What to Cook With One Egg and One Potato

It is 8 pm, the fridge has one egg, one potato and half an onion, and nobody wants to order in. If you are wondering what to cook with one egg and one potato, the honest answer is that the egg is the garnish and the potato is the dinner. Once you see it that way, the list opens up.

Here are five plates, from fastest to most filling, plus the mistakes that turn this kind of dinner into a pan of grey mush.

First, decide what the egg is for

One egg cannot be the main protein for a person, so give it a different job. It can be:

• a binder, where it holds mashed potato together in a patty,
• a topping, where a single boiled egg is halved over a potato mash,
• a thickener, where it is scrambled into a spiced base so it coats every bite.

Pick one job and cook toward it. Trying to make "egg curry for one" from a single egg usually leaves you with one lonely yolk floating in a lot of gravy.

Plate one: aloo bhorta with a halved egg (about 25 minutes)

Bhorta is the Bengali habit of mashing something with raw onion, green chilli, salt and mustard oil. Our potato bhorta takes about 25 minutes in total, and egg bhorta takes about 17.

Boil the potato whole in its skin until a knife slides in with no resistance, usually 20 to 25 minutes for a medium one, around 200 g (7 oz). Boil the egg for 10 minutes, the same time our aloo anday recipe uses, then cool it in cold water. Peel both, mash the potato with chopped onion, chilli, salt and a teaspoon of oil, and put the halved egg on top.

Opinion: use mustard oil raw here if you have it. It is sharp and a little goes a long way, so start with half a teaspoon.

Plate two: a one-egg potato scramble (about 20 minutes)

This is the closest thing to a real meal. Cube the potato small, about 1 cm (a bit under half an inch), and fry it in 1 tablespoon of oil with a lid on for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring now and then, until a cube squashes easily. Add chopped onion, a pinch of turmeric and salt for 3 minutes. Push everything to the side, pour in the beaten egg and stir it into the potatoes until it is fully set, with no wet egg left.

The method borrows from our anday ka khagina, which scrambles eggs into onion, tomato and cumin. If you have half a tomato, add it with the onion.

Plate three: potato curry with an egg dropped in

If you have a little more patience, treat it like a tiny aloo anday. The recipe on this site makes a masala of onion, tomato, turmeric and chilli, adds cubed potato with a cup of water, and covers it to cook until tender, about 15 minutes. At the end it adds halved boiled eggs and simmers 5 minutes so they take up the gravy.

For one egg, scale the masala down to a quarter: about 1 small onion, 1 small tomato and half a teaspoon of chilli powder. Cook the potato in about 1 cup (240 ml) of water. Bring it up to a gentle bubble before the egg goes in, not a hard boil.

Plate four: the egg-and-potato patty

Mash 1 boiled potato with a beaten raw egg, chopped onion, a little chilli and salt. If the mix is too wet, add a spoon of flour or a handful of breadcrumbs. Shape two small patties and shallow-fry them in a thin film of oil, about 3 to 4 minutes a side.

Wet potato is the usual failure. If the mash steams after you drain it, let it sit in the open pot for a few minutes so the surface dries before you mix in the egg. The raw egg in the mix is fine here because the patty is cooked through, but check the middle is hot before you serve it.

Plate five: potato omelette for the lazy night

An omelette like our simple omelette cooks in about 10 minutes. For this version, microwave or boil half the potato in thin slices first, because raw potato will not soften in the 2 or 3 minutes an omelette needs. Fold the slices into the beaten egg with chopped green chilli and onion, and cook on a medium flame with a lid so the top sets.

One egg makes a thin omelette. Add a splash of water or milk, about 1 tablespoon, to stretch it slightly, and serve it with a slice of bread or a roti.

Mistakes with a short ingredient list

• Skipping the salt on the potato. A potato boiled in unsalted water tastes flat however much masala follows. Salt the water.
• Crowding the pan. One potato in a big pan browns. Three potatoes in a small pan steam.
• Under-cooking the egg to be safe-looking. Keep eggs cooked until the white and yolk are set, especially if children or older relatives are eating.
• Reheating a potato and egg dish more than once. Refrigerate leftovers within about an hour and eat them within a day, heated until steaming hot.

A quick table to pick by time

If you would rather not do this arithmetic every night, you can tick off what is in your kitchen in the Degchi pantry try-out and see which dishes match, no sign-up needed.