Potato and Egg Casserole

Happy Sunday! 

This morning I woke up early and, since the Steelers have a bye-week, was delighted to stay home and make breakfast. We're going away (to California for Thanksgiving) on Wednesday so using up the food in the house was a must. We had plenty of potatoes and eggs but no bacon or sausage.

Rather than making potatoes and eggs separately I did a quick web search and found this recipe for Potato and Egg Casserole. It seemed simple enough - potatoes, eggs, seasoning salt, margarine (I always use butter), and sour cream. Sour cream we did not have, but a large container of Greek yogurt we did. Healthy substitutions are always welcome here.

I quickly got started cooking the potatoes and hard-boiling the eggs. As often as I cook and as much as I have learned over the years, I still can't boil an egg without looking at a recipe! I followed the directions on the recipe and only let them sit for 10 minutes and they were a disaster!

The eggs went for another round in the bubbly hot-tub and successfully finished cooking.

While the taters and eggs were cooking I went searching in the fridge for ingredients to add and found: red onion, mushrooms, and shredded cheddar cheese! That being said, what I made is so much more than what the original recipe called for.

Potato and Egg Casserole

6 potatoes
8 eggs
8 - 10 sliced button mushrooms
1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
1/8 cup of chopped red onion
seasoning salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter
17.6 ounce container of plain Greek yogurt 

Start by boiling the whole potatoes in a large pot of water. (Potatoes can go in at the beginning, before the water is boiling.) Once it's boiling, cook for 15 minutes. Drain, cool, and slice them.

At the same time, hard boil the eggs. You saw the trouble I ran into with this, sadly. From now on I promise to always use the Better Homes & Gardens method: first put the eggs in the pot, add water to fill 1" above the eggs, and bring to a rapid boil. Once the water's boiling to your liking, cover the eggs and remove from the heat. Let them sit this way for 15 minutes. PROMISE! Remove the eggs from the water, cool (I chose to give them a cool bath in some ice water to speed up the cooling process), peel and slice.

If you don't have a lot of time to cook, I'd recommend cooking the eggs and potatoes the night before. In the morning you can slice them, build the casserole and save a ton of time and dirty dishes!

Now would be a great time to preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a rectangular baking dish layer the potatoes, eggs, cheese, onions, and mushrooms. There are only 2 rules for layering: start and end with the potatoes and sprinkle seasoning salt on each layer of egg.

Mine was layered as such:

[top]
potatoes
mushrooms and onions
seasoning salt
eggs
potatoes
cheddar cheese
seasoning salt
eggs
potatoes
[bottom]

Layers 1 & 2 - potatoes and eggs.

 All of the layers except for the top later of taters.

In a small saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and incorporate the Greek yogurt until smooth and creamy.

 Pour over the casserole and bake for 30 minutes.

Before:

After:

Look at those layers!

What a great recipe this turned out to be! Using only a little bit of cheese and swapping the sour cream for Greek yogurt, I don't feel bad about eating this at all. The yogurt gives the same tangy flavor that the sour cream would have. This casserole is hot, savory, and delicious. This will be a perfect breakfast for a freezing cold Christmas morning in Pittsburgh :)