Veggie Fritter Eggs Benedict is a fun garden twist on traditional Eggs Benedict
I love eggs benedict, and I love serving it over a veggie fritter. Fritters are easier to cut through than English muffins, and they contribute their own savory deliciousness to the meal. Veggie fritters also add a healthy dose of vegetables to a hearty breakfast.
Eggs benedict can be a time consuming process to make, at least relative to most other breakfast foods. I’ve included some tips below to speed up the process, but I also recommend scaling this meal to multiple people. If you make this meal for multiple people, the cook time becomes pretty reasonable.
Use squash fritters in your Veggie Fritter Eggs Benedict
If you haven’t, you should check out my squash fritter recipe. They’re super easy to make and can be pretty versatile (such as being used as the base of this meal.) If you’re taking squash from a garden, the fritters are next to free, and even at the store summer squash are pretty cheap to make.
I actually prefer reheating my fritters in the oven over freshly made ones, as the oven tends to make them extra crispy.
If you don't have squash fritters, try squash hash
If you don’t have squash fritters, you should check out my recipe and make some! It’s not terribly hard and you’ll get a second breakfast out of the process.
If you don’t want to make fritters first, you can still make this veggie fritter eggs benedict on the fly with a squash hash. Think of it like hash browns made with grated squash. Mix ½ lb of grated squash, ½ cup of flour, and 1 egg. Spread it out over a hot, oiled pan and cook them like hash browns, aka, fry them until golden. Then proceed with the recipe as normal.
Hollandaise sauce: mix or from scratch?
While it feels less than authentic to use a mix packet for your hollandaise sauce, I strongly recommend it. There’s no harm in making the sauce from scratch, but it’s very involved and will likely taste about the same as a mix packet.
Anecdotally, I find hollandaise sauce reminds me of carbonara sauce. Both are primarily egg and butter sauces.
Egg poaching tips
While basic egg preparation is one of the easiest things people are taught when learning to cook, poached eggs are tricky. Here are some helpful tips on egg poaching:
- Make a tornado/cyclone before dropping the egg. We want the whites of the egg to stay with the egg yolk. By spinning the water, the whites will wrap around the yolk as they cook, keeping the whole egg together.
- Don’t boil the water too hard. A roaring boil is more likely to break the egg apart than make a pretty poached egg.
- Don’t boil the water too softly. You should target a nice medium rate of boil. Boiling too softly will result in the egg taking too long to cook, and again causes it to come out messy.
What if I don’t have Canadian bacon?
Most people don’t just have Canadian bacon laying around. It works really well for this meal, and is the traditional meat used. That said, this meal works perfectly fine with a wide range of meals. Consider trying:
- Regular bacon: Fried crispy it will crumble and mix with the sauce and egg, fried softly and the bacon will behave similarly to Canadian bacon.
- Lunchmeat ham: if you don’t have Canadian bacon, a slice or two of ham will work just fine and you probably won’t notice the difference.
- Breakfast sausage: You could slip a sausage patty into this meal and it’ll work perfectly. Think “egg mcmuffin” with Hollandaise sauce.
How to make Veggie Fritter Eggs Benedict
Veggie Fritter Eggs Benedict
Equipment
- 1 Pot
- 1 pan
Ingredients
- 2 large/extra large eggs
- 2 slices Canadian bacon
- 1 packet Knorr Hollandaise Sauce Mix (or other brands)
- 1 cup milk
- ¼ cup butter or margarine (I used Country Crock)
- basil leaves optional garnish
- smoked paprika optional garnish/spice
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425F. Bake the frozen squash fritters for 20 minutes, flipping after 10 minutes.
- Bring a pot of water deep enough to contain an egg to a steady, medium boil. It shouldn’t be too rough, or the egg will fall apart.
- While the water comes to a boil and the fritters bake, fry the 2 slices of Canadian bacon until both sides are lightly browned. Set aside
- In a small saucepan, combine Knorr Hollandaise mix, milk, and butter or margarine. Cook until it boils, then reduce heat and stir occasionally. It will thicken within 1 minute after boiling, but you can reduce the heat to keep it hot until the eggs are done.
- Break each egg into an individual ramekin.
- In the pot of boiling water, stir a spoon so that the water looks like a tornado. Drop one egg into the water, and poach for 1 minute. Using a slotted spoon, remove the cooked egg to a bowl. Repeat this process with the second egg.
- To assemble the eggs benedict, first place the fritters side by side on a plate. Top the fritters with 1 piece of Canadian bacon per fritter, then 1 egg each. Finally, cover both assembled benedicts with Hollandaise sauce. You can eat now, or top with smoked paprika and basil. Enjoy 🙂