For all you ladies who would love breakfast in bed, I think you should email this post to your significant others. Or create an anonymous email address to send the link to plant the idea in their brains. And maybe the anonymous email should include that this recipe needs to be assembled the night before, so you would also need a People magazine, a pedicure, and dinner alone on Saturday night while he whips this together. Just sayin’.
This recipe is beyond easy. Minimal chopping. Pre-cut potatoes. Incredibly delicious (seriously, when our family ate this for the first time, my pickiest eater, who is also a potato-hater, yelled, “THIS IS AWESOME!”) and, like I said, can be made the night before and then popped into the oven in the morning.
You’ll need Southern/country-style hash brown potatoes (the cubes, not the shreds), eggs, milk, bacon, green onions, pepper jack cheese (I promise, this doesn’t come out too spicy), cheddar cheese, and a little salt and pepper to taste.
Cook the bacon. All of it. The whole package. This is how you know things can’t go wrong. You can either cook it in the oven or on the stove top; the oven is my favorite way to cook bacon, but you’re going to be using the bacon drippings a little later, so if you’d rather just do it all in one pan, that’s up to you.
While the bacon is cooking, place the potatoes in a 9×13″ or a deep-dish 9″ pie plate. 
Mix together the cheeses and sprinkle those on top of the potatoes. 
When the bacon is done, place it on a paper towel to drain and reserve about 2 tablespoons of the drippings. Cook the chopped green onions in the drippings over medium heat for 2-3 minutes or until they’re tender and fragrant. Spread them on top of the cheese mixture.
Crumble the bacon and sprinkle that on top of the green onions. 
Um, in case you guys ever doubted, I love bacon so much. 
Look at it?! How could you not love it? Carly, you know I’m talking to you.
Whisk together the eggs, milk, and a little salt and pepper. 
If things are going to get tricky, this is where because you don’t really know how salty the bacon and cheese are and you can’t taste the mixture. But I think about 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt is probably good (you can always add more later) and about 10 turns of freshly ground black pepper.
Whisking constantly, pour the egg/milk mixture all over the potatoes and bacon.
Cover it up and refrigerate it overnight (or, if you’re making breakfast for dinner, do this first thing in the morning and then it will be ready by dinner time).
When you’re ready to bake it, preheat the oven to 350. Bake it up, uncovered, for 40-45 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly but not burned. Remove from the oven and let it stand for about 15 minutes (if you cut into it sooner, it will be a little runny and icky looking). Serve with fresh fruit, orange juice, a jelly jar full of flowers from the yard, and lots of hugs and kisses. Serves 6-8.
Easy Potato and Bacon Breakfast Casserole
Ingredients
- 4 cups Southern/country-style hash browns cubes, completely thawed (if they’re not thawed, they won’t cook correctly)
- 12 ounces bacon
- 1 ½ cups pepper jack cheese
- 1 ½ cups cheddar cheese
- 1 bunch green onions chopped
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup milk
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- about 10 turns freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Begin cooking bacon. While the bacon is cooking, place the potatoes in a 9×13″ baking dish. Mix the cheeses together and sprinkle it over the potatoes. When the bacon is done cooking, drain it on a paper towel and reserve 2 tablespoons of the drippings.
- Cook the onions in the drippings for 2-3 minutes or until they’re tender and fragrant. Spread the onions over the cheese mixture and then sprinkle everything with the crumbled bacon.
- Whisk together the eggs, milk, salt, and pepper and, whisking constantly, pour the egg mixture evenly over the potato mixture. Cover and refrigerate overnight or for 7-8 hours.
- When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350℉. Bake, uncovered, for 40-45 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly but not brown. Allow to stand for 15 minutes before cutting. Serve with fresh fruit.
Notes
- For high altitudes, reduce milk to 2/3 cup and sauté the potatoes in rendered bacon grease until partially cooked before baking.
Questions & Reviews
I made this for Mother’s day brunch and an extra one for my bf to take to his friend’s house… (It was a bribe to get him out of the house so we could have a girls day) It was so easy and turned out FANTASTIC! Thank you for this wonderful suggestion. I served it with a berry/pear fruit salad, mimosas and a dallop of sour cream.
Also for those with the watery/undercooked comments, this happened to mine too. It needed another 30 min in the oven, but after that was perfect… YUM!
Delish breakfast casserole~approved by the “I-don’t-like-breakfast-casseroles-husband”! I think it could us another egg or two, and has anyone ever used fresh, slighly cooked fresh potatoes? I bet that would make it even tastier as I don’t care too much for frozen hashbrowns.
I NEVER eat stuff like this. . . I’m kind of a health freak, but my husband is Afghanistan, so I put this together yesterday then baked it this morning for my own Mother’s day breakfast. I needed a little comfort food. 🙂 I used Alexia rosemary and olive oil oven reds, chopped them up once they were thawed and they were SO yummy in this! Very delicious recipe! My kids didn’t want to eat it, but oh well! Thanks for the idea for comfort food!
Just made this for mothers day breakfast, and it is totally watery! The taste is good and I love the idea. Also the potatoes aren’t done all the way. I defrosted them and even par-steamed them. Still not all the way done. I will try this again with 1/4 c milk and completely cooked potatoes.
Ours was super watery with undercooked potatoes too. I had it in a round casserole dish because it was overflowing in the pie pan. Maybe I used too many potatoes?
I’m thinking e watery thing may be an elevation factor–where are you located?
utah, slc area
can you make this without the milk…maybe extra eggs instead?
I would try it with some soy milk or unsweetened unflavored almond milk. You don’t want to lose that creaminess that milk adds! Admittedly, I have not tried this recipe with substitutes, but I just wanted to suggest it in case it works well for you 🙂
Oh. My. Dear. I just took this out of the oven and it smells absolutely divine. Waiting 15 min before serving is definitely going to be the hardest part of the recipe.
I am hooked on your website. (Thanks Jenn Southworth!!) And when I saw this I knew I had to make it. My house smells amazing and I can hardly wait to eat all this bacon-ny goodness. I think I have the next several months of dinner menues ready thanks to your website and cookbook. Thanks for all your hard work ladies. You are helping to make my life (and that of my hubby and kiddos) very tasty.
I just StumbledUpon your site and I’m glad I did! I love breakfast food, especially if it contains bacon and potatoes.
I’ll be trying this soon for sure but I think I’ll add green bell pepper with the onions (or buy the refrigerated potatoes that have peppers and onions mixed in) and, after letting the mixture cool a bit, I’ll mix directly with the potatoes before topping with cheese. I may also try with turkey bacon since that is what I have in my refrigerator right now.
another question (sorry I ask a lot), how come in your recipes that call for bacon you also add in salt? doesn’t bacon naturally have a lot of salt so you dont need to add more in?
I saw my store was having a buy 1 get 1 free REFRIGERATED cubed potato sale (I only needed 1 so it was like it being 50% off) and there was almost exactly 4 cups in a bag..soo happy (so maybe others can find some in the refrigerated section). the only type they had left was cubed with onions, which I didnt think was bad since the recipe calls for green onions anyways so I just added a little less green onions. Question, do you HAVE to refrigerate it before putting in the oven? I was making this planning on putting it in the oven right after until I kept reading the directions..good thing I was making it a little earlier than I needed it so I will have it in the fridge for only a few hours.. but I wasn’t sure