This breakfast casserole is perfect: a thick and creamy egg base, along with a just a little bit of sweet heat from the sausage, and enough cheese to know that this is a casserole for a special occasion.
This is not an every day type of meal. I guess maybe if you’re Michael Phelps and can routinely eat 10,000 calories per day it is, but while that does sound awesome, I don’t love what chlorine does to my hair so I’m over here slumming it on the recommended 2k a day or whatever.
For my family this is a once a year, Christmas morning treat. For the last 20 years, and I assume the 20 before that, my lovely mother in law makes this for Christmas breakfast, along with a coffee cake, fruit salad, and various other goodies and we all chow down like happy little bears preparing for winter hibernation, while also consuming an almost astonishing amount of coffee. I mean really - no one is hibernating anywhere afterwards. It’s amazing that any of us sleep that night at all. The gift/food/recovery from gifts and food order has changed itself up a bit as we add and lose members of the family, but the breakfast casserole remains a constant. My nephew, who hates eggs, is happy to tell me every year that I’m missing out by not getting more coffee cake, and I’m happy to tell him to shush it up and respect me as his elder. To which he gives me the greatest of eye rolls.
The corner pieces are the best…they’re the ones with the crispiest bits of melty, not quite but juuuuust this side of burned bits of cheese. You know the bits I’m talking about. This is a really good base recipe that could be modified in endless ways. If you’re not a sausage fan, you could use bacon, but if you do, I’d work to season it more in other ways. Bacon is great on its own, but cant flavor a casserole like this one without some help. If you’re in the midwest, Goetta would be amazing in this. You could spice it up if that’s your thing. You could adapt the egg mixture in about a million different ways too - add some sautéed onions and mushroms, or some bell peppers and zucchini. Other types of cheese would be amazing too.
This is an incredibly special dish to me, and I’m so happy to get to share it with you…hopefully you can start some holiday traditions of your own.
Oh, and the best part is - you make it almost all the way the night before, so the only thing you need to do on Christmas morning is grate some cheese and slide this in the oven.
Sara Rauckhorst
20 Min
1 Hour
8 Hour
9 H & 20 M
Breakfast Casserole
Ingredients
- 8 slices of white bread
- ½ cup milk
- 8 eggs
- 1 can cream of mushroom soup
- 1 pound breakfast sausage
- 8 ounces cheddar cheese
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Spray a 9x13 baking dish with nonstick cooking spray and line the dish with the bread (however many slices to fit)
- Pour the milk over the eggs
- In a large bowl, beat the eggs until well mixed, and then mix in the cream of mushroom soup. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the egg mixture over the bread.
- Brown the pound of sausage and scatter over the eggs.
- Cover the dish with foil and let rest in the fridge overnight.
- The next morning: preheat oven to 350.
- Grate an 8 ounce block of cheese, or use pre-grated cheese (honestly though, grate it yourself. It’s not that much more work, and it’s SO MUCH BETTER) and scatter over the sausage.
- Bake for one hour.
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