Sha Bang's Kitchen: Easy Brunch Bake

I'm one of those full breakfast kinda gals. I think Continental Breakfast is really more like a snack. I'll take eggs and bacon and toast and potatoes over a danish or pastry any day.

Most days, I'm totally fine with making the works. Some days, not so much. So I came up with this egg bake that has everything in it that I love. Spicy home fries, spam, eggs and sourdough bread, and let's not forget the cheeeeeeeese. All this in one casserole. Um, sign me up! You can also make this ahead of time for a potluck or brunch party. Or just on a Sunday morning to pig out on after a long weekend.

The beauty of this baked casserole is that you can pretty much use whatever you want in it. If you don't like spam, use cubed ham or sausage. You could even use shredded chicken or no meat at all. Bump up the veggies and make it a veggie egg bake with broccoli and asparagus. YUM! It's all good.

For this bake, I used:
spam
leftover baked potatoes
onion
serrano chili
eggs
cheese
milk
seasoning salt
black pepper
sourdough bread (you can use any kind of bread you want)

You can use cold, leftover home fries if you have any. Or you can just make some up. I made some for this recipe, but I usually have some on hand. I make homefries in bulk and just keep in the fridge to eat during the week (I'm serious about being a full breakfast kind of gal).

For the homefries:

I sauteed one small onion in olive oil over medium heat. I used a lot of Lawry's seasoning and black pepper.

I like my potatoes spicy so I chopped one serrano chili. You don't have to. I add to onions.

I chopped up some spam. You can use ham, sausage, chicken, or a combo of any of these.

Saute together.

I had 5 small already baked potatoes that were left over from something else.

You can microwave them if you don't have already cooked potatoes. OR you could use frozen shredded hash browns if you wanted. That works too.

I chopped and threw in with the onions, chili and spam.

At this point, I add a few tablespoons of water to help with coating the potatoes. Adding water helps coat the potatoes with all the yummy seasoning without adding more oil.

Everything is already cooked at this point, so I just mix around until the water gets absorbed and it looks like this:

Set aside.

I grabbed 3 slices of sourdough bread. I used this kind:

I love sourdough. You can use white, wheat, rye, french, shepherds, whateva!

I used a knife to cut into even cubes.

I used a glass baking dish, this one was a 11x7x2 rectangular pan. Spray with non-stick spray like Pam.

Add your cubed bread.

Spoon home fries over the bread.

Add shredded cheese. Or no cheese. Or lots of cheese. I used sharp cheddar. Feel free to pick any cheese you want. Or don't want. Whatever.

I whipped up 5 eggs with some milk. I know the pic has 3, but 2 had rolled out of the picture.

Little suckers.

I added black pepper. No salt because my potatoes are well seasoned.

Whipped with a fork. Or spoon. Or chopsticks. Whatever you work best with.

Pour egg mixture over your bread, potato, cheese mix.

I baked on 375 for 30 minutes.

And it looked like this when it came out. Don't worry about the white. That's just the egg.

Side profile.

Let it sit for about a minute before you cut and serve. Grab yourself a corner piece....those are the best.

I should mention that you can use more eggs if you want. I don't like my casserole to be that egg-y. I like the egg to be just sort of be on the bottom with just enough to set the casserole. But feel free to use a dozen eggs to make this more quiche like.

You can serve with fruit, but remember it's got everything in there so you don't need toast or anything like that. Enjoy your egg bake!

You could also just assemble it and refrigerate it if you're making it ahead of time and bake it later when you're ready for it.

Here's one I made using left over ranch rolls for the bottom, ham instead of bacon, and mushrooms leeks sauted with frozen hash browns:

I shredded the ham and topped over the bread. I chose to do that because the ham was thin sliced for sandwiches and frying it up in the veggies would just dry it out.