Bacon Egg & Cheese Breakfast Sandwiches

If you haven't been keeping up, I'm pregnant. And so are (what seems like) most of my friends. It's going to be such a wild ride as our kids all grow up together. With all these babies, that means that there are a lot of new busy moms.

In church, I learned that the best gifts aren't material things, they are gifts of your time, talents, and treasures. So I try to do that when giving gifts, especially for close friends and family where it feels awkward to put a dollar amount on how I value the relationship... so the opposite of the Michael Scott approach.

While I am no gourmet chef, I enjoy cooking and would consider it one of my "talents" (on my good days haha). And it takes time, which is something that I have plenty off right now, and I know for a fact these new moms do not. And for treasures, in a metaphorical sense it is special to share the recipes that I like and make, and I try to make healthy(ish) meals that are stuffed with as many veggies and nutrients as possible - but in a more literal sense it's also nice for a family to not have to spend money on carry-out for one night because let's be honest, new parents are not spending time cooking nutritious home-made meals... it's this or take-out. Or cereal.

With these things in mind, my usual gift for new moms is some sort of heat-and-eat meal. I've done spinach rollatini, zucchini and spinach lasagna, ranch chicken-pot-pie biscuits/bread, crock-pot chicken tacos, chili, and most recently: breakfast sandwiches. Here's my confession though... the sandwiches are just for me. I'm being selfish with them because they are my favorite and I know I'm going to need some meals in the freezer before too long. My energy is already starting to wane, and having a fresh cooked meal every night is getting to be a bit much for me to tackle. Because of that, with each of the meals I've made recently for my new mommy friends, I've also made a dish for myself and have it in my own freezer. I've been spending my weekends prepping tons of food because I have such limited energy during the week. So some of these meals in my freezer might be saved until the baby comes and I really need them, but some might get busted out before then because I need to. My goal though is to try and stock my freezer with as much food as I can before the baby comes, because if I have this little motivation to cook now, I can only imagine what it'll be like once my little one makes her grand entrance!! And it will be a grand entrance... she's her mother's daughter.

Specifically, breakfast is an awkward meal for me. I'm really not a big cereal person. I don't like the taste of most healthy cereals, and anything that I like the taste of is so chock-full of sugar, that I don't want to eat it. Plus I think it's an imbalanced meal with too many carbs and too little protein. I've been drinking a lot of Shakeology shakes in the morning which are super healthy and delicious, but in my current state and while I'm breastfeeding, I'll definitely need more calories than one shake will provide. So I make these sandwiches once in a while to supplement my shakes. And I figured that if I make them one at a time and really enjoy them, why not make them en masse? I've seen posts like this on Pinterest and figured I'd try it myself. One difference on Pinterest I've seen is that they just crack individual eggs into the cups of a muffin tin. Well I took a different approach for the following reasons: 1) the size of the muffin tin is WAY smaller than the English muffin, so a huge ring around the edge of your sandwich would be egg-less. After 4 years of working at Potbelly Sandwich Works, I'm quite a stickler for sandwich perfection... every bite of the sandwich needs to taste the same. 2) I wanted more than 1 egg per sandwich... I need more protein than that. 3) I wanted to use the egg as a way to sneak in some veggies (spinach - though you could probably add in lots of different veggies!! Just sautee them first. Try zucchini, peppers, onions, mushrooms, just about anything you like in an omelet would be good). 

I feel bad for the "food" section of this blog because it doesn't always get the love it deserves. I have so many things that I make that I would love to blog about, but I'm in a hurry. I rush home, bust open the fridge, start cooking, and by the time I'm sitting down to eat, I realize that I didn't get out our big camera to take any pictures. So instead I just post a picture of my (usually half-eaten) plate to Instagram with a couple of hashtags, and think "oh well." But I'm making an exception this time. Though I don't have nice pictures of the step-by-step process, I had enough friends comment or message me to ask for the recipe that I thought I'd share... even though it won't be illustrated. So here goes!

Bacon, Egg, & Cheese Muffins

Makes: 12 sandwiches

Ingredients

12 English muffins

18 organic eggs

1 box frozen spinach (thawed, gently drained)

1 lb low sodium regular cut bacon

12 slices American Cheese

~1/2 stick of butter

Nonstick cooking spray

Salt & Pepper (~1/2 tsp each)

Steps to assemble

I'm going to walk through how to prepare each ingredient, and then the final assembly. This doesn't need to happen in any particular order, so use this as an opportunity to practice your mise en place and multi-tasking so that things come together around the same time.

English Muffins - Split English Muffins with a fork, toast lightly (if you have a big toaster oven, you can do 4 muffins at a time), and lightly butter the top and bottom of each muffin. Remember these will be re-heated so don't toast them to a nice dark color quite yet or they'll burn in the final cooking.

Bacon - The best trick to cooking bacon is to do it in the oven instead of on the stove. On the stove, it cooks unevenly because it wrinkles up, which means that the parts that touch the pan get darker and the spots in between stay soggy, and it's hard to reach every inch of the bacon to get it good and evenly crispy. Cooking it in the oven prevents that issue - it gets wrinkly still, but it heats much more evenly. But for a sandwich, the trick is that you want flat bacon so that it sits nicely on the other sandwich fillings. The easiest way to do that is to use two jelly-roll or sheet pans with edges. Place foil or a SilPat on the bottom of one jellyroll pan, lay out your bacon in a single layer, then place a slightly smaller sheet pan on top of the bacon, and put the whole thing in the oven.

What I like to do is use a sheet pan that's slightly smaller than my SilPat on the bottom - this means that all the bacon fat stays pooled on the SilPat. After several minutes of baking when a lot of the fat had been rendered off (and was starting to come up the sides of the smaller sheet pan on top), I pulled it out, and poured the bacon grease into my mason jar where I store bacon fat in my fridge to use for zillions of other delicious things. Having a pan that's just slightly smaller than the SilPat allows it to collect and be poured off really easily, and it keeps that pan (mostly) grease-free. I then flipped all the bacon, put the top sheet pan back on, put it back in the oven, and finished cooking. Be careful though because with this method your bacon goes from "crisp" to "burnt" really quickly, and because you have a sheet pan on top you can't see it - so as you're getting close, check on it frequently. And err on the side of pulling it out too soon because the bacon will cook more when you re-heat the sandwiches. Full disclosure, I totally over-cooked my bacon for this batch of sandwiches. But I'll live... lesson learned for next time! I cooked it at 375, though the temperature is less important, just check on it. Anywhere from 350 - 400 would work.

Eggs - As noted, I didn't want to use muffin tins, so instead I used ramekins. Holding these up against the English Muffins, the size was much more similar, though the egg patties still came out smaller than the muffins themselves. Thoroughly combine eggs, and stir in salt and pepper. Spray all ramekins thoroughly with nonstick cooking spray, including bottom and sides. Divide the thawed spinach into 12 (you can draw lines on the thawed spinach brick with your finger to estimate 1/12) and put 1/12 into each ramekin. Pour 1/12 of the egg mixture into each ramekin, and give it a little stir to distribute the spinach. Place ramekins on a sheet pan and place in oven (you can do this at the same time as the bacon). The eggs will puff up - it'll look like a souffle and rise way over the top of the ramekin but don't worry, they'll fall. They're done when they've set in the middle, mine took about 15 minutes give or take... Sorry I didn't time it, like I said I wasn't planning to write about this one haha! When they've set, pull them out and remove the egg patty from the ramekin. Either flip them over, or place on a cooling rack (allowing cool air to get to the bottoms will help them fall faster).

You're ready to assemble! Take your English muffin base, place one egg patty right-side-up on top, break 1 slice of bacon into thirds and put the 3 pieces on top of the eggs, put on one slice of American cheese, and the top of the muffin. Press, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Lather, rinse, repeat, 11 more times and then you're ready to go to the freezer!

I've made these before and eaten them fresh and they're delish (I put the whole thing back in the toaster oven for another minute or two to melt the cheese). I've never frozen, thawed, and heated them before, so I hope that turns out as well as it looks like it does according to Pinterest!! I'll definitely post an update after I've had one! What I plan to do is put a sandwich in the fridge the night before I want one, and then I'm going to experiment with microwaving vs. toaster oven to re-heat. If you try it out, please let me know what worked for you, and I'll be sure to update once I have an opinion!