15 Ways To Eat Potatoes For Breakfast

Filling, savory, and full of nutrients, potatoes are an ideal breakfast food. Potatoes boast high concentrations of antioxidants and vitamins such as vitamins C and B6, especially if the nutrient-rich skins are left on. Potatoes are also a significant source of good gut bacteria that can aid in the digestion process. And as if that weren't enough, studies have found that potatoes might help us regulate our blood sugar content, which means that eating potatoes in the morning can help us manage any hunger pangs that might occur later in the day.

Hunger pangs can take place in response to a sudden drop in insulin, which regulates blood sugar, and this is especially true for people living with diabetes. In short, if you want to start your day on the right foot, without getting too hungry, too soon, eat potatoes. Luckily, potatoes come in so many tasty varieties at breakfast, from latkes to hash. Let's take a look at some of the best ways to eat potatoes for breakfast.

Unless you're content with just eating boxed cereal every day of your sad life, you probably already know all about the wonders of hash browns. This all-around favorite breakfast food is made of shredded potatoes that have been fried until browned and crispy, sometimes with onions and various spices. But if you've ever bit into a forkful of hash browns and found part of it to be a little cold and slimy, you'll know that evenly cooked hash browns are not all that easy to pull off. To avoid this sorry fate, we recommend following a few key steps.

First, and counterintuitively, try not to stir the potatoes around once they're in the pan, as this risks leaving them limp. Instead, wait until they harden enough to flip, even if it has to happen in sections. Second, be sure to use the right pan. A nonstick or cast-iron pan will allow your potatoes the alone time they need to get nice and crispy without letting them stick to the bottom and become impossible to scrape off.

We've already established that hash browns are amazing, but they're even better with cheese. Enter this delicious hash brown and cheese breakfast casserole. The beauty of this recipe is that you can make it ahead of time and heat it up in the microwave after storing it in the fridge or freezer in individualized portions. This, of course, means you get to sleep in on hash brown casserole mornings.

To make it, simply combine 32 ounces of thawed shredded frozen hash browns, a can of cream of chicken soup, 1 cup of chopped onions, 2 cups of cheddar cheese, half a stick of melted butter, and black pepper, and pour everything into a prepared baking dish. Top with even more cheese, because it's best to err on the side of including as much cheese as possible, and bake for 50 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You may have noticed that this recipe doesn't call for salt. This is a good thing — between the cheese and the pre-seasoned cream of chicken soup, there will be plenty of sodium in this casserole to go around.

This typical Spanish treat may look like a simple omelet or quiche, but the leading ingredients are potatoes, olive oil, and onions, with eggs taking a back seat to the operation. Prepare a Spanish omelet or tortilla española by frying the potatoes, onions, and some garlic in a pan with plenty of olive oil. Once the items are cooked through, but not yet browned, mix them thoroughly with beaten eggs. Pour the entire mixture into a pan and let it cook until the bottom is set but the top is still wet. Using a heatproof plate, flip the tortilla in its entirety, then cook the other side until browned. The result should be a potato tortilla that is golden on the outside and creamy on the inside.

The secret to a good Spanish omelet is the olive oil. Select good quality oil and use it between each step in the preparation process. Yukon gold potatoes are ideal for this recipe, but if you want to get creative, you can try using purple potatoes for a dash of color. If time is not on your side, a quicker version of this dish can skip the potato prep and use leftover thick-cut fries or frozen steak fries in lieu of fresh potatoes.

Pancakes are a delicious American breakfast staple, but there are next to no nutrients in a typical batch of pancake batter. Not so with our sweet potato pancake recipe. In fact, sweet potatoes are jam-packed with vitamin A, vitamin C, and manganese, as well as antioxidants that studies suggest might help fight cancer cell growth. So why not take advantage of all that healthfulness in your morning routine?

All you have to do is swap flour, milk, butter, sugar, and a rising agent for nothing more than a handful of sweet potatoes and just as many eggs. The process is simple: Cook your sweet potato in whichever way you choose — microwaving, boiling, baking — then mash up the insides and combine them with one egg per potato. Then plop patties of your mixture onto a frying pan as you would with regular pancakes. After that, these pancakes are at your mercy. Add cinnamon, maple syrup, fresh fruit, or whichever toppings you prefer for the perfect pancake morning.

Potatoes can be mashed, roasted, fried, and grated in all sorts of ways, each time transforming into something that looks, feels, and sometimes tastes completely different from its other iterations. One such variation is the potato roll, made with mashed potatoes, which come out of the oven looking like bona fide dinner rolls.

To prepare this feat of culinary magic, boil and mash your potatoes, preserving a bit of your cooking water. Then mix these two ingredients with yeast, sugar, flour, softened butter, salt, lemon juice, and eggs. From then on, treat your concoction like regular bread dough and knead it, let it rise a couple of times, and bake it in rolls at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes. After brushing them with butter and topping them with sea salt flakes, you can serve your potato rolls with any of the main breakfast staples. They're especially good for scraping up the gooey yolk of a sunny-side-up egg.

Smoothies, as standalone meals, can sometimes feel a bit feeble, leaving you hungry and unfulfilled, aching for a snack. Adding sweet potatoes to a smoothie, though, changes everything.

Start by gathering your ingredients around your blender. You're going to need frozen sweet potato cubes, dates, bananas, a milk of your choice, Greek yogurt, almond butter, vanilla extract, and spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and ground cloves. Blend everything for about two minutes, or until completely smooth. And believe it or not, that's all it takes to create a healthy, well-balanced breakfast. The vitamins in the fruit and root will give you a good boost, while the starchiness from the sweet potato will keep your tummy feeling full all morning. Not to mention that this particular smoothie is also travel-friendly. Pack it up and bring it to the gym for a pre-workout pick-me-up, or sip it in the car as you drive to work.

If you ever get tired of bacon or sausage — not that you ever would — you can always sub in chorizo as your go-to breakfast meat. To that end, we have the ideal chorizo hash and eggs recipe.

After cooking up your fresh chorizo in a skillet, use the same implement to sauté the onions and minced cilantro stems. This step is key: If you change pans, you could be forfeiting the delicious rendered fat that comes from heating up semicured or raw chorizo. Using the same pan for everything will help give depth of flavor to your dish while using the chorizo to maximum effect. Next, add the grated potatoes with some butter and cook until the mixture is golden brown, after which it's time to add the peppers. Last, but not least, create a few wells in the potatoes and drop in some eggs, then cook them to gooey perfection.