Sausage and Egg Breakfast Tacos

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Sometimes mistakes in the kitchen turn into something great. I stayed with some friends recently and I took it upon myself to buy a few breakfast items to cook in the morning as a reward for putting up with me for the night.

My plan was omelets. The last thing in the skillet were the eggs and through my impatience I kept stirring the mix which scrambled them. Instead of a thick omelet like patty in the skillet I got a breakfast scramble that was perfect for a burrito or taco filling, but a little awkward to eat with a spoon from a bowl instead of wrapped in a tortilla with toppings.

My friends agreed I had the start of a great breakfast taco. For this recipe, I remake my breakfast blunder with some small tweaks. Sausage is the key element of flavor and it’s complimented by the sauted vegetables. The eggs add a fluffy and creamy texture. Salsa, cheese and cilantro are used as garnish and it’s served on a tortilla, helping turn a mistake into a great way to start the day.

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Sausage and Egg Breakfast Tacos

I love turning tacos and burritos into breakfast items, which had always left me to dream about Taco Bell offering a breakfast menu. Well, that culinary dream has come true and last Thursday I ventured to my nearest Bell for a breakfast sampling.

I ordered a Waffle Taco and an A.M. Crunchwrap with steak. The taco had a manufactured flavor about it and I thought it could be reworked to make a little tastier.  The waffle had a syrup flavor infused in it and made it taste unnatural.

The A.M. Crunchwrap was simply spectacular and the best thing I have ever eaten for breakfast at a fast food chain. The hash brown, steak, eggs and cheese packaged into a toasted tortilla is an excellent breakfast item that can be eaten on the run. I really think the hash brown patty included in the mix really helped it stand out. I used a little mild salsa with each bite also.

They have a sausage and bacon option for the A.M. Crunchwrap and I plan to try them both next time I make a run for the border before 11 a.m.

Eat well, cook often ...

THE RECIPE

Sausage and Egg Breakfast Tacos

Serves 4; 30 minutes
1 lb Breakfast sausage
1 C Onion diced
1 C Poblano pepper, diced
1 Tbs Garlic minced
6 Eggs beaten
12 Flour tortillas
1/2 C Monterrey jack cheese, shredded
1/2 C Cilantro, chopped

Brown sausage, cook vegetables
In a skillet over medium-high heat cook sausage until browned,  remove to a paper towel lined plate. Add onion and poblano pepper, cook until soft, 3 to 4 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Add garlic and cook one minute more or until fragrant.

Finish filling
Return sausage to pan and mix through. Pour eggs into mixture. Let cook a minute then stir. Repeat until eggs are set and mixture is heated through 6 to 8 minutes.

Make tacos
Place filling in a flour tortilla and garnish with salsa, cheese and cilantro. Then serve.

Mini Breakfast Fillo Bites

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I was at Walmart recently hoping to see some of those crazy people that you see in pictures on Facebook when I stumbled upon a product in the freezer isle that I thought would be lots of fun - mini fillo shells. I purchased a box and decided to fill them with something breakfast oriented.

The shells consist of a number of super thin layers of fillo dough formed into a small cup that can hold a heaping teaspoon of filling. They have a light and crispy texture and can be used to make a sweet or savory snack. I could have gotten all fancy and made these little shells myself from scratch, but they were less than $2 and it saved me lots of time and labor.

For this recipe, I make a mixture of sausage, egg and cheese to fill the shells and then heat them through in the oven. The end result is a tasty little bite loaded with breakfast flavors that is perfect for the kids. They can also be made ahead, stored in the fridge then heated and served as a side to pancakes or waffles in the morning.

BEHIND THIS BITE

Mini Breakfast Fillo Bites

I found these fillo cups by accident walking through the freezer section and I knew instantly that I had to do something with them. At the same time, I also thought it would be nice to use breakfast flavors because it had been a while since I went that route with a recipe, and to me, it’s hard to go wrong with sausage and eggs.

The overall flavor of these little cups was a surprise. I was sure they would taste good, but the light fillo dough, the bite-size portion and the breakfast theme form a trinity of yummy goodness - I almost ate the entire batch myself. They reminded me of my obsession with deviled eggs, every time I got near the tray I had to grab one and pop it in my mouth like a high-calorie tic tac.

I’m looking forward to using these filo cups again, they were cheap, make a great delivery devise for an appetizer and are the perfect size for scarfing!

Eat well, cook often ...

THE RECIPE

Mini Breakfast Fillo Bites

Makes 15 breakfast snacks;
25 minutes
1/2 C Breakfast sausage, fully cooked
1/2 C Scrambled eggs
1/2 C Monterrey jack cheese, shredded
15 Mini fillo shells

Make filling, fill and cook
Preheat oven to 350°
Mix together sausage, egg and cheese. Spoon a heaping teaspoon of mixture into each mini fillo shell. Place on cookie sheet and bake 8 to 10 minutes or until cheese is melted and cups are heated through. Remove from oven, let cool slightly and serve.

Meat Lovers Meatball Subs

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So, what happens when I notice that ground beef, bacon and Italian sausage are on sale at my local super market? Meatballs subs for dinner!

And you know what?

They were magically delicious.

The bacon and sausage were the star flavors and the ground beef was there more for volume. I made these in the afternoon and wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the finished product. I thought of trying them over pasta like traditional meatballs but wasn’t cracked about that because of their unique flavor. I flirted with dropping them into corn muffin batter then baking them off to make meatball corn muffins, but I ran into a problem which led to a great corn muffin recipe.

In the end, I decided that a sub with pizza sauce and cheese was the way to go. The combo of meats reminded me of a meat lover’s pizza so I thought a sub to carry those flavors would work well – and it did. This was probably the best meatball sub I have ever had, but then again, it’s the only meatball I’ve ever tried made of bacon, Italian sausage and ground beef - which is a tough meatball to compete with.

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Meat Lovers Meatball Subs

I bought these sub buns at Walmart. I usually use these buns for photographing hot dogs because they look good in pictures and come without having been pre-sliced. I decided to try them with these subs which meant I had to hollow them out. This created a hot-dog-bun-sized bread boat to work with. I stuffed them with the meatballs and toppings then baked them off, which really did the trick.

They crisped up on the outside and were moist on the inside and provided the perfect delivery system for the tasty meatballs. They reminded me of mini French bread pizzas that had been toasted and made crisp. When I have used them in the past strictly for a good photograph they seemed a little chewy, I discovered that baking them toasts the outside and fluffs the inside. I want to try them again with brats or sausage from the grill. Walmart really came through with these buns!

Eat well, cook often ...

THE RECIPE

Meat Lovers Meatball Subs

Makes 44 to 48 meatballs;
12 sandwiches (with some meatballs leftover)
1 lb Ground beef
1 lb Italian sausage
1 lb Bacon finely, chopped
1 C Bread crumbs
1 C Parmesan cheese, shredded
1 C Parmesan cheese, shredded
2 Eggs
FOR THE SUBS
12 Fresh bake brat buns
1 C Mozzarella cheese
1 C Pizza Sauce

Make meat mix
In a large bowl mix together ground beef, Italian sausage and bacon until well combined. Mix in bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese and egg until all ingredients are well distributed.

Cook meatballs
Preheat oven to 400°
Roll meat mixture into 1-inch meatballs. Makes 44 to 48. Place meatballs in cups of a mini cupcake pan. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until internal temperature of meatballs reaches 165° Remove from oven. Place meatballs in a bowl and let cool to room temperature, 1 to 2 hours.

Make sandwiches
Preheat oven to 350°
Hollow out fresh baked brat buns. In bun place a layer of cheese, pizza sauce, 3 meatballs. Then top with a little more sauce and cheese. Bake subs until cheese is melted and bread is toasted, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from oven and serve.

Deluxe Pigs in a Blanket

Deluxe Pigs in a Blanket

Now that Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year holiday are past it’s time to prepare for the biggest party of them all - Super Bowl Sunday.

My all-time favorite things to cook are football party snacks – wings, sliders, nachos, pizza – the list goes on. To me, Super Bowl snacks are like a simple American version of Spanish tapas, which are a variety of small appetizer-like bites served one after another to form a meal. It’s an excellent way to eat hardily with friends and family in a social setting — much like treats on Super Bowl Sunday.

For this recipe, I take the classic “pigs in a blanket” and make it a Super Bowl worthy treat. For extra pizzazz, I make it with smoked sausage and add marinara, green pepper and onion. Together, these flavors combine for an easy score.

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Deluxe Pigs in a Blanket

I decided to make this recipe because of a mistake in documenting the dish I created the day before. I had forgotten to take a picture of smoked sausage after I had sautéd it, which creates little caramelized spots on each slice. I do that because those spots are little flavor bombs that give a dish with smoked sausage a little extra flavor pop.

I bought the sausage to photograph and thought it would be a good ingredient to use in my first Super Bowl snack of 2014. Each year I have really enjoyed creating new treats for the big game. With the sausage on hand I decided a souped up pigs in blanket was in order.

Some food bloggers and gourmet cooks may turn up their nose at such a primitive treat but for me it’s a simple and tasty snack that anyone could recreate as part of their own Super Bowl spread. These deluxe blankets are tasty, simple and great to wash down with beer!

Eat well, cook often ...

THE RECIPE

Deluxe Pigs in a Blanket

Makes 12; 30 minutes
1 sheet Cresent dough, unperferated
1/4 C Marinara sauce
12 slices Smoked sausage (1/2 lb)
12 slices each
Green pepper and onion, sliced 1-inch long

Assemble
Preheat of to 375°
Cut cresent dough sheet into 12 equal squares. On each square place a dab of marinara, slice of sausage and 1 slice of green pepper and onion. Fold opposite corners of dough together forming a role around ingredients. Place on a baking sheet.

Bake
Put blankets in oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and let rest 10 minutes, then serve.

Sausage, Sage and Green Pepper Dressing

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For the last few Thanksgivings I’ve made dressing separately, rather than stuffing which is cooked inside the bird. I usually brine my turkey and the last time I made stuffing inside, it was edible, but the overload of salt from the brine was obvious and it really ruined the flavor. Since that disaster I have always kept it separate.

This recipe was the best dressing I have ever made, the sausage, green pepper and fresh sage combine to take the flavors off the charts. I used a loaf of french bread that I cubed and put in the oven at 200° for about 2 hours. This dried the bread out and replicated the results of leaving the bread out in the open for a couple of days.

This was a great dish and sadly, it's the final post from my Thanksgiving feast of 2013. I’m already looking forward to next year.

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Sausage, Sage and Green Pepper Dressing

I’m so glad this dish turned out. The biggest disappointment of last year's Thanksgiving feast was my dressing. I didn’t have dry enough bread and I didn’t use enough chicken broth to get everything to congeal together. It was more like soggy bread with mirepoix vegetables, so it was important to me this year to have a tasty dressing.

This is also my favorite infographic recipe of all the Thanksgiving 2013 dishes.

The red dish featuring the finished dressing at the bottom was a clearance item at Pier 1 Imports and it really helps this recipe stand out from the rest. When I mixed everything in the bowl I thought there was no way it would fit into the vessel, by like the sweet corn casserole, all of it fit and the rest is history.

Now it’s on to Christmas cooking!

Eat well, cook often ...

THE RECIPE

Sausage, Sage and Green Pepper Dressing

Serves 12 to 15; 50 minutes
1 lb Breakfast sausage
1 C Onion diced
1 C Celery diced
1 C Green pepper, diced
1 Tbs Garlic, minced
6 C Stale bread cubed
3 C Chicken broth
1 Tbs Italian seasoning

Brown sausage, sauté veggies
Preheat oven to 375°
In a sauté pan over medium heat cook sausage until no longer pink, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove from pan to a large bowl. Discard all but 1 tablespoon of drippings. Cook onion, celery and green pepper until soft, 4 to 6 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Add garlic cook two minutes more. Transfer to large bowl with sausage.

Make dressing
Add dried bread, chicken broth and Italian seasonings to bowl. Mix until well incorporated and bread has soaked up broth. Transfer to a prepared 9 x 13 baking dish. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until top becomes brown and with crispy bits. Let cool a few minutes before serving.

Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash

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I have never been a fan of squash. For the longest time I thought the only good use for squash was hollowing out pumpkins to make scary jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween or chucking rotten ones at passing hay rides in the fall.

A couple of years ago, I tried spaghetti squash for the first time and I actually liked the dish. It was one of the first squash recipes I had eaten that wasn’t purposely made sweet, and it allowed for its natural savory flavor to come out which is why I like it so much. Since then, I have made several spaghetti squash recipes, two of which, spaghetti squash and meatballs and lemon spinach spaghetti squash have been published here.

Recently my Mom made a simple acorn squash with just salt and pepper that I was reluctant to try. To my surprise, I liked the taste. I thought it was time to go out on a limb and decided to try it stuffed with one of my favorite pizzas combinations: sausage, mushroom, green pepper and onion. I knew that if I didn’t like the flavor of the squash I would for sure love the filling. Basically, it’s a pizza that replaced the crust with acorn squash.

In the end, I was pleased with the results. It was a lighter way of enjoying one of my favorite pies. The success of this recipe has me thinking about acorn squash a little more. Could it be that squash is growing on me in general? Maybe, but I’m still a long way from craving pumpkin pie.

BEHIND THIS BITE

Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash

I overcooked the squash when I documented this recipe. I should have pulled them a few minutes before I did but the time got away from me as I was making the filling. It all turned out well in the end, but the squash was so soft it was tough shaping them up for the pictures. Al dente is definitely the way to go, at least for the sake of making the stuffing part a little easier. The flavor wasn’t effected, just the texture, that is why I decided to soldier on and complete the dish, photos and all.

I had funny moment later on that evening when I took these to Mom and Dad for them to have with their dinner. Mom was excited to try them but Dad wouldn’t touch ‘em. All those topping were still not enough to get him to experiment, he just doesn’t like squash.

Eat well, cook often ...

THE RECIPE

Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash

Serves 4 to 6; 1 hour
2 to 4 Acorn squash halved (for 2 cut ingredients by half)
2 C Button mushrooms, sliced
1 lb Italian sausage
1/2 C Red onion, diced
1/2 C Green pepper, diced
1/2 C Pizza sauce
1 C Mozzarella cheese, shredded

Prepare and cook squash
Preheat oven to 350°. Cut squash in half, scoop out seeds. Rub with a little olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place cut-side down on a prepared baking sheet. Roast until cook through but still firm 30 to 40 minutes.

Make filling
In a saute pan over medium heat cook mushrooms until liquid is rendered, stirring occasionally, 6 to 8 minutes. Season at end of cooking. Remove from pan, set aside. Add sausage and cook through, stirring occasionally and breaking up chunks, 8 to 10 minutes. Move to one side of pan. Cook vegetables in empty half until soft, 3 to 4 minutes, season to taste. Return mushrooms to pan and stir everything together. Remove from heat.

Stuff squash, heat through
Increase oven temp to 425°. In cavity of cooked squash, coat with pizza sauce, stuff full with sausage mixture and top with cheese. Repeat until all squash are filled. Place stuffed squash on baking sheet, place in oven and cook until heated through and cheese is melted, 6 to 8 minutes. Then serve.

Italian Sausage Patty Melts

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My Mom has always been a big fan of patty melts and she is responsible for introducing me to these yummy delights. She has waited tables part-time for years and she has probably served about 37,000 of them. I was young when she introduced them to me and whenever I get hungry for one I think about being a kid at the local diner and Mom suggesting it for lunch to me for the first time.

I think of patty melts as grilled cheese sandwiches with a meat patty tucked inside.

I think they’re awesome.

I have some rules for patty melts:

• Never eat one at a fancy place, they have to be served at a typical mom and pop diner and should require lots of napkins.

• When the sandwich is touched, there should be an ultra-thin layer of grease left on the finger tips that will leave an annoying grease-fingerprint on any object touched.

• Grilled onions aren’t required but one without is like a salad without dressing.

• Finally, there must be lots of cheese, more than a typical cheeseburger. Almost a burger with double cheese – not a double cheeseburger – a double cheese single burger!

Those are my rules.

Instead of beef for this patty melt I used Italian sausage. Combined with the onions and provolone it was spectacular. I ate two of them myself. Had I not been feeding others, I might have destroyed another half sandwich, thank God more people were eating.

BEHIND THIS BITE

This is the first time I have designed a recipe with a black background and white text. Usually there is too much writing in a typical recipe to do this. There is only so much type a person can read in that style without it starting to mess with their eyes.

This, and the next recipe, are an exception and something new. I love the look and will try to incorporate it more. I think it will work best with sandwiches and pizza, or recipes that don’t include as much written instructions.

It’s always good to experiment when it comes to design and presentation, it might be the start of a new trend, or I may say to myself in a couple of weeks “What the hell was I thinking!” For now, I think it’s cool.

Eat well, cook often ...

THE RECIPE
4 sandwiches; 30 minutes
1/4 C Mayonnaise
8 slices Bread
16 slices Provolone cheese
1 C Caramelized onions
4 patties Cooked Italian sausage (1l4 lb each)

Spread a thin layer of mayo on sides of bread to be grilled. Layer 2 slices cheese, 1 sausage patty, a 1/4 of the onions, 2 more slices of cheese and top piece of bread. Grill sandwiches over medium heat until it's golden brown on each side and cheese is melted, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Then serve.

Biscuits and Gravy

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When I was younger, one of my favorite things to do was get a late night order of biscuits and gravy after being out with friends. I would rip into a plate of this stick-to-your-ribs dish like a celebrity who just gave up on Jenny Craig.

Biscuits and gravy are served throughout the Midwest but it is for the most part considered a southern dish. It was a favorite on southern plantations because it was easy to make and provided a substantial breakfast before a long day of work.

I have to admit that the best biscuits and gravy I have ever eaten was when I spent the weekend in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I ate breakfast at a small diner with hand-made wooden benches. Not only was it the sausage gravy amazing – the biscuits were moist and creamy and unlike any baked good I have ever devoured.

For this recipe, I make my own version of my favorite breakfast. They're not as good as what I found in Chattanooga, but neither is 99.9 percent of the biscuits and gravy found on this planet.

I use store bought biscuit dough, but the gravy is made from scratch and definitely a great start to any day.

BEHIND THIS BITE
This is one of the first recipes I made for my food column. It didn't appear here because I made it before I created Behind the Bites. I decided to make it again and shoot it with better knowledge of quality photography, food styling and culinary knowledge in general. When I originally created this, I was using a hand held Canon PowerShot and halogen flood-lights to illuminate the food. It was literally a Wal-mart purchased photography studio.

Last June, I sought professional photography help.

I have since discovered tripods, lights that replicate the sun’s wavelength, diffusers, reflectors and most important – DSLR cameras. I’m still a photo novice but I do believe my skills have improved immensely.

I might be kidding myself though.

The improvement mysteriously coincides with about $1,000 worth of equipment. Whether it’s better equipment or better photography skills, I am much happier with my photography now than I was when I created this recipe the first time.

Below you’ll find a side-by-side comparison – judge for yourself. I think that the photography is better, and I have also refined the layout template as well. What a difference a year-and-a-half makes.

NOTE: The actual recipe has also been tweaked, which was not only better for flavor but it lent itself to a more appetizing photograph of a plate of biscuits and gravy.

Eat well, cook often ...

Click for a closer look