Herb and garlic purple sweet potato hash browns

I love breakfast. It saddens me to think that there used to be days when I would happily skip breakfast. I love breakfast because it is a meal that can be whatever you make of it. It can be simple, big, sweet, savoury, hot, cold, you just name it and breakfast can deliver. 

Everyone has their own view about breakfast. Some people are quite happy to just eat that one piece of toast with a smear of butter, others will literally feel sick if they eat in the morning and then there are those lucky few who get the time to make a huge breakfast with all the food groups. 

Today was one of those lucky days for me. Since starting this blog, I've found that I am pre-planning a lot of my meals. Last night I had a dig around the kitchen to see what I could muster up for breakfast today. I found some purple sweet potato, which is pretty much a staple food here in my house because we all love carbohydrates and sweet potato is such a good carb (as opposed to white rice for example). 

The purple (Okinawan) sweet potato (and the orange sweet potato for that matter) has far more nutritional benefits than your ordinary white potato (check out more info here and here). For instance, it is high in the antioxidant beta-carotene which is good for preventing cardiovascular disease. Best of all, it tastes great by itself! I normally just steam it and eat it as is. No need for butter or cheese (not that I eat them anyways) to make it taste better like you would for white potatoes. Purple sweet potatoes are filling and taste so good plain. 

With breakfast in my mind, I decided to check out Google for any recipes for purple sweet potato hash browns. Oh man, you think I love breakfast? Well my love for hash browns is just as great. I don't eat hash browns a lot though, because of how unhealthy they are. 

I found a great recipe for sweet potato hash browns from the website Like a Vegan which I tweaked. If you get the chance, check out this website because it has some really fantastic vegan recipes!

Herb and Garlic Hash Browns

Makes 4 hash browns

Ingredients

• 1 large purple sweet potato, peeled
• 1/2 cup wheatgerm or breadcrumbs
• 1 tablespoon mixed dried herbs (I used oregano, thyme, parsley and basil)
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder (optional)
• 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Egg replacer to replace one egg
• 3-4 tablespoons flour (you can use any type. I used wholemeal spelt because it was the only one I had in the pantry)
• 3-4 tablespoons of unsweetened soy milk
• Oil for frying

Method

1. Grate the potatoes 
2. In a bowl, mix in breadcrumbs, herbs, garlic powder, onion powder, nutritional yeast and salt.
3. Add egg replacer and mix until combined.
4. Add enough flour and soy milk to the potato mixture so that you can form a ball in your hands without it falling apart
5. Evenly split the mixture into four and mould into the shape you want. I did rectangles.
6. Heat 1cm oil in a frypan.
7. Add hash brown patties to the pan and press down gently to flatten.
8. Once golden on one side, flip and cook the other side.
9. Drain on paper towel before serving.

The vegan breakfast I made for my dad and I. Normally breakfast for dad will be a bowl of oats, but today was one of those lucky days where I had enough time to whip up something special...and something new :)