I keep a nonstick around
exactly for a day like today. Heat on high — yeah, that's fine with teflon,
as long as you have a lot of food in the pan to absorb the energy and keep the
coating from overheating and sending off dangerous gas. Just a touch of olive oil.
All three stages of this meal will involve fat in the pan, and if you
don't watch the oil quantity, you'll end up with a pretty greasy plate in the end.
I'll hit these with salt and pepper — not because they have to be seasoned in
isolation from the potatoes, but mostly just so I can visually keep track of
how much salt total I need to put in the dish — and a splash of vinegar.
This gives the final plate a needed hit of acidity,
and I wonder if it keeps the veggies a little crisper. When they just have a
little color on them and they're starting to soften, like two minutes in there,
I'll turn the heat off and stow those on a plate. They'll keeping softening as they sit.
You can fry the veg with the potatoes, but it's way easier to control if you do them
one at a time, plus we were just sitting here anyway, waiting for the potatoes to soften,
which they have. I can just barely pierce them with a fork — that's enough.
Drain them — I usually do this through the pot lid to save on dishes. Back over here in our pan,
I'll turn the heat on medium-high, some more olive oil and a little butter — not
because this "lowers the smoke point" of the butter. I'm pretty sure that's crazy talk.
It's just that the butter plus olive oil tastes good, also if the butter does burn, there will
be less of it. I'll hit these with a bunch of salt, so the salt can really fry into the crust.
And then I'll just let these sit. If you let the first side brown really rigid,
it provides structural support to the rest of the piece as you stir things around later.
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Now, give these a stir, and you can see why pro brunch cooks love to put a ton of acid in the
boil water. I'm having to be kinda ginger with my spoon. But you put a lot vinegar
in the water and the pieces will be hard, which has gotta be great when you're flipping a giant
pile of home fries on a flat-top griddle. You can be brutal with them.
I can afford to give these a little more love and affection since I have
nothing else to do right now, and the bits that get mashed up, like that,
are the ones that are gonna go super crisp, if you give them enough oil to fry in.
If you want to use all butter for the flavor, I'd recommend clarified butter. Whole butter will be
likely to burn and won't get the potatoes as crispy. I like the olive oil flavor.
While they're going we can slice our onion greens nice and thin. If you want that segsy diagonal
cut, you have to get it started, which results in some waste. So, flip these around — keep the waste
up here, where the tops are too dry and fibrous to eat anyway. That's no skin off our backs.
Reason 35 why I love green onions is they're a two-for-one deal — you get your onion at
the white end, and you get your fresh herb at the green end. We'll scatter those raw on the plates.
Back at the potatoes, people often put paprika and garlic powder and such in these — just be careful,
because those kind of spices burn really easily at these temperatures.
When they're brown to my liking, I will turn off the heat, and then dump in my veg to warm up.
Now that it's safer, I'll put in my spices. I'm using harissa powder — the dry version of the
traditional North African chili-garlic paste. Super tasty with the potatoes.
Will moisture in the vegetables make the fries a little less crispy? Yeah,
a bit. If you want really crisp home fries, don't do vegetables with them.
But for the flavor and the nutrition, I'm happy to make that trade-off.
On this goes to my plates. Way too hot to eat right now, which is perfect, because we still
need to cook our eggs. A little oil, just to be super-duper safe. That was too much.
Crack in the eggs, and my heat is still off. There's the perfect amount of residual
heat in the pan and the burner to cook these eggs. If you're using a cheaper thinner pan,
or gas burner, you might have to turn the heat back on low. Just keep the eggs bubbling gently.
And for an over-easy egg, this is the sign I look for. See how the white has two distinct
regions? There's the flat outer skirt, and then there's another layer
of white up above it around the yolk. When I see that upper layer just starting to go opaque,
the egg is usually solid enough to flip safely. You just gotta do it
swiftly and with some confidence, even if you have to fake your confidence.
For over-easy eggs, they need like 30 seconds max on the flip side.
I finally had to move some lights and such for this last shot,
so my eggs were on the flip side for maybe a minute and they came out more
like over-medium — yolk is still runny, but not quite as runny as I'd like. It's fine.
If you want the yolk firm, just cook it until if feels firm when you poke it.
Easy. I think this meal cost like $2-3 a plate, in terms of ingredients.
And it is fit for a king. Make brinner happen at your house tonight.