Smoked Salmon Breakfast Toast Recipe

Sometimes a good breakfast makes all the difference in your outlook on the day ahead, and starting the morning off with this smoked salmon breakfast toast seems like it could almost guarantee you a good day. Not because this multi-textured, tangy, and filling meal has magical qualities, but simply because it's impossible to be in a bad mood after eating something so delicious.

As the recipe developer behind At the Immigrant's Table, I love a good, complex, and layered avocado toast for breakfast. The breakfast avocado toast had a long and proud tradition in Australia well before it made its way to Instagram feeds in North America. The inspiration for this smoked salmon breakfast toast came from my travels along the Gold Coast in Australia, where I tasted this exact combination in a little coffee shop around Burleigh Heads. It stuck with me for years, and I make it at home for myself when I want a slightly involved, but very impressive breakfast.

The crunch of lightly buttered, golden-toasted sourdough slices is the perfect base for creamy, lightly seasoned mashed avocado. Top it with silky smooth slices of salty smoked salmon, and a perfectly poached egg, give it a boost of acidity from quick-pickled onion and capers, freshness from dill, and a touch of everything-bagel seasoning, and you've got yourself the perfect layered avocado breakfast toast. Just stock up on the napkins because it's going to get messy!

Start with making the pickled red onions, for which you'll need red wine vinegar, sugar, sea salt, and thinly sliced red onion. For the avocado toast itself, assemble white vinegar for poaching, large eggs, sourdough bread, butter, a ripe avocado, garlic, red pepper flakes, fresh lemon juice, sea salt, black pepper, smoked salmon, capers, everything bagel seasoning, fresh dill, and fleur de sel for finishing.

Combine the red wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons water, sugar, and salt in a small bowl. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

Add the sliced red onion and toss to coat. Let the onions sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, or refrigerate them up to 3 days.

Bring a pot of water to a gentle simmer. Add the white vinegar.

Crack each egg into a small cup, then gently slide them into the simmering water. Poach for 3-4 minutes until the whites are set but the yolk remains runny. Remove with a slotted spoon.

While the eggs poach, toast the sourdough slices until golden. Butter each slice immediately.

Cut the avocados in half, scoop the flesh into a bowl, and mash it with a fork. Fold in the garlic, red pepper flakes, lemon juice, sea salt, and black pepper until combined but still chunky.

Divide the avocado mixture evenly between the toast slices.

Top each toast with 2 ounces of smoked salmon, arranged in folds. Carefully place one poached egg on top of each toast.

Drain the pickled red onions and scatter them over eggs. Top with the capers, everything bagel seasoning, red pepper flakes, and fresh dill. Finish with fleur de sel.

Serve immediately.

• Simple Fruit Salad With Honey-Lime Dressing Recipe
• Simple Home Fries Recipe
• Sweet and Spicy Cowboy Bacon Recipe
• Homemade Horchata Iced Coffee Recipe
• DIY Deluxe Pistachio Latte Recipe

There are plenty of methods for poaching eggs, and everyone seems to have their foolproof advice. Over the years of making poached eggs, including one memorable pop-up breakfast where I poached eggs for 50 people at once, I've tried most of them and have my few favorite tips and tricks to.

The one thing I'll advise is that you avoid adding salt to your poaching water, which can cause the eggs to become stringy and ruin your perfect breakfast. Start with the freshest eggs you can find, because they'll hold together more firmly. Make sure your water is at a gentle simmer and not a rolling boil, then add a splash of regular white vinegar to the water. This helps the whites firm up faster around the yolks and if you only add a splash, it won't impact the flavor.

To avoid messing up your eggs, crack each one into a ramekin separately and then slide that into the water. I avoid poaching more than 2-4 eggs at a time, depending on the size of the pot. Then, once in, leave the eggs alone for 3-4 minutes, and no more. Lift them out with a slotted spoon and slide them onto a plate, where you can gently blot them with a paper towel to avoid making your toast soggy. And that's it, you've got perfect poached eggs!

I find the flavor combination in this breakfast toast to be just right, but some mornings, I can't help myself from playing with it further. So if you're in a tinkering mood, here are some ideas for adaptations you can make to this smoked salmon breakfast toast.

First, if I want a more decadent breakfast, I serve this concoction on a bagel. For a lighter gluten-free option, I love a good crunchy rice cake — it actually works really well for soaking up the runny yolk. For the mashed avocado, I sometimes opt for guacamole, which has more flavor, and then make sure to sprinkle some Tajin on top of the toast instead of the everything-bagel seasoning. You can also work with plain avocado slices, in which case I sprinkle some dukkah on top of the toast instead of the seasoning.

If you don't want to pickle your own onions, or don't love capers, use regular onions along with a couple of gherkin or cornichon slices for acidity. And if a poached egg isn't really your thing, a soft fried egg with a barely set yolk works just as well. All of these combinations still help maintain the sour-creamy-salty nature of this open-faced sandwich, but still give you plenty of variety to work with.

• 3-Ingredient Tomato and Burrata Toast Recipe
• Savory Cacio e Pepe French Toast With Jammy Tomatoes Recipe
• Oeufs Jeanette-Inspired Egg Toasts Recipe
• Everything Bagel Cream Cheese Rolls Recipe
• Gluten-Free Everything Bagels Recipe
• Bagel and Lox-Style Avocado Egg Bake Recipe