Breakfast Casserole

With the holidays on the horizon and family gatherings in tow, you'll need a quick, easy to make ahead, and filling breakfast dish to feed a crowd. Let this breakfast casserole be your guide. Use whatever meats, cheeses, and veggies that you like, make it ahead the night before, and enjoy a delectable breakfast on Christmas morning. All right, we're going to kick things off with one bag of pre-shredded hash browns here. You could definitely grate your own potatoes and wash them, dry them, but this is just pretty simple. So about 20 ounces of grated potatoes go into the bottom of a 9 by 13 baking dish. I'm going to add in 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter and pop these into a 400 degree oven for about 25 to 30 minutes. Also going to season them with some Cajun seasoning, but salt and pepper would be just fine. While those cook in that warm oven, we'll go ahead and grab a pound of breakfast sausage. I'm using hot sausage, but you could cook bacon or regular sausage. Go ahead and just crumble that up and continue to cook it until it is mostly cooked through and rendered out most of its fat. We do want to get some nice golden brown crispy edges on there as well. Once your sausage has mostly cooked, and again I say mostly because if there's a little bit of pink, it's all right. We're going to bake this for 30 to 40 minutes and whatever may be slightly undercooked in the interior is going to cook through. Go ahead and remove that out to a bowl. You could drain this if you want to, but hey, it's the holidays and I'm leaving all that delectable sausage fat right in the dish. We're going to use that to saute one half of one white onion, which I've finely diced, one green bell pepper, and one orange bell pepper. You could use whatever veggies you like here. Go ahead and saute those for five to seven minutes and then set them aside. Our last component here is going to be 10 large eggs, which I'm going to add to a bowl along with about a cup of milk for a body. We're going to go ahead and just beat those until they are nice and homogenous and there's no large pieces of yolk left, and we can construct our casserole. Grab those nicely toasted hash browns and lay down that pound of sausage or again any kind of cooked meat that you like here. Make sure it's as even as possible. Next up, add your layer of softened sauteed peppers and onions. Some mushrooms would be delightful in this as well as maybe some jalapenos for some heat. Next up, we're going to bring on the cheese. I've got 16 ounces. Yep, it's the holidays. 16 ounces of cheddar and pepper jack cheese, which I freshly grated myself. Of course, you know that I did. We'll pour those eggs over everything and then give it a nice shake and tap so that those eggs are evenly distributed throughout the casserole dish. We'll turn our oven down to 350 and pop these in for roughly about 30 minutes. You're looking for that cheese to be thoroughly melted and those eggs to be fully set in the center of the dish. Something like that. Look at that golden brown cheese on top. Those eggs have perfectly set, so we're going to have a nice easy custardy slice to pull out here at the end. I'm going to garnish it with some green onions because of course I am. Let it rest for at least 10 minutes because, I mean, it's piping hot. And then grab yourself a corner piece. If you're indulgent like I am, I love those golden brown corners and edges. Hit it with just a little bit more fresh sliced green onions and I gotta have a little bit of Tabasco or Texas Pete, even though it is breakfast. I let mine cool off while I was taking some pictures so we didn't get a great cheese pull there, but look at that. Those eggs are perfectly cooked. Those nice soft hash browns on the bottom. All that rich sharp cheese. Oh, it is still pretty hot by the way. Might want to watch out for that. Oh man, look at that corner piece with that golden brown cheese and egg on the edge. A really delightful bite. I love that you can make this ahead the night before and pop it in the fridge and then just bake it off the next morning. Beautiful cross section and texture. This is a winner for any kind of a breakfast dish that you need to make to feed a crowd. Perfect for your holiday gatherings. Get out of here and make it, or at the very least, go make something delicious.