Sausage Breakfast Bake

Recipe challenge, week nineteen.

Let me tell you: Mondays come around awfully quickly when you solemnly swear and promise to post a new recipe each Monday.  I do believe that I may start re-doing and highlighting my tried and true recipes at some point.  Because, honestly, we don't need 258 recipes in our repertoire.  We need just a few good recipes that we can make again and again and they never disappoint.

So, we'll see.

I have, as of right now, three recipes to make just so I can take pictures of them, but I don't feel like cooking big meals for myself.  My dinner rotation usually goes: sweet potatoes/black beans, pizza, Annie's Mac and Cheese, cereal, repeat.  Usually preceded by a spinach smoothie and some tortilla chips as an after-school snack. Leftovers are lunch the next day.  Breakfast is usually fancy, expensive peanut butter that I can't buy when Scott's around (because he'll eat it all) and toast (on fancy, expensive bread).  I usually have oatmeal or fruit at school for snacks.  Pre-popped popcorn also my number guilty pleasure.  I go through a bag a week.

Now that you know all of that unnecessary information, you can see that my current arrangement isn't conducive to cooking.

However...

This is a the perfect, easy brunch or lazy-day breakfast casserole.  We had it a few months ago, and I would make this for overnight guests or for a holiday breakfast.  I used chicken jalapeno sausage from TJ's and it was delicious.  Feel free to add bacon too (I've been watching Parks and Rec and bacon just seems like it would go with everything now).

You could alway split it up into muffin cups too and portion it out for a week of breakfasts.

Egg and Sausage Breakfast Bake

Makes a 9 inch pie plate (double for a 9x13 pan)

5 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

4 sausage links, diced (for a 9x13 pan, used a whole package…I used Trader Joe’s Chicken Jalapeno)

2 cups shredded hashbrowns (I used frozen ones, but you could go with fresh potatoes or sweet potatoes)

½ cup diced green or red pepper (I didn’t have these on hand, but would use them in the future.)

½ cup diced onion

½ t. pepper

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Spread the frozen hashbrowns in the bottom of your pie plate.  In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, shredded cheese, and pepper. 

In a frying pan, lightly brown the onion, pepper, and sausage in a bit of olive oil.  You can skip this step if the sausage is precooked, but I like the crispy flavor.

Spread onto the top of the hashbrowns.  Pour the egg mixture over the top.

Bake for 40 minutes, but start checking it at 30 minutes (just in case) to see if the center is set.  Mine took about 45 minutes, but I’m never sure how much elevation is playing into things here and I also used convection.