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Potatoes with eggs or patates me avga in Greek is one of those simple, comforting dishes that proves you don’t need complicated ingredients to create something truly satisfying. Finished with a generous crumble of feta, this dish strikes the perfect balance between creamy, salty, and savoury. Whether enjoyed as breakfast, a quick lunch or even a light dinner, it’s a rustic, no-fuss meal that brings warmth to the table with every bite.

My mum used to make this for us all the time when we were growing up; she used to do it from scratch, including deep drying the chips; it was something easy she could whip after we finished school. These days, deep frying the chips, especially fresh, can be time consuming and annoying, particularly when dealing with frying oil. To make things more simple, if I want fresh potatoes, I like to bake them coated in olive oil, salt and pepper or use baked, frozen, store bought chips. While this potatoes with eggs recipe probably isn’t inherently Greek, many Greeks have memories of their mums or yiayias making it for them.

Ingredients

Potatoes, eggs, canola oil for frying, olive oil for cooking eggs, salt and pepper for seasoning

What kind of potato should I use?

Close-up view of a large pile of freshly harvested potatoes, showcasing their texture and earthy tones.

Your typical dirty potatoes (sebago) are perfect for this potatoes with eggs recipe. They’re the cheapest and most widely available potato in Australia and are great all-rounders. Perfect for mash, chips and roasting.

How should the potatoes be prepared?

Now, this is going to take up a chunk of your time. It took me half an hour to deep fry 2 chopped potatoes due to various factors. The main one being that raw potatoes take longer to deep fry and bake because they’re going in completely uncooked and unprepared. It also depends on the size of your pots and the amount of oil you have. At the time of filming, I didn’t have much canola oil left and you need lots of oil and a big enough pot to put it in so that the food has plenty of space to cook so I had to use a smaller pot and things took longer to cook.

The usual method of making homemade chips involves cooking the raw potatoes through boiling until just before it’s cooked through and then deep fried or they go through two rounds of being deep fried. For example: the typical frozen chips available in supermarkets are prepared, blanched or boiled, deep fried, seasoned, frozen and packed. As they’re parcooked, deep frying or baking at home won’t take as long.

Are there any alternatives to using fresh potatoes?

Absolutely. As much as I love the taste of fresh, homemade chips, the process can be long, tiring and messy. If I’m really craving it, I’ll bake or air-fry a batch of frozen chips until cooked and continue the recipe as usual.

If you want fresh chips but not deep fried, I will prepare them as usual, place them onto a baking tray, coat in olive oil and salt and bake at 160 degrees celsius until the outside is golden and crunchy and the inside is soft. This will take longer than baking frozen pre cooked chips.

If I don’t want to wait that long and I want to reduce the mess, I’ll often just use frozen chips. I cook them according to their packet instructions, and continue the recipe as usual.

My Best Tips

If you don’t want to cook chips from scratch, use frozen, prepared chips, cook them according to the packet and follow the recipe from step: 4.

Don’t want to deep fry but want to use fresh potatoes? Peel and chop up the potatoes as usual, place the chips on a baking tray, pour over some olive oil and sprinkle with salt and toss to coat. Bake at 160 degrees celsius until the chips are golden and crunchy and the inside is soft, then follow the recipe as usual.

Ingredients

▢ 2 large potatoes Sebago (the dirty ones), Note 1
▢ 6 extra large eggs use what you have
▢ 40 g of fetta cheese
▢ 30 ml of olive oil for cooking the potatoes and eggs
▢ Canola Oil for deep frying Note 2
▢ Salt and pepper for seasoning

Instructions

Peel the potatoes, wash off any leftover dirt, cut them into thick slices and those slices into chips, the size is up to you, finger size is good.
Add enough canola oil to a medium or large pot to fill half the pot; the chips need enough room to cook. Heat up to 180 degree celsius, add in the chips in batches, occasionally checking on the chips, moving them around and removing once they become a golden colour. This can take 10-12 minutes+ to cook, refer to Notes 1 & 2 for more information and alternatives.
Add the chips to a bowl with a paper towel – this helps soak up any oil – and season with salt.
Crack the 6 eggs into a bowl, add in a sprinkle of salt and pepper and scramble.
Put a medium to large pan onto a medium heat and add in the olive oil. Add in the chips evenly around the pan and pour in the eggs. Let the bottom set and then flip the egg/chip mixture in portions and continue to cook until the eggs are set throughout, flipping portions again if necessary.
Serve with crumbled fetta.

Video

Notes

Note 1: If you don’t want to deep fry the potatoes, they can be baked in the oven: place them on a baking tray, coat in 2 tbsps of olive oil, salt and pepper and bake at 160 degrees celsius until golden and crunchy and soft on the inside.

Otherwise your other option is to use frozen chips. Cook them as per packet instructions and once cooked, follow the recipe from steps 4-6.

Note 2: As much as I love olive oil, it’s expensive considering how much oil is needed to deep fry food. A good alternative is canola oil, as it’s much cheaper and cost effective to use large amounts. If you want to cook a large batch all at once, you’ll need a large pot and enough oil to fill up the pot between ⅓ and ½ of the way. For smaller pots, fill it up half way, and cook the chips in batches.

Because the potatoes are raw, deep frying will take longer than deep frying frozen chips, around 10 – 12 minutes + for fresh chips, depending on how crispy you want them. This is because frozen chips are cooked before frozen: once they’re peeled and chipped, they’re either blanched or boiled, deep fried for a short time so they’re partly cooked, sometimes seasoned, frozen and then packaged ready for the supermarket.