Italian Herb, Potato & Onion Frittata Recipe with Pancetta Bacon

What up, you guys? Chef Billy Parisi here from billyparisi.com, and today we're starting off with breakfast, and I'm gonna show you how to make a very classic frittata. Frittata? Frittata. I'm making a frittata, and I'm sure you're already thinking, dude, enough with the Italian recipes. We've had quite a few, and I promise I'm gonna switch it up. Starting right now, I'm gonna do a five-part series around my favorite course, breakfast. All beginning with a frittata. Yes, it is Italian. I'm sorry. I love frittatas. I've been making them for years, and you know what? I actually did something a little bit wrong in the past, which I'm going to fix and show you how to do this time. It's really, really simple. Frittatas are delicious. It roughly translates from Italian to English as fried, so that means we're not finishing it in the oven, although that is okay if you wanna do that. I'm sick of getting hollered at about people telling me this is not the way to do things. Well, I promise with all the research I've done and all the Italian videos and websites I've translated and read, this is a correct way to do it. However, the things that are maybe a little bit different are ingredients that go into it. So I'm gonna start off by doing some prep and get after it. This recipe moves quick, so follow along. We're gonna first start by small dicing up a sweet onion. You could absolutely use a spring onion here, and in fact, that'd be a little bit more classic, so go ahead and slice off the ends. Cut it in half, and then the next thing you wanna do is simply peel that outside layer of the onion. We wanna small dice it, so slice into it, slice down on it, turn it, and slice down again, and you're gonna have beautiful little small diced sweet onions. Go ahead and set them in a bowl to the side. What we wanna do now is peel and small dice up a russet potato, so simply peel your potato. You could use Yukon potatoes here or even a sweet potato if you wanted to. And just like the small diced onion, the same exact size, we're gonna small dice up these russet potatoes. Go ahead and set them to the side in a bowl. We need to go over to the cooktop, and also we're gonna grab some chopped up pancetta bacon that's gonna make this recipe awesome. Once you've set everything down near your cooktop, we are gonna drizzle in some extra virgin olive oil to a nice cast iron skillet. You can use a nonstick pan if you want to. In fact, that would be easier to do because I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna do in a little bit. Once you've got the olive oil in there, go ahead next and add in your pancetta, your diced sweet onions, followed up with your potatoes. We're gonna season it up at this point with sea salt and pepper. We're gonna give it some stirs. What we wanna do is let this cook on medium heat. Go back over to your cutting board because let's not forget about the eggs. We are gonna crack in about 10 eggs into a large bowl, so go ahead and crack them, add them in there. We want to give it a whisk, so go ahead and using a whisk or a fork, whatever you're comfortable with, whisk it together. And now I'm gonna add in a little bit of Parmesan cheese. And I wanna stop right here because here's one of those parts to the recipe that maybe I was confused with in the past. I would usually add in heavy cream or half and half, and while that's totally okay, it's actually maybe not authentic to the original recipe. Obviously, in the old world Italy, they're not just having an abundance of heavy cream lying around. So not that they didn't, but those are expensive things. So they used cheese, so we're gonna add in next some grated Parmesan cheese. Another cheese you could add to this could be pecorino or even a ricotta. Go ahead next and season it with sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper. We're gonna give that a whisk. Make sure it is completely combined. Whisk it, incorporate that air into there. Take a few seconds to do it. And now head over to the cooktop. Let's go ahead and give our potatoes, pancetta and onions a little stir, a little look. You can see it's lightly browned. The potatoes are al dente, which is perfect, slightly crunchy. They're gonna be done by the time the eggs are finished cooking with them. So next, go ahead and pour in that egg and cheese batter. What we wanna do now is cook this on the cooktop. Like I said, frittata roughly translates to fried. So that means everything is done right here on the stovetop. So what you wanna do is just sort of keep moving the eggs around, move it back and forth, kind of go around the edges, tilt the pan a little bit. If there's a runny part going by where a cooked part is, just sort of put it through there and lift up the pan and lift up the egg to let it run underneath. And then once you can see that it's almost finished, at this point, what we wanna do is sort of take a rubber spatula and run all the way around the outside to make sure it doesn't stick. We're next gonna add a plate to the top. What we wanna do is simply invert it, so flip it over. You can see that it came out perfectly out of the plate. And then what you wanna do is put that uncooked side right back into that cast iron skillet. It's gonna take maybe 30 seconds to finish up cooking because again, it is almost done. And I wanna stop you right here because I want to reiterate that you can absolutely finish this in the oven if you're not comfortable flipping it in a skillet, putting it back in there, you don't want it to break. I totally get it. Put it in the oven, maybe gonna take eight to 10 minutes on around 375 degrees. I don't wanna stress you out here. So at this point, let's go back over to wherever it is that we're serving it. Got a really cool cutting board here. I'm going to finish it by adding on some shaved Parmesan cheese. And last but not least, I've got some finely chopped parsley and fresh rosemary that I'm just going to sprinkle all over the top, give it a nice greenery and some really nice flavors. Boom, we're done, let's try it out. Just a huge fan of frittatas. They're so easy to make, so delicious, so malleable. You can customize these however you'd like. Add in some greens, some tomatoes, bacon. I mean, go to town on this frittata recipe. But I did wanna give you sort of a basic batter and how to cook it in the pan. A potato frittata would be incredibly classic in Italy or Sicily. And you know what, it's kind of funny because you're probably looking at this and like, this isn't, kind of looks like an omelet. I mean, you're right on the money. This is the Italian version of the French omelet. It is amazing. I don't wanna waste any more time. I'm gonna eat some. Let's try it out, see how good it is. I'm gonna take a little piece off the end there. Oh yeah, super good. Oh, that Parmesan cheese is phenomenal. You get so much complexity. First you get the egg, then you get the pancetta, then it finishes with the Parmesan. Oh, and also I heard that in my reading, of course, in my research, that they actually, a lot of times, take the frittata and serve it up in between two slices of bread and eat it like a sandwich. Sounds cool to me.