Strata Overnight Breakfast Casserole

Several years ago I discovered overnight casseroles. What I didn't know was that they are sometimes called a strata. The concept of an overnight breakfast is brilliant. You assemble them the day or night before you need them and then refrigerate overnight. The next morning you place the strata into a preheated oven, set the timer and bake the strata for about an hour while you take a shower, get dressed, relax or read a newspaper. This is great when you have overnight guests or your family over for breakfast, or brunch.

Melt the butter and mix in brown sugar and corn syrup

One year for Mother's Day our families gathered at my mother's house to enjoy a brunch consisting of quiche and a strata. My sister made a speckled egg bake which was a big hit too. It was probably the easiest brunch we've ever served.

Make sure the brown sugar is dissolved

If you’re not a morning person, you’re going to love this recipe. Just put it together before going to bed. After assembling it, cover it with plastic wrap and put it into the refrigerator, clean your dirty dishes and go to bed.

Pour syrup mixture into a greased 9"x13 inch pan

In the morning when you get up preheat the oven to 350°F. Start your coffee and when the oven temperature reaches 350°F. remove the plastic wrap and place the strata into the oven. Take a long shower, enjoy a cup of coffee and in about 60 minutes your breakfast will be ready to serve. Here's how to make it.

Arrange apple slices on the syrup base

Overnight French Toast Strata 

INGREDIENTS
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 tbsp. corn syrup
2 whole apples, thinly sliced
1 loaf Italian bread, sliced
6 whole eggs, beaten
1-1/2 cups milk
1 tsp. real vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon
as needed, cooking spray

Beat together eggs, milk, vanilla and cinnamon

DIRECTIONS
Melt butter in a sauce pan. Once melted add the corn syrup and brown sugar and bring to a boil. Pour this mixture into a lightly greased 9”x13” casserole dish. Lay the apple slices over the syrup and then lay in the overlapping bread slices over the apples. Mix together the eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and pour over the bread slices. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator overnight.

Arrange bread slices over apples

Pour egg mixture over the bread slices

BAKING DAY
Remove strata from refrigerator and allow to sit while preheating the oven to 350°F. Remove the plastic wrap and place the uncovered strata into the oven and bake for 50 - 60 minutes depending on the accuracy of your oven.

Strata baked and out of the oven

To check if the strata is fully cooked insert a knife in the center. When it comes out clean, the French toast strata is done. Cut and serve immediately. This strata is similar to a bread pudding, a lot like French toast, and if you put some chopped pecans on the top it may remind you of a taffy apple. This is just one of the many strata or overnight casserole recipes available. There are many others available on the internet. 

Serve the overnight French toast strata

Maybe you prefer a blueberry French toast strata

The breakfast bake possibilities are endless and limited only by your imagination. If you have an overnight casserole, strata, quiche, or frittata recipe and would like to share it, please attach it to the comments section below. If you have any suggestions about future posts for the summer. let me know that too.

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Next up pan-fried and oven baked frittata

Send in your favorite frittata recipe.  

© TMelle 2014

Bacon, Bacon, Bacon!

Slab of bacon

Bacon, bacon, bacon! Who doesn’t like bacon? Some like it cooked easy, some like it cooked medium, and some like it extra crispy. In a modern home kitchen cooking bacon can and often is a challenge. Cooking bacon in a round pan is a lot like pushing a round peg through a square hole. The problem is that they just don’t make a bacon pan. 

Cut bacon to fit

When I was a much younger man I worked as a short order cook. The flat top grill was the perfect medium to cook bacon, eggs, hash browns, hamburgers  and anything else.  Place the bacon slices on the grill, place a cast iron bacon press on the bacon and cook side one. Remove the press, flip the bacon and cook side two. Drop your eggs into egg rings while side two of the bacon is cooking.

Cooking in egg rings

Move the bacon to the plate and add the cooked eggs. You can pick up a bacon press and egg ring set a Target™ for about $10.00. Pop a couple of slices of bread into the toaster and you’re ready to make your own bacon and egg breakfast sandwich.

You just can't get this at a fast food joint

Let’s face it cooking bacon on a stove top in a pan can be messy. Not to mention dangerous. How many times have you attempted to turn a piece of bacon over at the exact moment it decides to shoot off a bacon flare? That really hurts. Doesn’t it? My wife bought several stainless steel splatter shields for the different sized round pans that we use. While they do work great for containing most of the grease and splatter, cleaning them when you are finished should be done immediately before the grease cools. My wife uses a vegetable brush to clean the screen. These splatter shields are about $8-$10 depending on the size.

Bacon on cooling rack

One day while watching a show on television I learned about cooking bacon in the oven. My first though was that the oven would contain the splattering to a small area in the oven leaving a major oven cleaning to add to my things-to-do list. You have to understand that my oven is only two years old and is still in pristine condition. Would I allow it to be violated like that? I will place a sheet pan under a casserole just in case it bubbles over to avoid cleaning the oven later. I’d rather clean a sheet pan than clean the oven any day. I just had to try it. 

Do not preheat your oven! The first step is to line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil to make cleaning the pan easier. So far so good, I thought. The next step is to arrange the slices of bacon neatly on the aluminum foil. This beats putting long bacon slices into a small round pan. Next place the baking sheet on the center rack of the cold oven. Close oven door and turn the oven to  400°F. That’s it. You’ve got about 15-20 minutes to kill depending on how fast your oven reaches 400°F. You can also use a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and fitted with a cooling rack. Either way works. 

It's done

Don’t peek before 15 minutes is up. The anticipation was killing me. It's done when the bacon is golden brown and not too crisp. The exact time depends on how thick the bacon is, the accuracy of your oven temperature, and how crispy you like your bacon cooked. It seemed that when I checked the bacon after 15 minutes it was not done. It changes from almost done to perfectly cooked rapidly so keep your eye on it so it doesn't burn. 

Remove the pan from the oven. Immediately transfer the bacon to a plate lined with paper towels to stop the cooking process and absorb the grease, aka. fat.  When the bacon fat has cooled and hardened, simply roll up the foil and discard. Or....pour the bacon grease from the foil lined sheet pan into a ramekin fitted with a strainer and discard the dirty foil. What you do with the bacon grease is up to you.We like using it to cook campfire eggs.

Spoon baste eggs with bacon grease

Now here’s the part I love and why I save the bacon fat. My dad, a WWII Army vet, taught me to make campfire eggs when I was a Boy Scout. When camping in the wild butter is not often not packed available so we relied on bacon grease instead. To make campfire eggs after frying the bacon cook the eggs in the bacon grease. He also taught me a very bad habit. When the bacon grease is hot he would tear off a piece of bread and dip it in the hot bacon grease before eating it. The cook's share is what it's called.

The cooks share

My day said it makes your hair shiny. When the egg is cooking, tilt the pan and spoon the hot grease over the top of the eggs. As the yolk turns white continue spooning until the egg is cooked to your liking.

Just how I like them

No flipping of the eggs is necessary. The bacon flavored campfire eggs is incredible and a welcome cooking method for people who are lactose intolerant.

Mirepoix Rack

Strained bacon can be stored in the refrigerator for months and used for a spinach salad, German potato salad, greasing a quiche or cornbread pan, pan frying fried potatoes, or left-over kartoffelklösse (like that ever happens), sauteing a mirepoix (celery, onions, and carrots), or the holy trinity (onions, celery, and bell peppers). The uses are endless.     

Pan fried kartoffelklösse

Bacon, Eggs, pan fried Kartoffelklösse, toast

© TMelle 2014

Summertime Blues Barbecue Sauce

Have you ever had a song that gets stuck in your head for an entire day? Every year, during the month of April as I'm pacing back and forth trying to release the caged rat within, the song that sticks in my head is Summertime Blues. I'm not talking about the 50's Eddie Cochran or the 60's version by the Who, I'm talking about the acid rock version by Blue Cheer. This year is no exception.

Lake Michigan 2014

I just can't wait to put this year's brutal Midwest winter behind us. To celebrate the arrival of spring and summer it's time to uncover the grill and give it a good spring cleaning. A clean grill is essential to a good barbecue. Once the grill is clean head off to your favorite barbecue store and stock up on charcoal, smoke chips, starter, or propane.

It's burger time. Can you smell that?

With over 80 inches of snow this year, it was one of the worst winters in history. "Why do we live here?" I often ask myself that very question. Because the other seasons are so beautiful, as is winter if it is a short one. The season I like the most is barbecue season. Generally it runs from early to mid April until mid October and sometimes into November, depending on your addiction to barbecue, or outdoor cooking.

This looks like a good starting point

Every year my goal is to perfect my own signature barbecue sauce. There are so many sauces on the market to choose from. Which one is your favorite? Pick up that sauce and look at the ingredients in it. The list is generally in order from most to least. Those first few ingredients are the main components in your favorite sauce. I looked at almost every sauce on the market and found most of them have very similar ingredients.

A little honey should sweeten things up a bit

Let's look at the first six ingredients in the following example: Water, tomato paste, sugar, distilled vinegar, brown sugar, lemon juice. 
As you can see the ingredients so far are not bad. Now grab another brand and check their ingredients as well:  
High fructose corn syrup, distilled vinegar, tomato paste, pineapple juice concentrate, natural smoke concentrate, water. 
It's just my preference but I prefer the taste of real sugar over corn, or fruit syrups. Once you get past the main ingredients you come to the additives that either enhance the flavor or preservatives that make it shelf stable, for months or even years. 

Some Chili sauce sounds like a good idea

Making your own sauce is not as hard as it sounds. If you make it in small batches and use it fast (a couple of days) you won't have to worry about adding preservatives.

Now for that smoky hickory flavor

A dollop of tomato paste

My cousin, a former chef, worked in a restaurant specializing in fall-off-the-bone ribs. He really likes Open Pit brand barbecue sauce as do many other people. The Open Pit was a starting point for his own signature sauce. When he finished I had no idea that Open Pit was the main ingredient. From there the recipe is simple, a little of this, a little of that, taste and continue. In my test the sauce was very thin. Do I add more chili sauce, ketchup, or tomato paste?

Caramelize them onions. Oh yeah!

Meanwhile I'm cooking up some Valida onions in butter to add some texture to this sauce. How about some garlic? What do you think?

But now the sauce is a little too red. I know... Brown sugar or Molasses. Either one will do the trick. I think I'll go with the brown sugar this time.Pure cane sugar or Molasses next time. For now some garlic and onion powder and maybe a touch of heat from red pepper flakes. What am I going to put this on?

Ribs of course

Maybe it's chicken I crave

Well I've got the entire summer to figure it out. What do you like to barbecue? I love the regional differences in sauces. If you have a family barbecue sauce recipe that you would like to share, just post it in the comment section below, or join this blog upper right above. 
As my brother down south says "ya'll put some south in your mouth."           

© TMelle 2014

Corned Beef, Reuben Sandwiches & St. Patrick's Day

It's that time of the year again. Time to get your Irish on. St. Patrick's Day in Chicago. On the Irish side of the family it is in our blood and a part of who we are. In Chicago it's also a big deal. Every year when I get an ad from the local grocer that corned beef is on sale I know what we have to do. Make corned beef and cabbage, or as my wife calls it "New England Boiled Dinner."

Thin sliced corned beef

That means going to the store and buying corned beef. There are many brands to buy out there but in Chicago it's Ray Harrington's, or Vienna brand, flat cut corned beef briskets are the best.

Add some Baby Swiss Cheese

While I love a New England boiled dinner as much as the next guy, to me it's really all about what you make with the left-overs. Corned beef sandwiches, Reuben sandwiches, or corned beef hash.

Russian or 1000 Island Dressing

I really do love a good Reuben when I can. It's really a very simple thing to make. 

Add some dressing

Ingredients
Corned beef, very thinly sliced
Swiss cheese
Rye bread, seeded, unseeded, or marble rye bread
Russian Dressing, or 1000 Island
Sauerkraut
Butter, for grilling
Deli-style Dill pickles, quartered

Add some Sauerkraut

If you have a meat slicer use that to cut the corned beef, otherwise you can buy some thinly sliced at your local deli while picking up your Swiss cheese. 

Butter the bread generously

Lay the sliced rye bread on a clean work surface and spread 1 side of each slice with some of the Russian dressing. Layer 1/2 of the slices with some of the corned beef. Divide the sauerkraut evenly over the meat, then top the sauerkraut with the slices of Swiss cheese. Place the remaining bread slices on top, dressing sides down, and set aside.

Place sandwiches on griddle

Heat a large heavy skillet or griddle over medium heat. When hot, place the sandwiches on the hot pan or griddle, buttered sides down, and cook until crispy and golden brown (about 3-4 minutes). Turn the sandwiches over to cook on the other side until golden brown, crispy, and the cheese is melted, 3 to 4 minutes longer.

Looking good

Transfer the sandwiches to a cutting board and cut in half on the diagonal. Place on plate and serve with dill pickles, Cole slaw, and potato chips.

Now where are those chips?

My wife prefers potato stix to chips so if you prefer those enjoy. If you're not into sauerkraut just make a plain corned beef on rye. 

Corned beef piled high with mustard of course

If you're looking for an Irish soda bread recipe, check out my previous post at http://dumplingproject.blogspot.com/2013/03/st-patricks-day-irish-soda-bread.html. 

What to do with the left-overs?

So what do I do with all the left-overs? Corned beef hash!

Corned beef hash ingredients

Have a great St. Patrick's Day. Get your Irish on!