When you think of home fries, what comes to mind? The scattered mass of browned potatoes playing sidekick to your French toast at your local greasy spoon? The value-added carbs to your diner short stack of pancakes? Whatever you may think, this ubiquitous staple is almost always a morning meal background player, until now. These Indian-spiced breakfast potatoes won’t only outshine a side of scrapple, but just might be able to get equal billing with the big guns of breakfast. We’re looking at you, Curried Italian Sausage Frittata.
What exactly are Indian-spiced breakfast potatoes?
Firstly, these are home fries at their core, which are simply par-boiled potatoes that are fried and browned in oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Good home fries have some crispiness all over.
A variant of home fries is Potatoes O’Brien, which adds in onions, garlic and peppers that are sautéed with the potatoes.
These Indian-spiced breakfast potatoes combine the two aforementioned methods with some of the flavors of Bombay Aloo. It is an Indian potato dish that uses garam masala, turmeric, mustard seeds and chili powder.
What makes these Indian-spiced breakfast potatoes pop in your mouth?
Garam Masala is an Indian spice blend, and there’s no single recipe because it varies by region.
What’s in garam masala?
Some of the most common blends you’ll find in the store contain:
- Coriander
- Cumin
- Cardamom
- Cloves
- Black Pepper
- Cinnamon
- Nutmeg
We wanted a more pronounced cumin flavor so we opted to add more of it into the base garam masala mix as well as cayenne pepper for some heat.
Making Indian-spiced breakfast potatoes
What’s different about our recipe is that we’ve packed in the exotic flavors of Bombay Aloo with fewer ingredients while keeping the characteristic crispy texture of the home fries.
Infuse the potatoes in the spices through boiling
Partially boiling the potatoes in some of the spices will give them a nice yellow tinge and infuse some of the flavor prior to frying.
The key to making crispy home fries is starch retrogradation
Chilling the potatoes the night before
Boiling the potatoes breaks down the starches. Letting the potatoes chill in the fridge overnight for at least 8 hours allows the starches to form a gel or gelatinize on the surface of the potato. This is a chemical process called retrogradation. The gel is what seals the surface and lets the potatoes brown and crisp nicely in the pan during frying as well as keep their shape.
You can chill for less time, but the gel won’t form as cohesively and you’re going to get mushier hash like potatoes from steam. It still tastes good but the texture isn’t crispy.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this article. As always, comments are welcome and encouraged!
PrintIndian-Spiced Breakfast Potatoes
Our Indian-spiced breakfast potatoes are seasoned with garam masala, cumin and cayenne for a spicy take on the usual home fries.
- Prep Time: *15 min
- Cook Time: 10 min
- Total Time: *25 min
- Yield: 2 to 4 1x
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Pan Frying
- Cuisine: Fusion
Ingredients
- 1 – 1.5 pounds (500-700g) red potatoes or baby red potatoes , with skin on
- 1/2 of a small yellow onion – diced 1/4 inch
- 1/2 of a green pepper– diced 1/4-inch
- 1 tsp minced garlic
- 4 tsp garam masala
- 2 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp cayenne (less if you desire less heat)
- Salt to taste
- 2 tbsps unsalted butter
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 cup water
Instructions
- Mix garam masala, cumin and cayenne in a small bowl.
- Cut potatoes in half lengthwise. Cut each half in two lengthwise, then cut into 2 inch pieces.
- Place potatoes in a large sauce pan and fill with water until covered. Add about a tablespoon of salt to the water.
- Spoon 2/3 of the spice mixture into the saucepan with potatoes and stir. Reserve the remaining 1/3 for frying the potatoes.
- Bring potatoes up to a boil on medium-high heat and boil for 8-10 minutes until you can easily pierce potatoes with knife, but not so soft it falls apart.
- Remove potatoes from heat, drain, and place on plate to cool.
- Once cooled, cover potatoes with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 8 hours for maximum crispiness.
- Remove potatoes from refrigerator and cut each piece in half once more.
- In a 12-inch non-stick frying pan, melt the butter with the olive oil over medium-high heat.
- Once the oil is shimmering, place the potatoes in the pan season with salt. Fry for 3-5 minutes. Then turn the potatoes over and fry for 3-5 minutes more. Keep doing this until most sides of the potatoes are browned.
- Add in the 1/3 remaining spices, garlic, onions and green bell peppers and stir or flip to combine with potatoes.
- Season again with salt and saute. When the onions and peppers begin to brown and lose steam, add in a 1/4 cup of water to help caramelize. Stir or flip everything around and saute until onions have browned and peppers are blistered and soft.
Notes
*If you want a little less heat, adjust the cayenne to your taste!
*Inactive time: It takes about 8 hours to chill potatoes and gelatinize after par-boiling. If you don’t have time to chill them the night before, you can still cook them. The texture will be softer, but they will still taste good.
Keywords: breakfast potatoes, home fries, Indian, breakfast
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