Skillet Breakfast Recipe for a Satisfying Real Food Meal (Now with a Make-Ahead Skillet Breakfast Option!)

The kids literally cheer when I make this for breakfast, and sometimes I'll make it for supper, too.  It's a super satisfying “feel good” home-cooked meal.  It takes a little time to do the chopping, but it goes fast if you have helpers like I do.  (I am SO thankful that a couple of our kids love to help in the kitchen, our daughter talks about going to culinary school someday!)  Or do what we do, just turn on a cooking show to watch while you chop.  🙂  Also, make sure to see my make-ahead instructions below.

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Skillet Breakfast Recipe

This is an easy breakfast to feed a crowd and everyone loves it! See more notes below...

Author: Kelly the Kitchen Kop

Ingredients

• Healthy fat for frying: bacon grease or lard from pastured pork pastured butter or ghee, unflavored coconut oil. Yep, these are all healthy fats that have nourished people for generations before our screwed up government convinced us that saturated fats were bad for our heart. Read more here.
• 1 onion chopped
• Organic potatoes chopped, I cut them into cubes so they cook uniformly — we use about 1-2 potatoes/person. Potatoes are in the dirty dozen list of conventional produce that is highly sprayed with chemicals, so I always buy them organic.
• Eggs about 1/person, or more if you'd like — sometimes I'll just add extra yolks for more nutrition.
• Sea salt and pepper
• About 2-3 cups cheddar cheese shredded (8-12 ounces)
• 1 splash cream or milk , optional--just adds some creaminess
• Optional: Various colors of organic peppers chopped -- again, these are on the dirty dozen list, so if I can't find organic, I don't buy them.
• Optional: Your choice of meat cooked: sausage, ham, bacon, just whatever you have leftover or in the freezer — however, the meat is optional because this is also a tasty meatless meal. Here's where to find healthy, pastured meats online if you don't have a good local source — I recommend you avoid mystery meat at all costs!
• Optional: Bread for toast we have a local baker who makes a delicious multi-grain fermented bread, which is great since I haven't been in the breadmaking groove for a while now, but if you ARE, have you seen this recipe for the healthiest bread on earth? –> The Best Sourdough Bread Recipe.

Instructions

• Clean and chop potatoes, start frying in the fat of your choice – don't be afraid to use a lot, that way it'll all get nice and crispy.  I use either a cast iron skillet or my favorite stainless steel 16″ pan, because it's big enough to cook for our whole family of six (read more here about my this awesome pan).
• Make a spot in the middle of the pan and fry the onions until golden. Then add sea salt and pepper.  Keep moving everything around so it doesn't burn.
• While that's cooking, shred your cheese.  (I rarely buy cheese already shredded because it has weird “anti-caking” ingredients in there, and it only takes a few minutes to shred it.  Even less time if I use the shred attachment on my beloved Bosch kitchen machine.  Often I'll buy a bunch of cheese when it's on sale and use the Bosch to shred it all at once and put it in the freezer.)
• When the potatoes and onions are getting nice and brown and crispy in spots, next put in the optional meat and peppers to heat them up.
• Next add your eggs and stir around. Add optional cream or milk if desired. When the eggs are cooked and everything is golden brown and crispy-licious, put the shredded cheese around the top. Once it's melted, it's time to serve it up!
• Add more sea salt and pepper to your taste, if desired serve with toast (buttered liberally of course), and ENJOY!

Notes

If I'm using bacon, I'll fry that up, remove from the pan and use those fats to fry up the potatoes, onions, etc.  Later break the bacon up and add the pieces back to the pan.

 

Let me know what you think down in the comments. 

Try the make-ahead option!

Recently we were having  lots of company over for brunch, and feeding too many than even my favorite big pan/electric skillet could handle, SO I did a make-ahead version of this and it turned out great!

Here's how I did it:

Use the same ingredients as listed above, but you'll need to adjust those or the amounts, depending on how many you're feeding, what meat or veggies you're using, etc.  I still used my favorite pan but did it in a couple of batches–the amounts below were for 3 pans full.  It was enough for 22 people, and there was one whole pan leftover, but this is no problem as the leftovers go fast around here.  (We also had a lot of sides with it, FYI.)

• Fry one pound of bacon 'til golden, and chop into pieces.  Set aside.
• Chop 3 large onions into small pieces.
• Use some of the bacon grease (or butter) to fry onions until they just start to get lightly golden brown.
• Clean and cut up about 22-24 potatoes and add HALF of them to the onions, fry 'til soft, mixing around now and then and scraping the bottom of the pan.
• As they're frying, season with sea salt and pepper.
• Butter 3 – 9×13 pans and evenly spoon in the first batch of onions and potatoes to the bottom.
• Fry the rest of the potatoes 'til soft and golden, season these too, and spoon evenly into the 3 pans.
• Sprinkle bacon pieces on top, and on one pan I also added chopped green peppers.
• Mix about 1 to 1 1/2 dozen eggs with 1 1/2 cups cream (or whole milk), and fry in the same pan.  Season with sea salt and pepper.
• Spoon the eggs on top of the last layer.
• Sprinkle cheddar cheese all over the top.
• Now you can cover and stick it in the fridge and it's all ready for the day you're having company.  We did ours 2 days ahead.
• An hour or so before serving, remove the cover being careful to leave the cheese on top, and pop the pans into a 300* oven for about an hour, or 375* for half hour or so–you just need to get it hot all the way through, and melt the cheese.  That's it!  🙂