Recipe modified by You Want Me to Cook? – September 4, 2011
Bacon Potato Omelet recipe originally published in Taste of Home Holiday Collection 2008.
My husband rarely cooks, but he makes a MEAN breakfast. His eggs come out perfect sunnyside-up. The bacon is oh-so-crisp. There are hash browns that make my mouth water. Of course, this is the exact menu we have each time… not that I mind at all. On occasion, I do enjoy mixing things up a little and that’s when I take over.
So when I look at the ingredients of this recipe, it mimics very closely my husband’s "Breakfast of Success." I love omelets! I LOVE me some bacon! And everything is better with cheese. I decided to give my loving husband a break and made this yummy looking Bacon Potato Omelet.
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| © You Want Me to Cook? Bacon Potato Omelet |
I was ridiculously proud of the way it looked when I was done. Usually my omelets are broken, oozing messes. They’re in one piece, but they’re never what I’d call “pretty”. Yeah, I know it all looks like mush in our stomach, but I do enjoy looking at nice looking food before I eat it.
It looked perfectly cooked and was almost identical to the picture published with the recipe.
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| © Taste of Home |
As I look at their picture and compare it to my own, I am beaming with pride. I’m sure you can tell why I picked this dish by how yummy they made it look.
Although I’ll be honest… I’m not sure I’d call this an “omelet.” But who cares? It looks good and I couldn’t wait to dig in.
Assessment:
for more details about what my ratings mean, go to G’s Rating System
Mess: EH – Okay, I’ll admit it… peeling and dicing potatoes is a messy thing to do. For that matter, so is making bacon. But the saving grace is that most everything is done in a single pan, you don’t have to pour off bacon grease and you have very little potatoes to peel and chop.
Start-to-Finish Time: WELL UNDER AN HOUR – If you have help with the peeling and chopping, you could definitely get this done in about 30 minutes. If you’re cooking by yourself, I wouldn’t start the bacon before all the chopping is done though. You don’t want to take your eyes off the bacon.
Prep Work: SLIGHT BLOOD LOSS – If I would have had to do more than one potato, I probably would have pushed this up to a LOSS OF FINGER POSSIBLE. I always lose skin when I’m peeling and the more potatoes I have to do, the more blood I lose.
Ease of Recipe: COOK IT IN MY SLEEP – There’s nothing difficult to this dish in terms of preparation of ingredients. You don’t even have to fuss with the egg as you would a traditional omelet.
Overall: SORRY HONEY, NO LEFTOVERS – Yes, he was thrilled to have a morning off from making breakfast, but we finished off the entire pan together. This is my oh-crap-someone’s-going-to-be-here-for-breakfast go-to dish.
Recipe Information:
I am not a doctor or dietician. I make my nutritional assessments with the aid of Spark Recipes. I run the original recipe and my altered recipe through their calorie counter and then compute the differences I find. My numbers are to be used as a guideline. Anyone who is under dietary medical supervision should follow the advice of their medical professional if their opinion differs from mine. PLEASE!
Servings: 3
Prep/Total Time: 25 minutes
I’m not sure if three servings are terribly accurate. That is one egg, one piece of bacon and a third of a potato per serving (including a sprinkle of cheese). If you’re a big breakfast eater, you may want to be prepared to serve toast and/or fruit with it.
I’m a big believer if the timing seems too good to be true, it probably is. However, the timing isn’t THAT far off. Like I said, when you’re peeling and dicing potatoes, you’re going to have a job ahead of you. Here is my timing:
- Prep: 14 minutes
- Cook Time: 24 minutes
- Total Time: 38 minutes
It took me a lot of time to chop up the bacon, peel and finely dice the potato and chop the onion, so the prep was almost all of the time they allotted to the entire dish being made. I made sure to dice my potato well, but it still took a bit of time to get it to soften.
Nutritional Information:
- Calories: 277
- Total fat: 14 g
- Saturated fat: 7 g
- Cholesterol: 238 mg
- Sodium: 285 mg
- Carbohydrate: 24 g
- Dietary fiber: 3 g
- Protein: 15 g
That’s a substantial amount of fat and cholesterol for a single egg, piece of bacon and potatoes. Overall, the numbers weren’t bad… but considering what is included in a serving, I’m not sure I’d consider this anything close to a healthy dish. I did my usual “check up” on the nutritional information supplied by the recipe writer. The Nutritional Information I computed using the ingredients they listed was:
- Calories 273.3
- Total Fat 14.5 g
- Saturated Fat 6.6 g
- Cholesterol 210.2 mg
- Sodium 295.1 mg
- Total Carbohydrate 20.9 g
- Dietary Fiber 2.9 g
- Sugars 0.8 g
- Protein 15.3 g
So, pretty close. A little less here and a little more there. The only stand out number is the jump in cholesterol but it’s still relatively close.
I made some changes by substituting low sodium bacon and reduced fat cheese. Then I recalculated the nutritional information. With my substitutions, the nutritional information came out as follows:
- Calories 255.9
- Total Fat 12.1 g
- Saturated Fat 5.1 g
- Cholesterol 203.3 mg
- Sodium 288.8 mg
- Total Carbohydrate 21.3 g
- Dietary Fiber 2.9 g
- Protein 16.0 g
It had a decent reduction of calories and cholesterol, but nothing to write home about. The sodium ended up being a wash probably because of the reduced fat cheese (it is usually slightly higher in sodium than it’s whole fat counterpart). There no significant health benefit to the recipe, although it did have a decent amount of Vitamin C at approximately 40% of the daily recommended value.
Ingredients:
Changes denoted by red text
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| © You Want Me to Cook? Bacon Potato Omelet - ingredients |
2 cups diced peeled potatoes
1 medium onion, chopped
3 eggs, lightly beaten
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup shredded reduced fat cheddar cheese
Cooking Spray
Ingredient Notes:
Low Sodium Bacon – The low sodium variety has about a third less sodium. I also find that it doesn’t have as much fat to drain from the pan either. I have no idea why that is. Maybe someone can enlighten me?
Diced Potatoes – To get the 2 cups of diced potatoes, it took me about 1 large. The recipe didn’t specify the type, but I used a regular baking russet potato and it turned out just fine. Remember, make the pieces small or it will take forever to get it tender.
Reduced Fat Cheddar Cheese – Although it wasn’t specified in the recipe, I used a mild cheddar blend. The reduced fat has about a third less fat than the regular whole fat cheese, but beware… reduced fat dairy usually has slightly higher sodium. If you’re watching your sodium intake, there isn’t a big enough benefit with the reduced fat to take in the extra sodium.
Cooking Spray – I don’t have traditional nonstick skillets, so I always need a little cooking spray to make sure my eggs and bacon don’t stick. Know your pan… even if it is a nonstick and you have problems with things sticking, a little squirt of cooking spray won’t hurt. You can skip this ingredient if you don’t have any issues with food sticking to your pans.
Equipment Needed:
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| © You Want Me to Cook? Bacon Potato Omelet - equipment |
Cutting board
(2) Sharp knives
Vegetable peeler
Small bowl
Fork
9” Skillet with a lid/cover
Large spoon
Slotted spoon
Plate
Paper towels
Equipment Notes:
Cutting boards and knives – Don’t cut any raw meat on the same cutting boards that you chop vegetables or cooked food. I usually go with a plastic cutting board for raw meat since wood can trap bacteria and cross-contaminate your food. You won’t necessarily need 2 knives for this dish, but if you’re going to use one, make sure you chop the vegetables first and then the bacon. Make sure you wash it if you need to chop up more vegetables when through.
Small bowl and fork – I always use these tools to lightly beat the eggs. I’m a big fan of breaking the egg into a separate bowl before adding it to the recipe anyway. If you’ve ever cracked a bad egg, you’ll know why I do this.
Skillet – The skillet calls for nonstick, but I don’t have one. I used a cast iron and sprayed it with cooking spray. Always be familiar with your pans, so if you’ve bought it for a special occasion, you may want to take it for a test drive before the big meal.
Slotted Spoon, Plate and Paper Towels – After you cook the bacon, you’ll need to remove it from the pan without pouring off the drippings. This is the best way I know how. Also, the paper towel will pull the oil away from the bacon keeping it nice and crispy!
Directions:
(1) Heat pan on medium heat and lightly mist with cooking spray.
For some reason, bacon sticks to my pans, so I always use a very small amount of cooking spray for me to stir/flip the pieces easier. If you don’t have that issue, don’t worry about the cooking spray.
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| © You Want Me to Cook? Bacon Potato Omelet Did I need to take a picture of the bacon? No, but I LOVE bacon, so a picture was taken. |
It took me about 8 minutes to get my bacon to cook. During that 8 minutes… I set off the smoke alarm. I’ve found the easiest way to keep that from happening is using medium heat (I changed the recipe to reflect that finding) and using the range hood’s fan if you’ve got one.
(3) Cook potatoes and onion in drippings until tender, stirring occasionally.
It took me about 7 minutes to get the potatoes tender. As I said above, make sure you keep your potatoes finely diced so it doesn’t take too long for them to cook, burning your onions in the process.
(4) Add eggs, salt and pepper; mix gently. Cover and cook over medium heat until eggs are completely set.
My eggs set in 3 minutes. Take care not to overcook them. I stayed away from adding the salt and pepper and opted to let each of us spice our own when we went to eat it.
(5) Sprinkle with cheese. Remove from the heat; cover and let stand until cheese is melted.
Honestly, it melted quite faster than I thought it would. I didn’t even get a chance to time it!
(6) Sprinkle with bacon. Carefully run a knife around edge of skillet to loosen; transfer to a serving plate. Cut into wedges.
This dish was a little more work than I enjoyed for a morning meal, but it was so good, it was well worth any effort I put forward. Next time, I’ll enlist my husband to cook the bacon while I chop to make things go a little faster.
If I were to make any changes, I would:
- Prep as many of the ingredients as I could ahead of time (or solicit some help in the morning). Breakfast meals need to be made quickly to get your day started and out the door.
- I would consider adding a green pepper, mushrooms or garlic to the omelet. It had plenty of flavor, but I enjoy a good kick in the morning.
Happy Cooking!!!
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