Beet and Golden Potato Hash with Maple Mustard Glazed Chicken Sausage

Ingredients:

• 3 small golden potatoes, peeled and diced [From Van Dessel Farms, Accomack, VA]
• 2 beets, peeled and diced [Also from Van Dessel Farms]
• ½ an onion, diced
• ¼ teaspoon fresh thyme
• ¼ teaspoon fresh oregano
• 3 links of chicken sausage (I used chicken and apple sausages)

• 1 ½ tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 ½ tablespoons mustard
• ¾ tablespoon apple cider vinegar

• A pinch (or two) of salt
• A dash (or two) of olive oil

• Plus: 2 eggs

Start by peeling and dicing the onion, beets, and potatoes. This took a lot longer than I thought it would, since I diced them up to be quite small (maybe ¼-inch cubes, or at least shapes vaguely reminiscent of cubes). I also used four potatoes instead of three, but found that that made for too many (see note below concerning meltdowns).

Once you’ve finished chopping, heat a dash (or two) of olive oil in a medium-large saucepan. Sautée the onions over medium heat, and once they’re slightly underdone, add the potatoes and beets with the thyme, oregano, and  a couple pinches of salt. Cover the pan and stir occasionally until the beets are tender and the potatoes have a nice golden-brown crisp to them.

While the beets and potatoes are cooking, stir the maple syrup, mustard, and sausages in a small bowl. I chopped my sausages into fairly large pieces, but it might work better if you take the sausage out of the casing and mix it that way. This will make the sausage pieces closer to the size of your beets and potatoes. When your beets and potatoes have cooked a little further (but aren’t quite finished), use a separate pan to sautée the sausages. If you have extra glaze mixture, you can save it to throw onto the hash when you’ve mixed it all together.

Once the sausages are cooked and the potatoes and beets are crispy on the outside, add the sausages to the hash and toss it together over medium-low heat, adding any extra mustard sauce. While the flavors of the hash are coming together, poach your two eggs (or three or however many you want). I like them poached both because poached is the best way to eat eggs and because the light creaminess of the poached egg balances out the sharpness of the mustard and the earthiness of the beets.

Place your egg on top of (or alongside, I’m not trying to tell you how to live your #life) the hash and enjoy! (Get it? It’s a HASHtag!)

Note: If you’re looking for something a little extra to add to your hash, a hollandaise sauce might make a nice addition. Use it instead of or in addition to the mustard glaze. It (hopefully) should complement the beets and sausages nicely.

(You’ll have to excuse my great lack of skill in the photography department. Not only am I working with my tiny/outdated cell phone camera and poor kitchen lighting, but I also don’t entirely have the artistic eye for food photos. Yet.)

For this recipe, I used two ingredients that came in my produce bag: beets and golden potatoes, both from Van Dessel Farms in Accomack, VA. Ordinarily (well, lately) I try to stick to a vegetarian diet, but when I saw this recipe for maple mustard glazed chicken sausage with roasted potatoes and apples, it sounded so good that I had to try. (Plus, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for chicken sausage.) I decided to adapt that recipe into a hash (inspired by this red flannel hash) for several reasons. First, roasting things takes an awfully long time, and I wanted to be sure I got the potatoes right to that crispy outside, smooth inside consistency of a nice potato hash. Second, I wanted to use my apples for morning glory muffins instead of roasting them with the potatoes and sausage. And third, I really love a poached egg.

The potatoes cooked up nicely, although I’m not sure if their flavor would have been all that different from an ordinary yellow potato in this dish. The beets, however, worked really well and their quality was pretty apparent. Because they were cut so small, they became nice and tender in just enough time for the potatoes to get perfectly crispy. I have two more beets from my produce bag, though I’m not sure in what recipe I’ll use them. (I have a shortlist at the moment, which consists of beet and black bean veggie burgers, a beet and ricotta grilled cheese with watercress [also in my produce bag], and a spicy beet and lentil soup. Suggestions/adaptations are welcome and encouraged!)

Everyone (especially my roommate and neighbors) will be happy to know that I did NOT set off the smoke alarm during this recipe! I did make a lot of smoke (between the onions, which I overcooked a bit, and the sausages, which I “seared,” read as “burned, but only on one side”). That being said, I also had two medium-sized meltdowns… One over the incredible amount of time it takes to properly dice potatoes, and once because  four potatoes turned out to be WAY TOO MANY and the pan was too small and the proportions were all wrong and it was just downhill from there. But after all the fuss (a reprisal of the semi-affectionate term “Brakedown” seems appropriate here), it turned out to be a pretty reasonably easy dish to whip up, as long as you’re alright with slogging through dicing for the first bit.

I cooked up a storm this past weekend, so look forward to a few more posts throughout the week about other dishes featuring the delicious products from this week’s bag. I’m also planning on trying a few more throughout the week, and will hopefully preface each by reading a little more about the farms my food is coming from so I can tell you about that experience. Stay tuned!