Thursday, January 16, 2020

Egg Bites


8 eggs
5 pieces of bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
1 cup mozarella cheese
1 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup half and half
1-2 Tablespoons hot sauce
handful of fresh chopped spinach

Place eggs, mozarella, cottage cheese, half and half, hot sauce and spinach into a large mixing bowl and thoroughly blend together with an immersion blender. Pour into egg molds (that have been sprayed with non-stick spray) until each cup is about 3/4 full. Sprinkle bacon over each cup. Cover with foil or silicone lid. Pour 1 cup of water into the Instant Pot. Stack egg molds on the trivet and lower into the Pot. Pressure cook for 9 minutes with a 10 minute natural release. Let egg bites cool in the mold for about 10 minutes before flipping the mold over and releasing.

So I have made a couple of batches of egg bites using various recipes and this is finally the right consistency for me. Some are too cheesy, some are too soft, etc. The great thing about these is that you can personalize them however you like. I do like the extra flavor of adding diced and sauteed red peppers but I didn't have any at the time. Alternatively, you can diced up jarred roasted red peppers and skip the saute step. But if you want cheddar or feta cheese, change that up. Don't like bacon? Try Canadian bacon or sausage. If you do not have an immersion blender, I have read that a food processor or regular blender works well also, although I have not tried it. I have found that not letting them cool a bit in the mold first leaves them a bit squishy when you flip them out and they don't form properly. They kind of spread out and, if you put them on a cooling rack, they slide through the cracks. We freeze these and then just pop them in the microwave in the morning for a quick breakfast. I am on a mission to make my early work mornings easier and this is definitely a time saver for me and it is nice for my husband to have breakfast already made for him when he is trying to juggle to two kiddos and get them ready for their day as well (see my earlier post that includes the recipe for pancake bites that he can feed our daughter!). I have 3 egg molds now and I just stack them on top of each other and cook all at once. For me, this was definitely a time saver and worth the extra money. Just make sure they come with silicone lids- only one of mine did so now I have to cover the other two with aluminum foil. I just find this a bit more wasteful than it should be. This combo made 18 evenly sized egg bites for me.

I switched the ingredients around from this recipe I found: https://www.myforkinglife.com/sous-vide-egg-bites-recipe-instant-pot/