Lately for our morning meals we've been putting together "breakfast skillets" of the sort you mind at a diner. These "little bit of everything" skillets not only have all the traditional greats of breakfast - eggs, bell peppers, cheese, bacon - but they also give us another way to use up the end of veggies and meats that didn't make it into any dinners over the course of the week. A skillet uses less eggs (between 2 and 4) than individual omelets or breakfast burritos, as the eggs are more to hold together the vegetables than anything else. They also give us an opportunity to be a little creative in the kitchen, because just about anything can go in them, and a skillet can either be made firm and served like a quiche wedge, or mixed up and served like scrambled eggs.
Any traditional breakfast meat is a delicious base to work off, from breakfast sausage to bacon and even soy crumbles or veggie bacon. You don't even strictly need to use a meat if you don't have any handy. To start a skillet, slice up your meat and start cooking in a fry pan. If you are doing bacon there's no need to add any extra oil or butter, as the bacon grease provides everything you need.
Next up, dice whatever veggies you want to use. Anything goes here, but thinking of what you'd normally put in an omelet is a great starting point. Below you can see a fantastic array that went into our skillet yesterday morning, including poblano peppers, anaheim peppers, white onion, green onion, red bell pepper, orange bell pepper, and tomato.
You may have noticed we use a lot of peppers in our various meals, from bell peppers to the much spicier kind. We'll soon be running a new blog specifically comparing the different kinds of peppers and explaining how they can be used for the most flavor in a huge range of dishes, so keep your eyes peeled!
Here's all those colorful (and flavorful) vegetables cooking up for one skillet that was less meat focused.
For the egg base, whisk your eggs with a small amount of milk and sour cream in a bowl, adding in salt and pepper if desired.
Then pour the egg mixture into the pan over the vegetables and bacon or sausage. Fill the pan so the eggs surrounds the other ingredients and forms a hold, like you might if you were making an omelet.
Grate some cheddar on top now so it melts in, or if you prefer, wait until it's finished and then grate the cheese over the final product. Cover and let the skillet sit until the egg has firmed up around the vegetables if you want the end result to be solid so it can be cut into wedges or squares. Otherwise, leave uncovered and either stir every few minutes if you want something more approaching a scramble, or attempt to flip the whole thing over to cook both sides (this can be a messy experiment if it fails!). Here's another look at a skillet, this time with mushrooms.
We're always trying to think of ways to use ingredients over multiple meals to save money, and inspiration struck one morning after we'd had a quick and easy pasta dish that's become a staple around our home. The dish consists of slices of beef or turkey sausage with pre-packaged and microwavable veggies that have their own butter sauce all tossed with bowtie pasta. Since we still had half a jalapeno flavored sausage left, we used that instead of bacon, and mixed it with green onions and slices of tomato, along with our typical array of peppers.
Here you can find the end result for several different skillets, served up with a side of wheat toast and a dollop of cottage cheese. I love to add on a variety of hot sauces as well, and to change up my toast with things like peanut butter. You may have noticed we don't have any potatoes in these skillets, and either hash browns on the side or just simply cubed potato pieces in the skillet would work quite well. Generally we add potatoes to breakfast burritos instead, so you'll get to see plenty when we get on that upcoming entry to our breakfast adventures. For even more ideas on how to cook up an array of breakfast skillets, click here.
You've seen what our breakfasts are like lately, so what's next for Six-Seven-Eight? As mentioned before, soon we'll be diving deep into the hot and spicy world of peppers, and tomorrow night we'll be doing an experiment with some friends recreating Olive Garden recipes. Be on the lookout for our coverage of those fantastic Italian favorites over the next week, as well as a new project where we embark on a (culinary) travel of the globe, cooking up meals from a different country for each entry.
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