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Start your day with this hearty and healthy Brussel Sprout Hash! I love starting my day with a serving of vegetables, and this dish is full of them! Potatoes, mushroom, and Brussel sprouts topped with crispy pancetta, and over-easy eggs! The whole family will love this one!

Several months ago I was out to breakfast with some friends from work and ordered a vegetable hash. My favorite thing to do at a new restaurant is explore the menu for items that feel new or sound unusual. The idea of adding Brussel sprouts to hash had me intrigued, so of course, it was what I ordered, taking care to save enough to take home and pick apart to determine what I liked best about the recipe. Using that dish as my inspiration and the potato and onion dish my mother, Trudy, made when I was a child as the base, this one has quickly become a family favorite.

The potatoes might be the hardest part to get right in this recipe. Once you do it the first time, it will make sense and you will move through this step quickly. For anyone that has ever made roasted potatoes or french fries probably learned, to get that brown, extra crispy exterior potatoes should be cooked twice. The goal is to par-boil them first, then slice and pan fry as the base of the hash. Parboiling is simply partially boiling, or precooking. I like to do the parboiling step the night before, then the potatoes have time overnight to dry and completely cool before they get peeled and sliced. This will also speed up the time it takes to get the hash completed the next day.

Yum pancetta - I love it as a base for pasta, soup, and vegetable dishes! High-quality pancetta is not too easy to find where we currently live. Fortunately, when my mother-in-law knows we're coming for a visit she'll stock up and purchase 1/4 pound chunks for me to bring home and hoard in my freezer for special dishes like this one. If you’re not familiar with pancetta, you could easily substitute bacon or ham in this recipe. Similar to bacon, frying the pancetta will render out the fat and leave a lot of flavor in the pan to build upon when you start to fry the potatoes.

The first time I tested this recipe I intentionally chopped all the vegetables into large pieces. Not being too confident that the family would embrace the Brussel sprout for breakfast. I thought at least if they weren’t sure, they could pick around them, which I have to admit a few of them did the first time. I was not willing to give up on the flavor or the beauty that the Brussel sprout adds to this dish. On the third attempt, I added the over-easy eggs on top of the hash instead of serving alongside the hash. That warm, runny, egg seemed to be all the incentive they needed to gobble up all of the hash including the Brussel sprouts! Vegetables for the win!

I hope you try this one and please leave in the Brussel sprouts! Just remember - parboil the potatoes, brown them in the pancetta (or bacon) grease until they are crispy and layer on the vegetables! Please don’t forget that sunny side up or over-easy egg on the top!

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