Baseball season has been in full swing in our house and it's turning my life upside down with dinner time. We eat at crazy times, nothing is ever consistent and it's driving me bonkers. One day I thought to prep this delicious casserole ahead of time in the early afternoon. I usually drop Benson off at baseball practice and I can make it home and have a half hour to 40 minutes to accomplish something before I have to go pick him up. The idea to make a breakfast casserole, pull it out when I go to drop off and have the oven pre-heating while I was gone, and then pop it in when I got home that way it would be done shortly after I got back from pick up sounded like a brilliant plan, and it was until practice got cancelled because of a thunder/lightning storm. Still, if it was a normal day, it was a brilliant plan!
My Mom originally got this recipe from a co-worker, and we have since tweaked it ever so slightly. I love that it uses the Italian sausage over regular breakfast sausage, it makes it more savory. Lucky for me, I had all the ingredients on hand it was easy to pull together. Think sausage, cheese, bell pepper, in a custard type dish. Yum. To go along with it, I just pulled out a bunch of random fruit that needed to be used up in my fridge and some yogurt. Easy, healthy, delicious.
I cut the original recipe in half because I didn't want or need a ton of leftovers, we aren't very good at eating leftovers in our family. The original recipe with our slight ingredient adaptations will be given below.
Italian Sausage Breakfast Casserole
1 lb Italian Sausage
1 small onion, diced
1 small red pepper, diced
2 cups monterey jack or sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cups milk
4-5 slices of white bread
8 eggs
Spray a 13x9 pan and set aside. Cook Italian sausage in a frying pan until done. Drain sausage on a plate lined with a paper towel. Saute onion and bell pepper in the same frying pan. Add sausage back to pan and mix.
In a separate bowl, mix milk and eggs, set aside. Add salt & pepper to taste. Break bread into small pieces, and slightly toss in milk and egg mixture. Add Italian sausage, onion, and pepper mixture to the bread mixture and toss until ingredients are mixed evenly. Finally add the cheese and toss until well mixed, you could reserve some cheese to top casserole if you would like. Pour mixture into prepared 13x9 pan and refrigerate overnight.
When ready to bake, while the oven is preheating, allow the pan to come to room temperature, especially if it is a glass dish. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes.
*I finished preparing this at about 2pm and baked it at 6pm and it turned out just as delicious as if you were to allow it to refrigerate overnight.
