Avocado Eggs "Benedict"

Today we're taking a little break from all the grilling to look at a fun (and quick!) breakfast creation we enjoyed a few days ago. We both love breakfast foods, and we've previously explored different ways to make flavor-packed meals like breakfast sandwiches and breakfast skillets.  While those are very tasty early morning meals, we also like to go with less heavy and fattening options than our normal breakfast choices from time to time.  For this egg-based meal, we took our inspiration from an article about twists on the classic eggs benedict recipe.


For our version of eggs "benedict," we're going to cover toast with an avocado mixture, plop on a poached egg, and then cover it with a drizzle of yogurt and dill.  Obviously it's not a real "benedict" without hollondaise sauce, but this is a much healthier version that still packs a whole lot of flavor. To start out with, Megan cut up some avocado that's going to be mashed up with seasonings.

The end result is very similar to guacamole, just without the lemon and using slightly different seasonings. We went with dill, salt, pepper, and some garlic powder (for a more in-depth look at making guacamole for breakfast meals, check out our blog on making breakfast burritos).

Next up is the poached egg.  Surprisingly, we'd actually never made eggs like this before, as scrambled is our go-to cooking method.  For poached eggs, heat up a pot of water until just before it starts to boil. Crack and egg and place it into a small dish or container so it retains its shape a bit. Quickly spoon the egg and white into the water, and then repeat with your remaining eggs.

Once all the eggs are in the nearly-boiling water, turn the heat off and let them cook for around 5 minutes for the perfect texture.  We did end up with some water that looked a bit like egg drop soup for our first attempt, but overall the eggs held their shape and we didn't lose too much of the whites.  We're looking forward to trying these again using different methods, such as putting the eggs in small metal containers so they hold their shape better.

To put together our avocado-based edition of eggs benedict, we first spread the guacamole mixture onto some wheat toast.

Then a still-steaming poached egg was placed on top of the toast and guacamole.

We spooned some plain yogurt over the toast and poached egg, and then topped with a small sprinkling of dill for extra flavor.

The next day we also tried a different version of this same breakfast to use up an ingredient that was nearing its expiration date. We had found some lemon and herb flavored Philadelphia cooking cream on clearance for just over a dollar and decided to try it out in place of the yogurt. For this second try, we switched the ingredients around and started with a layer of the cooking cream, and then topped the egg with a few spoonfulls of the avocado.  Both versions were equally good, although obviously the one with plain yogurt has less fat and calories.  This unique combination of flavors is well outside the norm for our breakfast options, and we're looking forward to putting this into the regular morning rotation.

Now that we've taken a little side trek into a quick breakfast meal, get ready for more fun backyard barbecue where we grill not only more ribs, but also head off the beaten path to grill pizza and stuffed tomatoes!