Posted by Dorine King on June 15th, 2018 in Cooking Through the Seasons, Food Prep, Mor-Mor

Food Prep for the Week – Egg Bake

Every week, I try to get a plan, a menu, a shopping list and a bit of a head start on food prep for the week coming up.  This week, I am making a favorite easy egg bake so I have a healthy breakfast without the daily fuss and muss.

It’s a fairly simple and straight forward food prep recipe.

First I lay out all my ingredients, so everything is right in front of me.  The cooking term for this is Mise en place, which literally means to set in place.  I set out my ingredients in the order the recipe is written, then it is all at hand.  It’s also helpful for me to do this because I sometimes am interrupted by phone calls, my dog barking at someone walking their dog (thank goodness I have a dog to save me from missing ANYTHING that may happen in the neighborhood!), and occasionally, I need to immediately stop what I am doing to help Mor-Mor with something.

I peeled and chopped the onion, sauteed it in olive oil.  Then added it to my big purple Tupperware bowl along with the hash browns, cubed ham, and a couple of good sized handfuls of shredded cheese and mixed it all together.  I had some leftover steamed broccoli and some fresh tomatoes, so added them to the mixture too — this is a good way to move those little bits and pieces out of the fridge and put them to nutritional use.  Then I poured it into a prepared pan(cooking spray, sprayed 9 x 13 pan).

Next, I put 11 jumbo eggs into my purple Tupperware bowl along with a cup of milk, some salt and some pepper.  Then I mixed that all together with a whisk.

Why did I use only 11 eggs, you ask?  Well, because they are jumbo eggs and I need one egg because I’m making homemade mayonnaise next.

I poured the egg mixture over the potato mixture, patted it down, added a bit more cheese and a sprinkle of dried parsley and paprika – just for color, covered it and popped it into the fridge until tomorrow morning.

I was going to bake this for brunch, but by the time I got it all put together, I decided to “go the the flow” and into the fridge it went.  Besides, it was time to take the dog for a quick walk and I was starving, so Mor-Mor and I had sandwiches for lunch.

The next morning, I preheated my oven to 350 F., removed the cover and baked it.  It actually took about 5-minutes longer to cook, just because everything was cold from the fridge.

I love to food prep.  It makes my life so much easier.  Sometimes, I food prep with a big salad for the week, or a big container of cut up fresh vegetables.

What a yummy breakfast and my weekday mornings will be so much easier!

As I said, it’s a fairly easy recipe.  Here is my version of the recipe:

Super Simple Egg Bake

Ingredients:

• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, diced
• ½ to 1-1/2 c. Left over veggies, such as broccoli, asparagus, tomato
• 20-oz. frozen hash browns
• 1 to 2 cups cubed ham (if you only have deli-sliced ham – cut it into bite-sized chunks)
• 8 to 12-oz. shredded cheese (whatever you have on hand)
• 12 large eggs
• 1  cup milk (any kind)
• 1-1/2 t. salt
• ½ t.  ground black pepper
• Cooking spray
• Dried parsley
• Dried paprika

Directions:

• If baking right away, preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil.
• Add cooked onion and garlic along with the potatoes, veggies, ham and cheese to a large mixing bowl. Combine well.
• Spray a 9 x 13-inch baking dish with cooking spray then pour in the potato-veggie-ham mixture.
• In the same large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, salt and pepper together.
• Pour over the potato mixture. Pat down so everything is covered in egg mixture.
• Sprinkle a bit more cheese over the egg mixture and sprinkle with dried parsley and paprika (just for a bit of color).
• If baking right away, bake for one hour, uncovered. The center should be set and the edges should be golden brown.
• If making ahead of time, cover and pop into fridge until ready to bake.

NOTE:  If making ahead, be sure to bake UNCOVERED.  I also baked mine just a bit longer (5-8-minutes longer).