Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Casserole

Source:  Cooking Light, April 2008
Servings:  12 1-cup servings

We assembled this casserole after church on Christmas Eve (at about 1am) and then cooked it on Christmas morning.  It needs to sit 8 hours or overnight, so the timing is great to make it the night before.  We made this casserole once before (I think when we had a friend visiting us-we treat houseguests like they are at a B&B) and really enjoyed it, so we decided to make it a new Christmas tradition.   We do use more exciting bread than the white bread in this recipe.  This year we got a nice round loaf of sourdough, which gave the casserole a little extra flavor–and the crusts look very nice so don’t cut them off.

Ingredients

  • Cooking spray
  • 12  ounces  turkey breakfast sausage
  • 2  cups  1% low-fat milk
  • 2  cups  egg substitute
  • 1  teaspoon  dry mustard
  • 3/4  teaspoon  salt
  • 1/2  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/4  teaspoon  ground red pepper
  • 3  large eggs
  • 16  (1-ounce) slices white bread
  • 1  cup  (4 ounces) finely shredded reduced-fat extrasharp cheddar cheese
  • 1/4  teaspoon  paprika

Preparation

1. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add sausage to pan; cook 5 minutes or until browned, stirring and breaking sausage to crumble. Remove from heat; cool.

2. Combine milk and next 6 ingredients (through eggs) in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk.

3. Trim crusts from bread. Cut bread into 1-inch cubes. Add bread cubes, sausage, and cheddar cheese to milk mixture, stirring to combine. Pour bread mixture into a 13 x 9–inch baking or 3-quart casserole dish coated with cooking spray, spreading egg mixture evenly in baking dish. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.

4. Preheat oven to 350°.

5. Remove casserole from refrigerator; let stand 30 minutes. Sprinkle casserole evenly with paprika. Bake at 350° for 45 minutes or until set and lightly browned. Let stand 10 minutes.

1 Comment

  1. January 6, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    [...] despite incredibly heavy rain on the way there. After getting home close to 1am we assembled a breakfast casserole to cook on Christmas morning and went to bed in our new pajamas my mom sent us.  My grandmother (my [...]


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