New and Improved: Breakfast Casserole

I've made some major discoveries on the low-carb breakfast casserole front since I first shared my Sausage Breakfast Muffin recipe. For one, the little muffin papers I used in that recipe turned out to be a disaster. The egg ended up becoming one with the paper, making it a chore to remove the paper before eating the muffin.

The next experiment was ditching the muffin papers and just using about half of a can of cooking spray and that definitely did the trick, no stick whatsoever. But it was still a pain to pour the mixture into each of the twelve cups. Some of the muffins would consist of mostly cheese and others would have all the meat, it just wasn't a very good distribution of deliciousness.

Bye-Bye Muffins
[Cue "Great Idea" music] That's when I had the idea of put all the ingredients in a glass baking dish! It solved all my issues. The meat can be laid in the bottom of the dish and the other toppings can be layered evenly, creating a perfect ingredient distribution for each serving! Bonus, I really don't have to worry about sticking because the meat is greasy enough to get the job done, so no need for spray or muffin papers. And the best part is that it's just simpler to make and much easier to store in the fridge.

The only difference I have found between the muffin way and this way is that the muffins are crispier and firmer per serving. To me that isn't much of a deciding factor.

The base

Getting Creative
I've also been mixing it up on the meat side of the equation too, opting to go with bacon tonight and maybe even some ground beef in the future. This is my first time doing the bacon in full strips with the baking dish method; having crumbled it in the muffin method. Another fun experiment has been different veggie toppings. So far, I've tried green peppers (that was good) and onions (not my favorite). This week I went with some tomatoes, we will see how those are. I'd like to try some green onions in the future. Basically, anything you might put in an omelet should be good in this casserole.

The toppings, ready to go in the oven!

Dairy-free Experiment
Tonight, I also cut out the cheese and it didn't seem to make any difference in how the dish cooked. I have tried making it without cheese before and I personally don't have a preference either way. The reason I chose to forgo the cheese was because I'm avoiding dairy products this week as an experiment to see its affects on my allergies.

Allergy season is in full swing here in Boise so I'm trying to cut out wheat and dairy in an attempt to "skip over" my allergy season for the first time in my life without too much suffering. Of course, the allergy season is during my favorite time of the season, so that's a bummer. But so far, it hasn't been too bad, so I can't complain. I'd love to find the "cure" so every year I could minimize effects pollen generally has on me. As my good friend Phil likes to say, "You're like allergic to air".

Looking forward to trying one of these muffins out tomorrow morning!