My workplace will occasionally have a breakfast or salad bar to which staff contribute various foods. This is always a fun event. Although I frequently am the one to show up with a jar of artichoke hearts, when I do remember to sign up for something I like to go big or go home.
When the sign up sheet came around at a recent meeting and the only thing left was casserole, I put my name on the line.
Then I remembered that breakfast casseroles and I have a very hairy track record, and my failures outnumber my successes. It is frequently the simple things that take me out at the knees.
Using my Google-fu, I came across this idea on Rachael Ray's website. The concept is a quick and impressive looking breakfast in one neat little package.
The idea is this:
Get a muffin tin. Put meat in each tin. Add a veggie and an egg, and bake for 15 ish minutes, or until the egg is done to your liking, at 375 degrees.
Tip: I used an oversized muffin tin - the kind with 6 big pots. In Rachael Ray's recipe she counts 2 normal sized egg muffin things per person. I served these up as 1 per person, a little larger, but it wasn't the only thing people were eating for breakfast. That said, when I made them for Dan and myself, I only made 2, and that included 2 pieces of bacon, 2-3 TBS of spinach, and 1.5 eggs each. It was enough, and is a good way to control portion size, if that is something you are going for.
The first time around (for the staff breakfast), I used deli ham, sauteed spinach and onions, and topped with an egg, untouched, as it came out in Benedict fashion. Once baked, I removed each from the tin and placed atop an uncooked English muffin half. Had I been serving these immediately, I would have toasted the English muffin. I refrigerated these overnight, and in the morning, popped them in the oven (which I had set much higher), covered, for 15 minutes. The eggs turned out a little more done than I'd like, but it worked out rather well. The muffins became slightly toasted, and the whole thing was a quick, individual breakfast.
The second time I made these, Saturday morning, I took into account that I was out of deli ham and that Dan does not eat sunny side up eggs. Instead, I used bacon, which I cut down to size, and in retrospect, would have kept longer, as bacon shrinks when it cooks. I placed some spinach in the bacon cups and baked those while I scrambled up some eggs on the stovetop. I left the eggs slightly runny, pulled out the bacon in the muffin tin from the oven, drained the fat from the tins, put egg on top of the spinach, and returned the bacon cups filled with stuff to the oven. I topped this all with cheese, and baked until the cheese was melted.
Baking the bacon first gave me a chance to drain the fat, and the bacon turned out a little more crispy.
You could do this with any combination of meat, eggs, and veggie. I recommend not salting the ingredients, as the salt in the meat will season the rest of the dish fairly well.
Rachael Ray makes hers with procutto, which I love, but feel it would be entirely too salty, and a waste in this dish.
I think fire roasted peppers (buy a jar at Trader's) would be wonderful in this dish. Also, I am curious to try and make the cup out of a potato base, such as latkes would be. It may take a little more work to keep it all together, but it would be delicious.
If you use spinach, make sure it is well drained before using. I used frozen spinach (2 - 10 oz packages) which I thawed, drained, squeezed, then sauteed.
I didn't take a picture of the first ones, sadly, but the picture above is version 2, which was delicious.
No comments:
Post a Comment