First off, it was time to dust off the old waffle maker. I thought I'd only use this once but I have made waffles TWICE now and then, of course, last night for our hash brown waffles.
Before getting to waffles though, I decided to throw the bacon on in the background. I really just adore this thick cut, high quality bacon from Costco. I mean, look at it. I'ts gorgeous.
Mmmm bacon...
So now for the rest of the mis en place. The sweet potatoes were also going to need some prep.
While they can be shredded with the skin on, I find that it ends up messing up the grates and just gets in the way so I always peel mine first.
The best way to get hash browns from fresh potatoes is to just grate them in a cheese grater. I do have to say, this is much harder than grating cheese and will take a while. I'm not sure if a mandolin with a grate die would be better. My grater has more surface area than my mandolin so I feel like it would be more efficient.
So I'm not going to lie - steps like grating often get passed off to my boyfriend sous chef. It allows me to focus more on cooking and more complicated cuts. If you have a roommate or significant other who eats your food, I think it's totally fair to recruit them to help out with easy tasks in the kitchen.
While he grated, I was able to take on the awful task of cutting jalapenos. One of my readers offered to send me gloves, but I haven't taken her up on that yet so I'm stuck trying to cut them using a paper towel to keep from touching them.
But the risk of jalapeno hands and burning my eyes when I take out my contacts is totally worth it.
So now that prep is done - let's make some waffles. I knew I'd have to grease my iron for these and also have some sort of fat to help bind the potato a bit. I used grass fed butter for this...
And then just brushed it on!
Then I just threw my grated sweet potato into the waffle maker. It was actually pretty tough to determine how much to put in. I found the best results came from filling the waffle maker to the waffle to the point where it closed, but barely.
The steam coming from the maker was a little concerning, but it worked out alright.
And in case you were wondering about the cheese, my skilled grater was also taking care of that in the background while I was tending waffles.
The first waffle I made turned out the best for sure. However, they were bound very well and were very difficult to get out. My best solution was to flip the waffle maker upside and shake it to get them out. This isn't ideal and probably isn't safe. I would actually recommend tossing an egg into the sweet potato gratings to act as a binder.
Next up was dressing the waffle! Since it would be a sandwich, I only put cheese, bacon, and jalapeno on one side and just folded it over...
...as such. However, this wouldn't melt the cheese.
So I tossed them back into the pan where the bacon was cooked. This melted the cheese and also imparted a little more bacon flavor. Basically, win win.
And this was the result!!! The waffles I made for Dan turned out way better than my own. However, he went jalapeno free so I feel like while the pictures of his sandwiches were prettier, mine were more complete. Frankly though, pretty plates are nice but I want something that tastes awesome.
We are definitely making these again though! It was just awesome to make some (if I'm honest here) total junk food dinner made completely out of whole, non-processed, paleo & primal (aka the cheese and butter) ingredients. Sweet potatoes, bacon, and jalapeno are obviously paleo. For the dairy, everything I used was organic and grass fed so I really aimed to pick the best options. It's just further proof that you can eat delicious foods that don't appear traditionally "healthy" but frankly, are way better for you than any store-bought, processed items filled with chemicals.
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