By Michaele Garcia
August 28, 2021
As a quick breakfast or snack, avocado toast lives up to its reputation
In this blog you can find an easy, quick avocado toast recipe and ideas of how to prepare the perfect runny egg to top it. There are also other ideas for toasts with delicious toppings to make a complete meal for breakfast, lunch or a light dinner.
Toast
Toast is much more than just a slice of bread with a fruit spread or honey for breakfast. Toast can be the base for a complete meal with delicious toppings for breakfast, lunch or dinner. My German upbringing has a lot to do with my relationship to toast – read on and you’ll find out.
Of course, it is very important to choose the right bread to put into your toaster. I personally like the sprouted bread or sourdough bread I also use for sandwiches or to make my favorite snack for myself, my family or as an appetizer for guests: toast a few slices of bread, slice into strips and serve with spiced olive oil.
Avocados
Avocados are healthy and very versatile. From avocado salad to avocado salsa, they add a creamy richness to many meals. One of my favorite ways to eat avocado is mashed on toast. It has gained huge popularity recently and with good reason. On a slice of healthy bread it is filling, tasty and very satisfying. Best of all: It is quick and easy to make.
Choosing the right avocados
For avocado toast it is important to use avocados with less water content. I love the juicy Florida avocados with their nutty taste, but for mashed avocado I prefer a drier type like Hass avocados. Unfortunately, they do not grow in Florida but most supermarkets have them available. I do not buy my avocados organic due to the thick skin, because the pesticide residues are usually located on the outside of the fruit. You can check the lists of the “clean 15” and “dirty dozen” online. Basically, anything that I eat with skin or that has a very thin skin I try to buy organic, if I can peel off a thick skin I buy non-organic.
Avocado Toast
Avocado toast is not only delicious and healthy but also very versatile. The mashed avocado can simply be put on toasted bread, topped with a runny egg or smoked salmon, sprinkled with sesame and other seeds or be part of a complete sandwich.
This recipe yields spread for 2 to 4 slices of bread, depending on the size of the avocado. It can be prepared in 5 minutes.
Ingredients:
- 1 ripe Hass avocado or other dry type
- Juice of ½ to 1 lime to taste
- Salt and pepper to taste and other favorite spices
- Sliced organic sourdough or sprouted bread
Directions:
Toast the bread and mash up the avocado with the lime juice, salt and pepper. I like to mash it to a point where it still has small chunks of avocado.
Before I smear the avocado mash on the toast I like to drizzle some spiced olive oil (Using Healthy Fats For Delicious Recipes – Foodie With Purpose) on the bread for more taste. It gives it an extra kick and that delicious richness.
Great Meals With Toast
For a perfect breakfast treat, an egg fried in olive or avocado oil or a poached egg (which is my personal favorite) makes the avocado toast a complete and satisfying meal. To make it perfect for me, the egg yolk should be runny and the egg white completely set. There are many ways of making a savory toast, topped with a runny egg, the center of a meal.
I was born and raised in Germany and I have always told my children jokingly that the Germans like to put anything on toast and melt cheese over it. Of course, the more fat content that cheese has, the better it melts. For health reasons I do not melt too much cheese over my toasts any more, although I still like to add goat cheese on occasion. I like to eat toast with a tasty fresh topping and goat cheese adds that rich creamy flavor.
My favorite toasts usually include a poached egg on toasted sourdough bread with any vegetables like, of course, mashed avocado, but also sautéed mushrooms (maybe on top of some thinly sliced chicken breast), spinach or even a bruschetta. We all know the classic poached egg dish Eggs Benedict, but my variation includes smoked salmon on a slice of toasted sourdough bread, poached egg and a home-made blender hollandaise sauce with lime and avocado oil (see my blog https://foodiewithpurpose.com/healthy-blender-bearnaise-hollandaise-and-mayonnaise-and-other-egg-based-sauces/ ). It’s a healthy twist on an otherwise rather unhealthy breakfast food and, in my opinion, even tastier than the original on an English muffin with Canadian bacon and butter hollandaise.
Poached Egg
To make the perfect poached egg, you will need a small saucepan with boiling water and a whole egg which is cracked into a small dish so it can be poured quickly into the water. Before you do that, take a spoon or fork and rapidly swirl the water in the center. It will help keep the egg whites around the egg. Simmer the egg for exactly 3 minutes before carefully lifting it out of the water with a slotted spoon and quickly put on a paper towel before placing on your toast to get rid of all the water. Season with salt and pepper and enjoy!
Fried/steam-basted egg
For me, the perfect fried or poached egg has a completely set egg white and a runny egg yolk. To accomplish that in a fried egg, I prefer the steam-basted method, where you start frying the egg and then add water and cover the pan so the egg is fried and steamed at the same time. This method works for me every time:
Heat a small frying pan over medium to high heat. Add olive or avocado oil and put one egg in the pan to fry. As soon as the egg white starts to set on the edges, carefully pour a tablespoon of water around the edges and cover immediately. Let simmer for 2 minutes. Open the lid and check the egg and make sure the entire egg white has set. If not, cover again and simmer for 10 more seconds. It overcooks quickly, so do not give it too much time.
Other Toast Ideas
Take it from a German-American: The possibilities to create tasty toast varieties for a complete meal are endless. Famous examples found in any country restaurant in Germany are Toast Hawaii with ham and a slice of pineapple and melted cheese (that’s probably why Hawaiian pizza never sounded strange to me), Hunters Toast with or without a slice of meat with a mushroom ragout and – you might have guessed – melted cheese. Of course, the melted cheese helps to keep all the toppings in place and not fall off the toast as you cut into it.
Since I usually do not eat cheese for health reasons, I like to add other ingredients to help keep my toppings from falling off my toast. Two favorites are pesto and hummus. Spreading some pesto on a slice of bread or toast by itself is already a treat and not much else is needed. If I have fresh pesto on hand, which happens a lot, I like to use it as a spread on any sandwich instead of butter, to which I only have to add some tomatoes and maybe a few leaves of spinach. For the meat enthusiasts, a few slices of thinly cut red meat or chicken, or even flaked cooked salmon are great.
Hummus on the other hand can be quite bland on a toast and is complemented well with some roasted vegetables on top with maybe a touch of tahini sauce.
The typical Italian bruschetta is toasted bread with a drizzle of olive oil and garlic rubbed on it. Then it is often topped with tomatoes and herbs. I prefer mine with a little bit of goat cheese and any Italian herbs I have available, either fresh or just an Italian spice mix. As expected, a lot of the tomatoes will fall off the bread the moment it is slightly tilted, but the taste is definitely worth the balancing act.
I hope that you see how versatile and delicious toast can be and how easy it can be to quickly create a healthy meal without much cooking. Add a small salad, depending on the topping you use, and you have a complete meal.
I will have recipes for my favorite pesto and hummus creations in the future. Stay tuned!