Breakfast Potatoes with Asparagus and Egg

Roasted potatoes with garlic, lemon, and fresh herbs, topped with asparagus, soft boiled eggs and prosciutto make this the perfect savoury breakfast or brunch meal.

I don’t know about you, but I absolutely love potatoes. They are one of my favourite foods, and I find them acceptable for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And while they are super versatile, nothing really compares to a crispy roast potato that crunches on the outside and is soft and fluffy on the inside.

While I’ve always enjoyed roast potatoes as an accompaniment to lunch or dinner, my love of roast potatoes for breakfast began with my first Whole30 round. With regular breakfast foods no longer an option, I began eating a combination of roasted veggies and eggs. To this day, even when I am not on the diet I still enjoy starting the day with this meal.

Today’s recipe began with that idea, but then got elevated to the point that I would be seriously happy to serve this up at a family brunch. And while it looks pretty impressive, it is really not that complicated to create.

How to get crispy roast potatoes?

The first element in this dish, and the foundation, is the crispy roasted potatoes. The key to getting your potatoes crisp comes down to just a couple of things, olive oil and a hot oven.

But the secret to making sure the inside is fluffy? That is where par boiling the potatoes first comes in.

Chop up your potatoes into even sizes (for baby white potatoes I halve or quarter them) and add to a large pot. Add enough water to cover them and put on the stove to boil. Once the water is boiling you only need to cook them for 5-10 minutes depending on size – just until a fork can easily move through but not so far as they get mushy (like you would when making mash).

Once just cooked, drain the potatoes and add to a large bowl. This is when I add the juice and zest of a lemon, some crushed garlic, fresh thyme, salt and a generous glug or two of olive oil. Toss everything together and spread out evenly on a baking tray. This is important as you want to make sure each potato is touching the tray and that it isn’t over crowded.

Place in a hot oven and let cook for 30 minutes. My trick here is to not touch them for this time. What that will do is let the oil do it’s thing and with the lemon juice it will start to form this dark crust around the potato that is touching the pan, and this my friends is pure crispy flavour!

After 30 minutes you can turn them as you add in your asparagus on top and bake for another 10 minutes to finish everything off.

Top with your eggs and some prosciutto and your done!

How to get perfectly soft boiled eggs?

Perfectly soft boiled eggs have always eluded me but when putting this recipe together I decided it was time to finally learn.

I found this video tutorial insanely helpful, so if you have any issues with getting your eggs right every time, I would suggest checking this video out. You really can learn anything on YouTube!

The basics of it are this; add your eggs to already boiling water.

This blew my mind as my whole life I had been told that eggs must be added to cold water to prevent cracking. But when you do this, you can’t control how long the water in the pot will take to come to boil as there are so many variables (pot size, water temp, pot material) that impact timing. Therefore, you never actually know how long you are cooking your eggs for. Makes sense right?

So, how do you prevent cracking when adding eggs to boiling water? Just get the eggs out of the fridge a bit early and let them warm up on the bench. I got my eggs out when I put the potatoes in the oven and started cooking them after I added the asparagus to the oven. This was perfect timing.

Once you add your eggs to the boiling water (carefully) set a timer for 7 minutes, and remove the eggs straight into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. This was the perfect time for me to get the whites fully cooked and the yolks soft and jammy. But play around with times based on how you like your yolks. If you want them a bit runnier – 6 minutes may work better for you.

This recipe is really about two key techniques of soft boiled eggs and crispy roast potatoes, while the prosciutto and asparagus round out the flavours and bring everything together. Make sure to add the prosciutto directly on top of the hot potatoes as the heat melts the fat and slightly cooks the prosciutto making it seriously delicious.

This is a serve it in the tray in the middle of the table type dish, where everyone gets a bit of everything and everyone is fighting over the crunchy little bits of potato sticking to the bottom of the tray.

It’s the perfect meal to entertain with as it caters to different diets being Whole30, paleo and dairy-free. If you want it to be suitable for vegetarians or vegans, simply omit the prosciutto.

I hope you agree that this is the perfect savoury breakfast or brunch and a great opportunity to sneak more veggies into your morning in a super delicious way.

If you do make this recipe, please be sure to leave a comment and rating below! And tag any of your creations on Instagram with #eightforestlane as I would love to see.