Description
This easy sausage, egg and hash brown breakfast casserole is simple to make, and always a crowd-pleaser!
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground Italian sausage (hot, mild or sweet)
- 1 medium white onion, diced
- 1 red bell pepper, cored and diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 (20 ounce) bag frozen diced hash brown potatoes*, thawed
- 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
- 6 eggs
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt*
- a few generous twists of freshly-cracked black pepper
- toppings: thinly sliced green onions, sliced avocado and/or hot sauce
Instructions
- Prepare oven. Heat oven to 375°F.
- Brown the sausage. Cook over medium-high heat in a large sauté pan until browned, crumbling the sausage with a spoon as it cooks. Transfer sausage with a slotted spoon to a large mixing bowl. Reserve 1 tablespoon of the remaining sausage grease in the sauté, and discard the rest.
- Sauté veggies. Add onion and bell pepper to the pan and sauté for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until softened. Add garlic and sauté for an additional 2 minutes, stirring frequently, until fragrant. Transfer the vegetable mixture into the mixing bowl with the sausage. Add the thawed diced potatoes and 1 1/2 cups cheese to the mixing bowl with the sausage and veggies. Toss gently until evenly combined.
- Add the eggs. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, salt and black pepper until combined. Add the egg mixture to the potato mixture and toss gently to combine.
- Bake. Pour the mixture into a 9×13-inch* baking dish and top with the remaining 1/2 cup of shredded cheese. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 40 minutes. Remove the aluminum foil and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes until the potatoes in the center are cooked through. Transfer the baking dish to a wire rack.
- Serve. Serve warm, garnished with your favorite toppings, and enjoy!
Notes
Potatoes: If you don’t have a bag of frozen diced hash brown potatoes, feel free to dice 20 ounces (nearly 2 pounds) of Yukon gold potatoes for this recipe.
Type of salt: I always cook and write my recipes with fine sea salt. But please note that if you are using iodized table salt, you only need to add about half as much.
Size of baking pan: This casserole will also fit in an 11 x 7-inch or 9 x 9-inch baking pan, if you prefer. It will likely just need an extra 5-10 minutes to cook.
Can I make and freeze sausage, egg, cheese , hash brown casserole ahead of time or freeze uncooked
Can this be made and baked in a crock pot?
Good base recipe, but man, it needed salt and the initial recipe time estimate of 45 minutes? Nope. It took an hour and 20 minutes at that temperature (and my oven runs a little hot, so I usually go with the low estimate for time on recipes and have no issues). To be fair, I diced my own potatoes, but I have purchased the prepackaged diced ones before, too, and I can never recall them being parcooked. As for the salt, even with cheese, you always have to add some salt to potatoes. Every time I make mashed potatoes or soup, I end up adding tons of salt.
I’ve never had issues with the recipes I’ve tried from this site, but this one is definitely off. Treat it as a base recipe that you add a little bit more seasoning to.
Why so salty?
I agree! It was definitely underseasoned.
Can you make this ahead and or freeze??
I have made this recipe a number of times and it is always a hit! I usually increase the eggs to 8 or 9. I serve it with salsa and avocado. So yummy!
Made without potatoes and used a green bell pepper and half/half. It was delicious!
If we make this ahead of time (night before), can it just be refrigerated and then baked the next day?
This was delicious! I followed recipe except that I used 8 eggs instead of 6. My family and I loved this. Will definitely be a new go-to for me when I need an easy and yummy dish for a group. Thank you!
Made this dish last week. My daughter decided she wanted breakfast for dinner. This was a big hit. I had to use frozen potatoes O’Brien instead of cooking onions & peppers but it was still really good. About to make a half batch, for me, for dinner tonight.
We have made this before and enjoyed it, and we just made it again with a few tweaks and it was still tasty. I had a fussy baby who wanted to be held, so I added onion powder, garlic powder, extra salt and pepper to the sausage and to the milk mixture instead of cutting and cooking the vegetables. I used a 2 lb bag of southern style hashbrowns, increased the milk to 1/2 cup, and the eggs to 8. It did take over an hour to cook, but it turned out fine.
I followed the recipe basically as written for a Mother’s Day brunch and everyone loved it. For myself I would go with a spicy Italian sausage with some more veggies but that is my personal preference. Served with pico, avocados, and green onions.
Making without hash browns
I used tater tots and also add cooked mushrooms. I have a convention oven so mine only took about 30 mind. Everyone loved this.
Potatoes didn’t get tender after almost an hour of baking. Added 3 extra eggs and they were still a minor player compared to sausage and potatoes. Not surprisingly with that much sausage and cheese, it was greasy.
Does anyone know the calories per serving? Thanks in advance!
Great flavor
Looks delicious aaand I will make this VERYYY soon…Thanks for sharing this recipe!!! 😍❤️😍
This is one of my favorite recipes ever! I substitute Impossible Sausage (savory) and it’s absolutely delicious. I can’t get enough of it!!
Can I substitute rice for the potatoes?
My fam favors a milder approach, so I used turkey sausage, food processed into ground. I did red, yellow peppers, 1 slice sweet onion, chopped, pre-browning the potatoes. 1/3 cup sour cream, 1/3 cup milk, 1 teaspoon fresh chives, 7 large eggs and 4 ounces IN the egg/milk mix and 4 ounces on top, uncovered at 325 for 40 minutes, with and a few minutes under the broiler until just bubbly.
Thanks for the recipe! In my mind, recipes are sketches, which contain the most important foundational steps … so, I didn’t have frozen potatoes, nor the milk, not any peppers at all, and the sausages I used were a generic brand of pre-cooked frozen links. Instead, I used, three Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed well and diced (left skins intact) and since they didn’t have much flavor, I added some Italian seasoning (as that was the one I found first in the cupboard), and I microwaved them for 4-5 min. on the ‘high’ setting, as well as defrosted the link sausages for that amount of time on ‘high’. I did have about 2-3 cups of fresh baby spinach, so after sauteeing chopped onions with minced garlic (and, also 2 stalks of the innermost leafy part of a bunch of celery–for ‘crunch’), I added the spinach to remove some of the moisture in the leaves. Vitamin K in the spinach is a fat-soluble vitamin, so I assume heating it through didn’t lose too much of that nutrient. I debated about using freshly grated sharp cheddar cheese, but in a push for time, used grated Mexican three-cheese combination, and a third cup of heavy cream (because of the added moisture of the wilted spinach). As for which went first in the casserole, I had to partition potatoes aside from one portion since someone in the family can’t eat them so that was the bottom layer in the buttered dish, and I loved bubbly cheese on top, so everything else went helter-skelter with the cheese-cream-seasonings on top. The cooking time was perfect and a lovely addition to Christmas morning with yogurt topped with tasty blueberries and ripe, ripe persimmons. Mmm. That was good. I’ll have to make this another time for a special way to start the day.
Can this be cooked overnight in a crockpot?
I plan on making this for new years day brunch. I hate having to read all the comments first just to learn how to make it right. I suggest updating recipes to save people the hassle. Now I can write this recipe out with all the necessary adjustments. Glad I know not to add the eggs until the morning since I’m making it the night before. I was hoping to make it in the crackpot but you never did address that, so I don’t want to take any chances. Just want to have a recipe that comes out the way its supposed to.
I have never taken the time to review a recipe online. But after making and devouring this, I rushed to my phone to review because it’s that delicious. Just thank you. Thank you for this glorious dish. P.s. I added salt and cooked for 45 mins.
Hello,
Do you have instructions for if you were to make it the night before? I am planning on making this and taking it to our cabin, but would love to make it the night before so I do not have to worry about cooking at the cabin. Thanks!
Can you do this the night before
Thank you
I cooked for a total of 45 minutes and eggs are still not done. I just added another 10 to timer
I made this with bacon in 11×17 pan because I had large group! It took 1 hour 15 minutes to bake at 350 because 375 is too high and bottom was getting brown too quick! Delicious!! Highly recommend for holiday breakfast gatherings!
Excellent recipe. So easy to prepare and so delicious. I added bacon and diced ham to this and it made it even better.
A+. I followed the recipe almost exactly, except sautéed the hash browns with some seasonings for a bit. This is the best type of breakfast casserole in my opinion. Not too eggy and full of potato and sausage goodness. I don’t know why so many people gave such poor reviews. It really is a good, easy, foolproof breakfast casserole recipe. My guests loved it and asked for the recipe.
I love to make this and then use the leftovers for breakfast burritos that I freeze for later! I’m actually making this now to make burritos for camping this weekend, I’ll just wrap them in foil and throw them on the fire. Thanks for the great recipe!
This is a go-to recipe for me. I’ve made it many times, and everyone always loves it!
Awesome I also added gab and bacon turned out great
This dish works probably better with shredded hashbrowns than diced. I used a single 26-ounce bag of frozen, shredded hashbrowns and used the doubled recipe otherwise (doubled everything else besides the potatoes) and it fit nicely into my Pyrex 13×9 pan. I added salt to both the egg mixture and to the potato mixture, plus maybe 1/2 tsp or a tsp of ground pepper to the egg mixture. Because of the reviews saying that the dish was bland, I added some sprinkles of Italian seasoning to the potato-veg-mild sausage bowl. If using really fresh eggs, 12 is plenty for the doubled recipe. I used the author’s baking temp and time (going all the way to the full 15-minute mark, but not longer), and it came out GREAT. My toddler loved it, too! Because it’s a big dish for a family of 2 with a tiny person, I’m having leftovers for breakfast and they’re good even cold. Great meal prep dish.
Using the shredded hashbrowns, they weren’t thoroughly thawed when I mixed them in. Just broken up pretty well in the bag before mixing them in, and not hard-frozen- I took them out of the freezer when I started heating up the sausage pan and by the time I was done chopping veg, cooking sausage, shredding cheese, and sauteeing veg, they were a good consistency, though still chilled. By the time cooking time was done, the potatoes were nicely cooked and didn’t need any extra time other than stated in the recipe. The dish didn’t “brown” but I took it out after poking it a few times to check the potatoes. There was a hair of resistance, but I took it out and let it stand for a little bit to get past the molten lava stage. I knew that the thickness of shredded potatoes would cook easier than thicker diced potatoes, so maybe that’s why this worked easily for me. Once it cooled a little bit, it was yummy.
Can I add spinach to this? When would I add it
Great recipe, plan on using it Christmas morning for my Sicilian/Calabrese familia
Can this be made the night before?
This has become a Christmas morning staple in our home! I make it every Christmas Eve and then pop it in the oven when we wake up Christmas morning. We start opening gifts and it’s ready right about the time everyone gets hungry. The whole family loves it – kids too – and I don’t have to miss out on the festivities to make a big breakfast. Win-win!
I made this casserole for our family’s Christmas brunch and it was a big hit! I followed the recipe to the “T” and it was perfect! Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful recipes!
Wishing you and your beautiful little family the very best in the new year!
I used leftover bear sausage links that were already cooked. Used a bag of OBrien hashbrown potatoes. 9×13 pan. Turned out wonderful! Great make ahead for quick weekday breakfast!
Hi I used raw yukon gold potatoes (which were small in size so i used 6), spinach cleaned from salad mixed going bad, shredded mixed cheese, 8 eggs, lactose free milk with some heavy cream….kind of a clean the pantry casserole day…
Shallot, red and green pepper that needed to be used…olive oil and sautéed the veggies first…used smoked kielbasa cooked then chopped.. lots of pepper n salt seasoned throughout each step.. a little fresh rosemary on the raw potatoes….added all to a bowl…mixed w half egg mixture into casserole dish…and then topped the rest off egg mixture…cover in foil baked 45min at 375….remove foil for 15 min more…looks beautiful so far resting
My man definitely loves this breakfast casserole!! Thank you for the recipe!
After reading several comments, I was afraid the recipe would not turn out right. For example, too oily or not seasoned enough or overly salty. To my pleasant surprise, the dish turned out amazingly. Not just presentation but taste. I had nothing to worry about. I made half the 1x portion because it was just for me. Even that could feed two people.
I followed the recipe directly. I made a few tweaks. Overall, it turned out amazingly.
I only changed about 5 things. As follows:
1. I used freshly peeled russet potatoes. 2. I used Pink Himalayan salt instead of using table salt. Much less salty but seasoned well. 3. I added a splash of hot sauce to the egg milk mixture. 4. I used half Carnation milk and half whipping cream ( That’s all I had on hand) for the milk mixture. 5. MOST IMPORTANTLY — I seasoned on ALL stages. Plus, I sauteed the diced potatoes in butter FIRST. Where the outside was soft but the inside was still a tiny bit undone. It will finish cooking in the oven.
Hope this helps!