Macheesmo

Sometimes I get an idea and it haunts me in my sleep until I try it. In this particular instance, I had the idea of using hash browns instead of eggs and making an omelet with fillings and cheese and all that stuff. In my mind it was a surefire 10 dish.

The problem is that I think I over-hyped the dish in my own mind. I was pretty convinced it was going to be the best thing I had ever eaten in my life. And it was probably only like Top 50.

Still worth making!

The thing about this dish is that it’s just fun to make. I was literally laughing while making it because it was just so ridiculous.

The Hash Brown Omelet

by Nick

Serves:

Seves 1-2

Prep Time:

15 mins

Total Time:

30 mins

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Ingredients

- 3 medium potatoes, shredded/grated

- 1/4 of a red pepper, diced

- 8-10 medium mushrooms, diced

- 1/4 red onion, diced

- Any other fillings you'd put in a normal omelet

- 1 Cup cheddar cheese, grated

- Salt and pepper

- Drizzle of neutral oil

- Hot sauce (optional)

- Ketchup (optional)

- Chopped parsley (optional)

Instructions

1) Shred potatoes and press them onto a few paper towels to get out a lot of the water.

2) Dice the veggies and grate the cheese just so you’re ready to go.

3) Cook the veggies in a nonstick pan over medium-high heat with a drizzle of oil until their soft, but not soggy, maybe 2-3 minutes.  Give them a pinch of salt and pepper and set aside.

4) Add a smooth layer of hash browns to your pan.  You’re goal is to have an even layer of potatoes.  Add a drizzle of oil to the potatoes and cook them over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes until the bottom side starts to brown.

5) Slide the whole thing onto a plate and flip the pan over top the plate.  Then invert the whole thing.  This is just a simple way of fipping the potato over in the pan.  If you’re feeling confident you can try flipping it in the air.

6) Once your potato is flipped, add the fillings and cheese to one side of the omelet and fold over the hash browns, forming a half-circle.  Cook on each side (use a spatula to flip at this point) for about 3-4 minutes until the potatoes are golden brown and the cheese is melted.

7) Serve immediately with hot sauce, ketchup, and chopped parsley.

The Potatoes

The key to really good hash browns is getting as much liquid from the potatoes as you can. There’s a shocking amount of water in a potato and if you don’t dry out the hash before cooking it, you’ll just have steamed potato shreds instead of crispy golden hash browns.

So the key is to shred them onto a few paper towels and press out some of the liquid.

The Fillings

Of course, like any omelet you can fill this guy with anything that you want really.

I usually just use some leftovers for omelets which in this case was a few mushrooms and a red pepper. Cheese and hot sauce are pretty much essential for an omelet in my opinion.

Not pictured below is 1/4 of a red onion that I also added to the party.

In a large non-stick skillet, add the diced veggies and a drizzle of oil and cook over medium-high heat until soft, but not soggy.

Just a few minutes should do the trick.

Making the omelet

This is when it kind of got a little challenging. I wasn’t exactly sure how this would work, but here’s was my game plan which ended up working fine:

Make a smooth, even layer of hash browns in a nonstick pan with some oil (I used too much oil. Probably a tablespoon will do the trick) and a pinch of salt.

Get this cooking over medium high heat.

After about 5 minutes, the bottom side should be starting to get crispy. You don’t want it to get TOO crispy or you won’t be able to fold the thing.

It’s kind of a judgment call, but about 5 minutes was what I did.

The next step is to gently slide the entire thing out onto a plate. Did I mention that a good nonstick pan is pretty important here?

(Of course, if you’re feeling very confident you can try to just flip this whole thing in the pan, but that kind of skill is a bit above my pay grade.)

So I just slid it.

Then put the pan over the plate and flipped it back in.

Easy!

Stuffing this thing

So now that we’ve flipped it, we need to add all of our awesome fillings to the party.

Just pile them on to one half of the disc.

And lots of cheese of course.

Then fold the empty half over the top half.

This is a monster of an omelet.

Cook this thing for about 3-4 minutes per side. This means you’ll need to flip it again, but it’s a lot easier to flip when it’s folded and the melted cheese helps hold everything together. I just used a spatula for the second flipping.

Serve this as soon as possible with some chopped parsley if you want to get fancy.

Most people would maybe serve this with ketchup, but I really don’t like ketchup so I always choose hot sauce.

If you think about it, it’s pretty hard to go wrong here. Even if you don’t get the filling/flipping thing perfect, you’re going to end up with hash browns, veggies, and melted cheese. It’s pretty hard to beat that for a hearty breakfast.

What do you think? Hash brown omelet? Any takers?