A Simple Breakfast Skillet

One of the more comforting foods to wake up to, the kind of thing your grandmother from the deep south might have made, or your grandfather made on a lengthy camping trip, is what’s called a breakfast skillet. Traditionally made in a single skillet, which was also traditionally cast iron, these are hearty breakfasts everyone will devour. Unfortunately, there are some that are called a breakfast skillet without actually being one. I ran into this at a restaurant called Grandma’s Kitchen up in Central Lake, Michigan. Their breakfast skillet, which I absolutely love and have enjoyed more than once, is more a stack of layers that have been cooked separately and then assembled on the plate. We’re talking open biscuits with sausage patties on them, slathered in milk gravy and shredded cheese, all topped with a pair of over-easy eggs. Sorry, that can’t be cooked in a single skillet.

This recipe can. It’s an impromptu thing 14-year-old Adam and I threw together this morning after Mary’s made me skillet breakfast casseroles many times the past couple years. What I wanted here was something suitable for camping and such, dirtying only a single skillet for the main dish. In this, we succeeded. Ok, well, you do need a mixing bowl for the eggs, but that’s not a big deal, right? Right.

But something else was key here. I found we achieved an amazing color and flavor simply by using the freshest bacon I could find. This was some fresh, hickory-smoked, thickly-cut bacon from the cutters at Jerry’s Market in Tecumseh. Because of this bacon, the whole dish turned out beautifully.

This simple breakfast skillet serves eight people. Here’s how to do it …

Get together the following ingredients:

1 lb slab bacon, thickly-cut
1-1/2 lb small redskin potatoes
1 small onion
18 eggs
8 oz finely shredded cheese
3/4 cup milk (optional)

Cut the bacon into sections about 1/2″ long. Dump these into a 14″ skillet over medium heat. Gently cook the bacon until it’s just beginning to get crisp. Once it’s barely crisp, use a skimmer to remove it from the bacon oil to a plate lined with paper towel, while retaining the oil in the skillet.

While the bacon is cooking, wash the redskin potatoes under cold water and remove any eyes. Slice the potatoes into 1/8″ slices and set them aside. Also, go ahead and chop the onion, making sure to keep the onion and the potatoes separated. Finally, break the eggs into a large mixing bowl (yes, take a bowl camping!) and, if you’d like, add the milk. Mix the eggs well with a fork. You may want to keep the sliced potatoes in cold water while the bacon finishes cooking. This will keep the potatoes from turning brown from exposure to the air.

Once the bacon is draining on the paper towel on the plate, discard most of the bacon oil in the skillet, leaving less than 1/8″. Set the skillet over medium-to-high heat and let it pre-heat. When the oil is hot enough, add the potato slices to the skillet. Stir the potatoes frequently so they’ll brown in the bacon oil but not scorch. When they’re just barely starting to brown, add the chopped onion. Continue cooking until the sliced potatoes are a golden brown, and the onions are just beginning to caramelize. When you reach this point, give the eggs a quick mix with the fork, and dump them on top of the potato and bacon mixture.

Cooking the eggs is the final and most difficult part of this recipe. You want them to cook all the way through, but just letting them sit in the pan over heat will burn the bottom of the dish. A golden-brown bottom is good, but don’t burn it or even scorch it. I like it that way, as I love that crunch and the rich flavor of that part of the dish. But your diners may not like it that way.

So while the eggs are cooking, go around the pan with a spatula, lifting the whole of it all the way around and letting raw egg run underneath. Do this a few times while the egg mixture cooks, keeping a close eye on how the underside looks.

When the egg mixture is almost fully cooked, dump the shredded cheese on the top of it all. Spread the cheese around as though it’s on a pizza. Wait about another minute, and then remove the skillet from the heat. Let it sit for a minute or two so everything will congeal, then cut it all into eight wedges. Serve each wedge with warm biscuits and butter.

There are so many possible variations to this thing, from replacing the bacon with bulk breakfast sausage, to getting rid of all the bacon oil and deglazing the pan with white wine or even rum or brandy before cooking the potatoes, to including minced garlic, sliced mushrooms, chopped peppers, and countless other items. Your imagination an probably come up with some other things. Let it happen! Confidence in the kitchen is a good thing. Don’t be afraid of what people think of what you cook. Instead, use those comments to learn. You’ll be glad you did.