Buckwheat Hash with Bacon & Eggs - (pg 254)

"It's no Oreo cookie" were the first words out of my husband's mouth after his first bite.  Ben proceeded to tell me that this dish had all of his favorite things in it minus the buckwheat.  He thought that adding some paprika or chili flavor would midigate the fact that the grain had no flavor.   Yes, I have one of the best food critics and husband a gal could ask for!  Husband Rating: 2/5 grains.

Would I make this recipe again?  Yes. I ended up buying chopped buckwheat instead of whole so I'll take the blame for not following instructions.  I recommend using whole buckwheat like Sass states.  Next time, I would cook the buckwheat and potatoes seperate.  Due to adding boiling water to the grains and potatoes at the same time, I believe that this caused the dish to lack flavor.  Going foward, I would cook the diced potatoes with the onion and add paprika, basil, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper to give them a nice flavorful coating.  Then, I would mix in the buckwheat. 

On Sunday morning, I fried up the rest of the bacon and ground the remaining buckwheat in my wheat grinder.  I made delicious pancackes using my favorite recipe found on allrecipes.com.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fluffy-Pancakes-2/Detail.aspx -amy

1/23/10

This evening I made the buckwheat hash for dinner and I really, really liked it! I will agree with Amy & Ben, it is in need of more flavor which I would probably achieve by sautéing the potatoes and crisping them up before stirring it into the cooked buckwheat in the end (Karen’s input J).  Lorna’s recipe has you simmer the potatoes and buckwheat together, which means you’ll only use one pan, but doesn’t help flavor either of the ingredients very well.  I added some paprika (thanks for the suggestion Amy!) to the grains and potatoes before the water, but still wasn’t enough to flavor it very well.

This upcoming week in school I have to showcase my amazing breakfast cooking skills…and by amazing I mean I hope I at least pass this portion!  I have a lot to do still to perfect my egg skills.  This recipe looked like a perfect opportunity to practice poaching eggs, which I’ve never done before.  I’m surprised she didn’t suggest that as an option, because it was so good! The poached egg, when broken over top added so much flavor and texture to the hash, it was awesome!  And, who doesn’t like eggs topped with bacon?!  I’ve cooked buckwheat many times, and this recipe far surpasses any of my plain old cooked in salted water and mixed with peas for hot cereal ideas.

Oh and one more thing, Lorna suggested to keep your buckwheat from falling apart, mix it with fat of some kind (butter, egg or bacon grease) before cooking it to help keep it from becoming mushy in the dish.  In this case, the buckwheat is added after you cook the onion in 1 Tbsp of bacon fat which worked perfectly! It stayed together so well.  Thanks for that tip J   Amy, I took a picture of the “raw” buckwheat so you’d see what it should look like when you pick it up from the store!  -Vicki