Sausage and Spinach Breakfast Casserole

How cool is this? A breakfast casserole – not unlike a strata – that you can make in an 8×8 pan, not one of those 13×9 behemoths?

Yes, please!

First, the nice folk at Pillsbury, who published the original recipe, planned this as a “breakfast casserole for two” with bacon and spinach and frozen Pillsbury biscuits.

Thing is, I couldn’t find any frozen biscuits at my market, so opted for dinner rolls.

And, I had some sage breakfast sausage to use or freeze, and there would be three for breakfast, so I got to tweaking.

INGREDIENTS
•1 lb breakfast sausage
•1 cup diced onion
•1 cup packed baby spinach
•3 dinner rolls, cut in eighths
•4 eggs
•3/4 cup milk
•1 tsp Cajun Power Spicy Garlic Pepper Sauce – or your fave hot sauce, to taste
•1/4 tsp pepper
•1/4 tsp Seasoned Salt
•3/4 cup Colby Jack cheese, shredded

Note: because the original recipe called for thawed frozen biscuits, and I used thawed dinner rolls, which are more dense that biscuits, I chose to treat this as a mini strata and let it all soak together in the fridge overnight before baking. If you choose to use biscuits, and are more of a morning person than I am, by all means assemble and bake it all at once.

Apply cooking spray to an 8×8 inch baking dish and arrange the roll pieces evenly across the bottom of the pan.

In a large skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage and the diced onion, breaking up the sausage, for ten or 15 minutes, until the onion is tender and the sausage cooked through.

Stir in the baby spinach and continue to cook until the spinach is wilted, another minute or two. Remove from the heat.

Whisk the eggs together with the hot sauce and seasonings until well blended and a little but frothy, then stir in the cooled off sausage and spinach mixture and 1/2 cup of the shredded cheese.

Pour evenly over the rolls in the baking dish, then cover and stash in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, pull the casserole out of the fridge and let it rest while preheating your oven to 350º.

Bake, uncovered, for about 40 minutes, until the center is set and the edges are golden brown.

Scatter the remaining 1/4 cup of shredded cheese over the top and bake for another five minutes or so, until the cheese is nicely melted.

Scatter some freshly chopped parsley over the top, if you have some, and serve.

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