Recipe #3: Potato Chip Omelette

This was the recipe that almost wasn’t. I hadn’t been feeling well all day, which doesn’t lend itself to wanting to meal plan for a week let alone research something new to cook. This also was complicated by the fact I have yet to go grocery shopping for the week so options were already limited.

We got home and Matt immediately had to head out to the Karate Studio for his belt ceremony (He’s Green-Black now! Yay!!!). So I just crashed on the couch and checked facebook. A friend mentioned he was having a cheese omelette for dinner (because really, what else do we all do with social media besides tell people what we are eating. Instagram was built on pictures of coffee and scones.) I commented that I was going to follow him down that path. So I did a quick search to see if there was anything interesting I could do with an omelette and limited supplies.  Might as well get a post out of it if I could…

Matt gets home and at this point, at this point I have decided I’m going to just go basic. I tell him I looked to see if there was anything new, and one thing sounded interesting but I just wasn’t sure. My description, “Well it was on the line of ‘that’s so crazy it might just work’ and just bad.” Matt asks, “What was it?”. “An omelette with potato chips in it…” “How could that be bad?! That sounds awesome!” So….

 
Potato Chip Omelette

Recipe: The idea came from Potato Chip Omelette but I used Alton Brown’s cooking methods opposed to this recipe.

Now this is a standard omelette but you literally just add potato chips to it. We still had some Salt and Vinegar Kettle Chips leftover from New Years Eve so I just used those. After you break the eggs up a little, add a handful or two of potato chips. Then continue to beat, breaking up the potato pieces a bit more. Then pour into your skillet and cook like you normally would. (If you have never cooked an omelette, check out Alton Brown’s tips here. It’s very simple.) The only step I did differently from Alton’s methods was the final flip. The potato chips make the omelette “bulkier” than normal so you can’t manipulate it in the pan as easily. So I just threw my extra toppings (cheese and some thick cut bacon pieces) on top and threw it under the broiler for maybe 30 seconds to finish it. When the cheese is melted and the top is set but not dry, take it out. If you wait until eggs look cooked in the pan, they will be overcooked on the plate. At that point, give the pan a shake to loosen the omelette and let it slide out and fold it on to a plate.

We were expecting more crunch to it but what you end up with is almost sliced potato in the eggs. Telling my friend Cathy about it this morning, she commented that you could pretty much throw this in a tortilla with some salsa for a breakfast burrito. She’s absolutely right!

A few thoughts:

1) I would use kettle chips, they are thicker and soak up more egg creating more of that slice potato texture I mentioned. I feel something like Lays might just get lost, but this is just a theory, when you are doing a pantry raid you use what you got.

2) This bulks up the omelette to a surprising degree, so decrease your normal omelette by one egg. I normally make 3 eggs, this would have been plenty with 2.

3) Account for salty chips when salting your eggs. Thankfully, this wasn’t an issue, but it’s worth mentioning.

So there you have it, a great pantry raid meal! And an excellent way to use up stale potato chips!