7 Basic Breakfast Recipes Every Home Cook Should Master

If you're making breakfast at home, chances are good that you're going to be following an easy breakfast recipe, rather than messing around with hollandaise sauce for eggs Benedict or baking a loaf of bread that needs to rise overnight. But making a quick and easy breakfast doesn't mean you're being lazy. If anything, some of the most basic breakfast recipes are also the most iconic and beloved—like a fried egg with a slice of toast, or a cheese omelet with a couple slices of bacon. There's no mystery about how your food should taste with these recipes, even if the technique is unfamiliar, so if you're new to cooking for yourself, learning how to make these simple recipes is a great place to start.

But simple also doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy. You can spend years mastering the art of the omelet or the scrambled egg, trying to get the perfect consistency every single time.

If you are able to get a handle on these simple breakfast recipes and basic cooking techniques, you'll become a better cook who's confident in their ability to tackle even more complicated breakfast recipes. So whether you consider yourself a veteran home cook or you're stepping into the kitchen for the first time, here are seven basic breakfast recipes you should have in your repertoire.

Before you go off and start making bourbon-soaked, stuffed French toast with bananas and peanut butter, start with the basics with this recipe for easy French toast. Besides, all other French toast recipes are some variation on this one, so once you master this easy French toast, you can adapt it to your heart’s content.

Few moments are sadder than when you flip an egg that you’re frying on a hot griddle, and the yolk breaks. It takes patience and skill to make a fried egg, be it over easy, over medium, or sunny-side up. But chef Jiselle Basile is here to walk you through it.

Scrambled eggs seem like they’d be easiest type of eggs to make, especially since there’s no chance of accidentally breaking a yolk. But there’s a lot of technique involved in making perfectly creamy scrambled eggs. Hard scrambled eggs can be a challenge, too, because you don’t want to overcook them. Dawn Perry has a few tips for getting your scrambling skills down pat.

The perfect omelet is soft, tender, and free of rips or tears. It should be one seamless piece of egg folded onto itself, but that takes some serious spatula skills. Chef Jiselle Basile makes it look easy, and with some practice, it’ll be just as effortless for you, too.

The best bacon arguably comes from diners. It’s crispy without being overcooked, salty without being overwhelming. And even though it’s cooked on a griddle at the diner, according to Ben Mims, the best way to get diner style bacon at home is in your oven—all you need is 450°F and sixteen minutes.

Crispy hash browns are another diner favorite that seem impossible to replicate at home. The secret is squeezing the moisture out of the grated potatoes to get that perfect brown caramelization, but knowing when to flip the hash browns is a whole technique unto itself.

Sure, you could just throw a slice of bread into the toaster and be done with it, but making truly delicious toast—a balance between a crunchy outside and a tender, soft inside—takes preparation. The trick to making great toast might have to do with getting the right kind of bread, as Ben Mims explains, and if you want diner-style toast, try toasting some Japanese bread.