Tater Tot Breakfast Bake

This Tater Tot Breakfast Bake will quickly become your family's favorite weekend tradition. It's loaded with eggs, cheese, veggies, bacon, and ham and it takes just minutes to throw together. It can be made ahead of time and the leftovers reheat like a dream. If you're stuck in a breakfast rut, you've gotta try this tater tot casserole!

Baking Bacon

• This recipe starts with bacon! Crispy, crumbled, and lots of it!
• The easiest way to cook bacon is to bake it! Have you tried it before? It's the best way to get perfectly crispy, crumbly bacon for this tater tot egg bake!
• Never again will you stand over the hot stove, endlessly flipping bacon while getting burned by spitting and spattering grease!
• All you do is arrange the bacon in a single layer on a parchment/foil-lined baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 20ish minutes and that's it!
• If you need your bacon crumbled (like you do for this recipe), wait until the bacon has cooled enough to handle the foil that it's on, then gently fold the foil in on itself crunching and crumbling the bacon right inside. Voila! Quick and easy crumbled bacon with virtually no mess!

Instructions

Lightly grease a 9x13 baking dish with oil or butter. Add bacon, cheese, ham, red pepper, green onion, garlic powder, and a couple large pinches of salt and pepper to the baking dish.

Stir to combine.

Add eggs, heavy cream, and a couple pinches of salt and pepper to a large mixing bowl.

Whisk until well combined.

Pour over the veggie/meat mixture in an even layer.

Add frozen tater tots, spreading them in an even layer on top of the eggs. They will overlap - that's okay.

Bake for 55-60 minutes or until the eggs are set. Garnish with fresh parsley, slice, and enjoy!

Baking Eggs

• If you haven't baked eggs before you may wonder how you know when they're done.
• Since the meat is all cooked ahead of time, when the eggs are cooked through, the casserole is done.
• You can tell that the eggs are cooked through when they look "set" in the very middle and are no longer jiggly.
• A good test is to stick a knife into the center of the egg bake. If the eggs appear set and the knife comes out clean, the eggs are cooked!

Make Ahead

• This tater tot breakfast bake can be made up to 24 hours in advance which makes this one of our family's brunch favorites.
• Prepare the egg casserole as directed, but before adding the tater tots and baking - cover the casserole with foil and refrigerate for up to 24 hours.
• When you're ready to bake, add the frozen tater tots and bake according to the directions below in the recipe card. You may need to add a couple extra minutes to the baking time as the casserole will be a bit colder when it comes right from the fridge.
• There's no need to thaw the frozen tater tots - just add frozen tater tots to the casserole right before baking. They will cook through in the oven so you don't need to thaw them beforehand.

Reheating Leftovers

• You can store your leftover egg bake in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. I like to cut them into slices so that they are already portioned out and ready to reheat.
• Slices of egg casserole can be reheated in the microwave for 30-60 seconds on a microwave-safe plate.
• This tater tot breakfast bake can also be reheated on the stove in a saute pan (which is my personal favorite way to reheat them). Heat oil or butter in a small saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the slice of the casserole to the pan and cover it with a lid. Cook for about 5-7 minutes, flipping halfway through. Basically, just cook and flip until the eggs are heated through. If you're in a hurry, cut the egg casserole into smaller pieces so it heats up faster.

Substitutions

• If you don't have heavy cream on hand, you can use whole milk or 2% milk in its place. The cream will make the eggs, well, creamy. But the milk will still add some nice fluffiness to the texture!
• I have actually made this egg bake using frozen french fries in place of the tater tots. It sounds odd, but they're basically the same thing. Waffle fries are especially delish in this recipe. Pretty much any frozen potato will work in place of the tater tots!

Egg Bake Blueprint

• You can use this recipe as a blueprint to make your own egg bake using whatever you've got in the fridge! This is a great way to use up those leftovers before they go bad!
• As long as you keep the measurements the same, the casserole will still turn out great every single time.
• A few of my favorite combos include:
  • Spicy sausage, Parmesan cheese, and fresh spinach
  • Pancetta, broccoli florets, and aged cheddar cheese
  • Chopped asparagus, prosciutto, and Gruyere

Breakfast Favorites

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