Breakfast Frittata
Love a good cooked breakfast? Hate all the preparation and mess? This recipe is for you. Make six meals in one pan in 20 minutes and breakfast like a king for the rest of the week.
Ingredients
For each breakfast frittata, you need the following ingredients. And a large stainless steel fry pan.
4 slices of bacon
1 onion
2 sausages
1 large roasted potato
12 eggs
1/2 cup grated cheese
In practice, I rarely have just the right amount of potato leftovers so I roast enough potatoes for 3 batches and freeze 2/3 of them. I do this by cutting 3 large potatoes into small cubes, then put them in a bread bag with canola oil and salt, and shake them around until well coated. Put on a silicone baking sheet and roast until just turning brown (~20 minutes at 400 F). Remove, cool, and divide into 3 parts. I use one part right away, and freeze the other two lots in bread bags along with 2 chopped-up sausages. That way my prep time is reduced for the next two times I cook my breakfast. I also freeze (separately) the bacon and leftover sausages between 6-day preps.
Here's what you'll have to buy and how often:
Every 6 days: 12 eggs
Every 18 days: 1 pack (12 slices) bacon
Every 36 days: 1 pack of 12 sausages, 6 onions, 6 large (or 12 medium or 24 small) potatoes, block of cheese
How much you pay for this is going to depend mostly on the price of your eggs - the price differential between cage eggs and free-range is pretty huge.
UPDATE Jan 2018. I still have this for breakfast every morning but have long since abandoned the potatoes unless they happen to be in the fridge. I've also bumped up quantities of bacon (half a 1 lb pack, so more like six slices) and egg (20 instead of 12), replaced the sausage with a cup of chopped mushrooms and 3 cups of baby spinach (added after onions are cooked), and I cut the frittata into 8 pieces.
Cook
Turn the broiler on.
Cut the bacon up into small pieces and fry at medium-high heat.* Once they've released enough fat, dump in the chopped onion and fry until golden. Add the two (pre-cooked) chopped sausages and potato cubes, and mix. Pour in 12 fork-whisked and salt-and-peppered eggs, and scramble the mixture until it has barely set (a little runny on top is OK). Sprinkle the cheese on and put the pan under the broiler and leave for 3-4 minutes until the top just starts to brown. Remove and leave to cool for a couple of hours. Or if you have hungry hordes to feed, serve hot. Total preparation and cooking time is about 20 minutes.
* In the video, I put the element on then faffed around setting up my phone on a magnetic tripod
Divide and Freeze
Slice the cooled frittata into 6 wedges and wrap in cling film. Put one in the fridge for tomorrow morning's breakfast, and the other five in the freezer. Each morning, take the slice in the fridge and microwave for ~1 minute. Move one of the other slices to the fridge to thaw (I don't recommend microwaving from frozen - too hard to get it evenly heated).
Each slice contains:
2 eggs | 1/6 onion | 2/3 slice bacon | 1/3 sausage | 1/6 cup grated cheese | 1/6 large potato
It's a nice compromise between flavor and healthiness. The sausage & bacon & cheese are are all high in fat, but they're there only in modest amounts and they pack a huge punch when it comes to deliciousness. Here's the nutritional breakdown for each slice (carbs/fat/protein/sugar in g, sodium in mg):
Probably not the best choice if you're on a diet, but I eat >3000 calories a day and I much prefer this to the kilogram of cooked oatmeal I used to have for breakfast.
There are of course a ton of variants. Swap bacon and sausage for tomato and mushroom and you have an awesome vegetarian option. Anytime you have suitable leftovers, throw them in too.
Some things to avoid: capsicum (pepper) is soggy and tasteless (so much better fresh and crunchy). Raw grated potato - I tried this after reading a Jamie Oliver recipe, but it was disastrously sticky.
I serve my cooked breakfast with toast and coffee. Total prep time each morning for everything is less than 5 minutes.