Over the years, I’ve written about bacon a lot. If you want some serious bacon action, just check out the bacon section of the Macheesmo!

I’ve mentioned in passing how I like to cook bacon, but I thought it would be worth it to spend a post walking you through how I make my bacon.

Not only does this method result in what I believe to be the best bacon possible, but it lends itself well to a bunch of fun variations on bacon which are also included in this post.

So… vegetarians… look away!

Bacon lovers… proceed!

The Perfect Bacon

Yield: 8 strips of bacon

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

Basic Recipe:
8 strips of bacon
Coarse ground black pepper

Chocolate Bacon:
8 strips cooked bacon
2 ounces milk chocolate
2 tablespoons cream, or butter

Maple Bacon:
8 strips cooked bacon
4 tablespoons real maple syrup

Candied Bacon:
8 strips cooked bacon
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Helpful Equipment:
Sheet Pan
Wire rack (oven safe)

Directions:

1) Add oven safe wire rack to a sheet pan so it is slightly elevated off the pan. Lay out 8 strips of bacon on the wire rack. It's okay if the strips overlap slightly. Season with ground pepper.

2) Baked in a cold 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

3) Remove bacon and flip the strips.

4) Bake for another 10 minutes or until very crispy. Let cool briefly before serving.

Chocolate Version:
1) I like the pepper/chocolate combo, but you might want to leave the pepper off if you're doing a chocolate version. Otherwise, cook bacon as directed above.

2) Meanwhile, in a small microwave safe bowl, add cream or butter and chocolate and microwave in 15 second bursts until the chocolate is melted and smooth.

3) When bacon is cooked and cooled to room temperature, drizzle chocolate over bacon. Cool in the fridge for 10-15 minutes so chocolate hardens.

Maple Version:
1) Cook bacon as directed, but when you flip the bacon halfway through, drizzle maple syrup on each strip of bacon. Return bacon to oven to finish cooking.

2) Let cool slightly before serving.

Candied Bacon:
1) Cook bacon as directed. Meanwhile, mix together brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. When you take bacon out halfway through to flip it, sprinkle each strip with brown sugar mixture.

2) Return bacon to oven to finish cooking.

3) Let cool briefly before serving.

The Basic Technique

The title of this post is the BEST way to make bacon, but I probably should’ve added an asterix to that. There are, of course, dozens of ways to make bacon and some are better than other depending on what you want to do with the bacon.

This is not how you should make bacon if you’re adding it to a sauce (like pasta carbonara) or something like that.

This is how you should make bacon if you want to eat big strips of perfectly crispy, salty bacon that aren’t soaked in grease. In my mind, that makes for the perfect piece of bacon and this technique delivers every single time.

You really only need two pieces of equipment to pull this off. First you need some sort of rimmed sheet pan or baking sheet. Most people probably have that.

The piece of equipment that some people may not have unless you bake regularly is a wire rack. And not just any rack… it needs to be oven safe. Like this one. These are cheap and if you make bacon even once a month, it’s worth it to pick one up just for bacon.

Then just set your wire rack on your sheet pan and lay out your bacon in long strips on the wire rack.

The rack is key!

I like to season my bacon really well with coarsely ground fresh pepper, but that’s an optional step.

Once you have your bacon laying on the wire rack, just stick the whole thing in a NOT pre-heated 400 degree oven for about 12-15 minutes. Bacon should start off cooking slowly, so don’t pre-heat your oven for it.

PS. If you’re ever cooking bacon in a skillet or pan, it’s always best to start it off cold.

The reason that this method works so well is because as the bacon cooks, the fat falls away from it and collects on the sheet pan, so the bacon gets very crispy. Because the wire rack is supporting the bacon, it also stays in beautiful strips.

While you don’t have to flip the bacon, I recommend it after about 12-15 minutes just to make sure your bacon is cooking evenly.

Halfway home.

There can be a pretty huge range in bacon thickness. Obviously, depending on the thickness of your bacon, you might have to adjust the cooking time. If you’re using very thick, slab bacon, you’ll probably have to add on 5-10 minutes to the total cooking time.

After you flip the bacon, just stick it back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so.

When you pull your bacon out, let it cool briefly and you’ll end up with these beautiful strips.

Very crispy!

The best part about this bacon is how absolutely crispy it is.

If you don’t like your bacon crispy, you can still cook it this way… just pull it out a few minutes early.

But for me, crispy is where it’s at.

Bomb bacon.

Now that you have the method down, there’s three really fun variations that are very easy to do, but taste amazing.

Let’s go through them!

Choco-Bacon

This looks and tastes very decadent, but is super-easy to do. Basically, cook the bacon as directed above, but leave off the ground pepper. Actually, I like the pepper-chocolate combo, but it’s not for everyone so maybe just leave it off to be safe.

Then, in a microwave safe bowl, add the cream or butter and chocolate and zap it in 15 second bursts until the chocolate is melted.

Once your bacon is cooked, let it cool down to room temperature and then just drizzle on the chocolate. You could also completely dip the pieces of bacon in the chocolate if you want!

Drizzle drizzle

I like the chocolate to be solid for this recipe so after you drizzle or dip it on, just stick the plate in your fridge for 10-15 minutes and the chocolate will harden.

The salty chocolate combo is pretty amazing.

Maple Bacon

Bacon and maple were made to be together. Just a few notes on this variation to make sure it goes smoothly for you.

1) Use real maple syrup. If in doubt, look at the ingredients. It should only have one: maple syrup. If it has corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup, then try again. The problem with these is that they will cook differently on the bacon and it’ll be very sugary. Not ideal.

2) Don’t add the maple syrup at the beginning. It’ll burn by the time the bacon is done. Instead, half cook the bacon and then when you take the bacon out to flip, add a small drizzle of syrup to each strip.

It doesn’t take much to get the job done.

Nature's sugar.

After baking for 10 more minutes, the syrup will mostly evaporate leaving just a light maple flavor on the bacon.

It’s super delicious and really very easy once you master the basic technique.

Candied Bacon

I saved my favorite variation for last.

Basically, you just mix some brown sugar and cinnamon together like so…

The mix.

After the half-way cooking point for the bacon, sprinkle on a bit of the brown sugar on each strip.

While the bacon finishs cooking, the sugar will melt around it and form this delicious sweet crust.

When the bacon cools, the sugar hardens and makes the bacon even more crispy (which I like) and the salty sweet combo is perfect.

You must try this.

So there you have it. The definitive way to make really good bacon with a few fun alternatives!

Give it a shot if you’re in the mood for crispy and delicious bacon.

See what I did there?

Sometimes indecision can lead to greatness.

For example, I love John Stewart’s Indecision election coverage. He always makes it very clear how much of a hot mess politics can be on both sides of the old aisle.

I’m not so indecisive about politics though.

I’m more indecisive about sandwiches.

On this occasion I was torn between making a grilled cheese sandwich or a club sandwich. My indecisiveness led me to just smack them together and call it good. And trust me, it was really good.

Grilled Cheese Club

Yield: 1 sandwich

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

3 pieces of bread
2-3 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, grated or sliced
1 chipotle pepper, diced
1 tablespoon salsa
1/2 avocado, sliced
2 slices bacon, crispy
Cilantro
Butter

Directions:

1) Butter two pieces of bread. Slice or grate the cheese and dice up the chipotle. Cook bacon either in a pan until crispy or on a wire rack in a 350 degree oven until crispy, about 15 minutes.

2) In a small skillet, add one piece of buttered bread, butter side down. Top with cheese, pepper and salsa. Top with other piece of buttered bread, butter side up.

3) Cook grilled cheese over medium heat for about 6-8 minutes, flipping occasionally until bread is browned and cheese is well-melted.

4) Toast other piece of bread. Top with bacon, sliced avocado, and cilantro.

5) When grilled cheese is done, add entire sandwich to the top of the open-faced part of the sandwich.

6) Slice and serve immediately!

A Tex-Mex Flair

When slapping together a grilled cheese sandwich and a club sandwich, almost any toppings will work. This is more a post about a simple idea rather than an exact recipe.

I decided to go with a tex-mex version though with chipotle peppers, cilantro, avocado, and salsa. Feel free to adapt to your tastes.

Some of my personal favorite flavors.

The Grilled Cheese

You might ask why I wouldn’t just shove all the ingredients into one grilled cheese sandwich.

The answer is two-fold. First, I don’t think they would all easily fit. Second, things are just better when they are stacked. Take my word for it.

The grilled cheese sandwich itself is pretty basic. I always recommend buttering the bread for a grilled cheese, but you don’t necessarily have to go as heavy on the butter as I do. I have a heavy butter hand – no question.

Butta that bread.

Add one slice of bread, butter side down, into a small skillet and then top with cheese, diced chipotle pepper and salsa. If you want to not have it be super-spicy, leave out the chipotle and just use some salsa.

Also, your cheese will melt easier if it’s grated. I didn’t grate mine on this occasion because I just plain forgot.

Some spicy stuff.

Cover this with the other piece of bread (butter side up) and cook it over medium heat until the cheese is melted and the bread is nice and brown. It’ll probably take about 8 minutes.

The key with cooking a grilled cheese is not to cook it over high heat. If you do, the bread will brown before the heat has time to transfer through to the cheese and you’ll end up with a burned sandwich.

Just keep it over medium heat and flip it every few minutes and you should be good to go.

The Club Section

I just couldn’t make a club sandwich without bacon. It’s not to say that you couldn’t, but I couldn’t.

I like to bake my bacon in the oven on a wire rack at 350 degrees so it gets nice and crispy.

The only way to do bacon.

Toast your third piece of bread and then add your bacon to the bread.

You’ll also need to slice up some avocado and grab a few cilantro leaves. I went heavy on the cilantro because I wanted a lot of herb flavor, but use it to your tastes which for some people is not at all.

Sandwich building 101.

Stack the avocado slices and cilantro right on top of the bacon. Notice that I didn’t put down any mayo or anything. You don’t really need it for this sandwich because the avocado has a creamy texture to it and there’s lots of cheese in the grilled cheese half.

Half of a sandwich.

Putting it all together

This isn’t rocket science, but I was pretty giddy while making it.

When your grilled cheese is done, it’s as simple as plopping it right on top of your club sandwich half.

Stacked up!

Slice it up so it’s easier to eat and you’re good to go.

I just love the layers in this bad boy. It was really good.

This worked.

This might be a bit more complicated than a normal grilled cheese, but it’s also more filling and has some really complex flavors which I liked.

The thing that takes the most time for the recipe is actually cooking the bacon. If you’re rushed you could leave it out or sub it with deli meat or something.

While indecision created this lovely thing, you should be decisive about making it as soon as possible.

Good luck. Good eats!

I’m not really much of a superstitious person. Maybe it’s my philosophy background, but I tend to think that things happen randomly and we impose meaning on them.

That said, there are still a few traditions that I do without fail.

One of those is eating black-eyed peas on New Years. It’s something my mom always served to me and she still calls me every year to make sure that I eat some.

I figure that in this case it doesn’t really hurt. Black-eyed peas aren’t a strange food. They aren’t impossible to find or taste gross. They are cheap and delicious. So I figure why not?!

Normally, I just make some sort of hearty soup like this one, but this year I decided to class it up a bit. As it happens, black-eyed peas and bacon make for a really good eggs benedict.

As a reader recently said on my Facebook page: “I don’t believe in good luck. But I do believe in good food!”

Black Eyed Pea Benedicts

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 20 minutes + cooking beans

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked black-eyed peas
3-4 slices thick bacon, chopped
3 scallions, chopped
1 large leaf of kale, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pinch of salt
4 large eggs
1/2 cup white vinegar (for poaching)
2 english muffins
Sriracha sauce (opt.)

Hollandaise Sauce:
1 large egg yolk
1 cup butter, melted preferably clarified
1 teaspoon water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 pinch salt
1 pinch cayenne peppe (opt.)

Directions:

1) Cook black-eyed peas according to package. Canned would work fine for this recipe also.

2) Dice bacon and scallions. For kale, slice out the center rib from one large leaf and mince the kale finely.

3) In a skillet, add a drizzle of olive oil over medium heat. Cook bacon until it's well-browned and most of the fat has rendered out.

4) Add scallions and kale and continue to cook for another few minutes until they soften.

5) Stir in black-eyed peas and season mixture with salt and pepper. Keep on low heat until needed and stir occasionally.

6) For hollandaise, whisk yolk together with water, lemon, and a pinch of cayenne and salt.

7) Melt butter. Clarified butter will work best, but I've used just normal melted unsalted butter with success before.

8) Over a double boiler, heat yolk mixture and whisk until it's steaming and frothy.

9) Slowly start to drizzle in butter and whisk. Add the butter slowly until the sauce comes together. You may not need the entire cup of butter to get a smooth sauce. Once the sauce is formed, set it aside until needed. Don't keep it over the heat. If it gets too thick, whisk in a teaspoon of hot water to thin it out.

10) To poach eggs, add 1/2 cup of vinegar to a large pot of water (2 quarts). Bring the water to a simmer (not a boil) and swirl the water with a spoon.

11) Crack eggs into a bowl and then carefully drop them into the swirling water. Cook for about 2 minutes.

12) Remove eggs with a slotted spoon and let them drain briefly on a paper towel.

13) Toast muffins and spoon black-eyed pea mixture over muffins. Top with eggs and sauce. Optionally, drizzle on some sriracha or hot sauce. Serve immediately.

The Peas

I used dried black-eyed peas for this post, but there’s really no reason for it. Feel free to use canned.

If you do use dried, be sure to sort them before cooking them. Of all the dried legumes I’ve ever used, black-eyed peas have more pebbles than any other in my experience. No idea why this is, but I always find a pebble or two in my black-eyed peas.

Chipping a tooth on a rock is not a great way to start the new year!

You could use canned...

The Topping

Besides the black-eyed peas, there’s just a few things that I wanted to put in my filling. All of these are pretty standard flavors that go really well with black-eyed peas. Traditionally, a ham hock is used to cook them, but I just sliced up a few pieces of bacon.

Instead of collard greens which need need to cook for awhile, I just minced up a kale leaf which will saute much better.

Good flavors!

To start the filling, add a drizzle of oil to a skillet and add all your bacon over medium heat.

Cook it until most of the fat has rendered out and the bacon starts to crispy up, about 8 minutes. Then add the sliced scallions and kale.

Cook this mixture until the veggies start to soften, just another minute or two. This will already smell great.

Already delicious!

Then just toss in your cooked black-eyed peas and season with some salt and pepper.

Solid stuff

Keep this mixture warm over low heat until you need it later. Give it a stir occasionally just to make sure it isn’t burning.

The Hollandaise

I really do think that when it comes to classic sauces, hollandaise is the easiest to make. I find it to be a very forgiving sauce which is why I’m always baffled at how restaurants screw it up.

It’s really just two things: Eggs and butter.

Not a hard sauce.

If you are making a really professional hollandaise sauce, you want to make sure and clarify your butter before using it in the sauce. This basically just insures that you don’t get any butter solids in the sauce and that you have consistent results.

But you know what? Clarifying butter is kind of a pain in the buttocks. I’ve just melted butter in the microwave before and used it with okay (but not perfect) results. Just try not to add the butter solids (which will be at the bottom of your bowl) to the sauce if you can help it.

Also, if your sauce doesn’t work because you took this shortcut… don’t blame me!

To make the sauce, whisk together a yolk with a teaspoon of water and lemon juice in a mixing bowl. Add in a pinch of salt and cayenne pepper (optional).

Set this bowl over a pan of simmering water (double boiler) and continue to whisk it until the yolk mixture turns frothy. It should be steaming slightly and will start foaming like crazy. This is your cue to start adding the butter.

Just like any time you are making an emulsified sauce, start by drizzling in a small amount of the butter. Whisk whisk whisk. Drizzle in a bit more. Whisk more.

If your sauce starts to curdle at all, it might be getting to hot, so take it off the heat and whisk like crazy.

At the end of the day you should be able to whisk in almost an entire cup of melted butter into the yolk. This was my finished sauce and it was darn near perfect in my opinion!

I could eat this with a spoon.

Once your sauce is made, don’t put it back on the heat. It’ll break down completely if it gets too hot. It’ll be fine at room temperature for 5 minutes while you finish the rest of meal. If it comes time to use it and it’s really thick or congealed, just whisk in a teaspoon of hot water and it’ll loosen up immediately.

Poaching the Eggs

They make fancy contraptions to poach eggs, but I think those things tend to overcook the eggs. If you don’t feel like poaching the eggs, you can also just fry a few eggs over-easy and use those.

To poach eggs the right way though, just bring a large pot of water to a simmer and then add in a good amount of plain distilled vinegar.

Crack your eggs one at a time into a separate bowl. Give the water a swirl with a spoon and gently slide the egg into the water. It should immediately clench up and start cooking in a nice little package.

Depending on the size of your pot, you should be able to do 2-4 eggs at a time in one pot.

Two minutes of cooking time will leave you with perfect poached eggs.

When they are done, scoop them out of the water with a slotted spoon and let them drain on a paper towel.

You could fry them also...

Assembling the Benedicts

All the hard work is done. Now for the fun part.

Toast a few English muffins and pile on the black-eyed pea mixture.

High and deep!

Top each half with an egg and a good dollop of sauce.

You could stop right here if you wanted.

Pretty straightforward

I like a bit of hot sauce with my black-eyed peas though so I drizzled on some Sriracha. It totally made the dish in my opinion.

When you cut into one of these benedicts, it’s a thing of beauty.

Best brunch I've made in awhile.

Like I said, I’m not sure that I believe in good luck.

But I’ll use any reason I can find though for an excuse to make these delicious things.

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!

Who doesn't like brussel sprouts?!

I’ve never really had a problem eating vegetables. In fact, I can’t think of a vegetable that I don’t like. I’m sure they are out there (durian fruit probably – but that’s a fruit!), but I’m usually pretty happy with almost any vegetable dish.

I’m not a normal eater really though. Most people have a problem with at least a few veggies and it seems like, to me, that most people have a problem with brussel sprouts!

Honestly, I think this is due to two causes:

1) Sprouts have some weird cultural stigmas and are frequently mentioned as the hard-to-eat veggie.

2) Most people have no earthly idea how to prepare them.

So this is the brussel sprout recipe for people who don’t like brussel sprouts. Think of it as an intro to the sprout. Because what could be a better way to eat something than to put it on a pizza?

Brussel Sprout Pizza

Yield: 2 Pizzas

Prep Time: 20 minutes plus time for dough

Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

2 pizza doughs (homemade is good)
1 Cup pizza sauce, below
10 ounces low moisture mozzarella cheese, grated
10 brussel sprouts, sliced thinly
8 ounces bacon, crispy
6 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
Fresh basil, chopped
Salt and pepper
Cornmeal, for peel

Homemade Pizza Sauce (adapted from American Pie)
1 (28 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 Cup water
1/4 Cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons garlic powder
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
2 Teaspoons dried basil
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes (opt.)
Salt and pepper

Homemade Napoletana Dough (Again from American Pie)
5 Cups (22.5 ounces) bread flour
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon instant yeast
2 Cups (scant) cool water

Helpful Equipment:
- Stand mixer (for dough), but you can make it easily without
- Pizza Peel
- Pizza stone

Directions:

1) To make dough, combine water, oil, salt, and yeast in a mixing bowl. Stir together and let sit for 5 minutes to make sure yeast is active. It should bubble.

2) Stir in flour until it’s well-incorporated and forms a ball. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Then mix either with your hands or with a stand mixer. If using hands, repeatedly dip one hand in water and work the dough vigorously until it’s smooth, about 8 minutes. If using a mixer, mix with dough hook until smooth, about 6 minutes. If at any point, the dough is very sticky, mix in more flour.

3) Cut dough into 6 even pieces, coat with olive oil and add to a large plastic bag. Let rest for 20-30 minutes.

4) Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but ideally overnight.

5) Remove from fridge at least 90 minutes before making pizza.

6) For sauce, mix together ingredients and set aside until needed.

7) Grate cheese, cook bacon, and roughly chop sprouts.

8) Preheat oven to 550 degrees with pizza stone for at least 20 minutes.

9) Roll out dough to form a 12 inch pizza. Place dough on a pizza peel lightly dusted with cornmeal. Add sauce and spread it smoothly over pie. Top with mozzarella, sprouts, bacon, blue cheese.

10) Slide pizza onto stone and let cook for 10 minutes.

11) Take out pizza and top immediately with fresh basil.

12) Slice and serve!

Making the Dough

I’ve talked a lot about making homemade pizza dough, so I’m going to do the abbreviated version in this post. If you want a full run down, this post has a great run down on the method that I used for this dough.

I really like making pizza dough. It’s actually one of the easier doughs to make in my opinion. It’s very wet so it’s actually pretty easy to work with once you get the hang of it.

The key thing to remember about homemade dough is that you want to give it at least 4 hours to rise in the fridge (overnight is great) and then you want to take it out at least 90 minutes before baking your pizza.

Beautiful things.

But there are a good number of store-bought doughs out there if you want to make this recipe even easier.

The Toppings

There’s really only a few toppings for this pie, but each of them is packing a lot of flavor.

Mini cabbages really...

This a great beginner brussel sprout recipe because you don’t need to know how to prepare them perfectly. Basically just chop off the stem-end of the sprout and then dice up the sprouts.

I sliced each sprout in half and then just sliced the sprouts roughly.

Get it?

Besides the bacon, sprouts, and blue cheese, you need a good sauce and mozzarella as well.

One thing I’m not a fan of is most store-bought sauces. Similar to my homemade trial with pasta sauce, pizza sauce tends to be pretty flavorless and too salty. So take the time to stir a few spices into normal tomato sauce. You don’t need to cook it or anything. You’ll end up with a much better sauce. Trust me.

Essentials.

Making the Pizza

Assuming you have a pizza peel and stone, making homemade pizza becomes pretty straightforward. Just make sure you heat your stone up as much as you can. I crank my oven up to 550 and let it preheat with the stone in the oven for at least 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, roll out your dough into a rough circle. Mine usually ends up slightly more rectangle in shape, but whatever. If you use the homemade dough recipe in this post, you should get about a 12 inch pizza out of each dough ball.

Than transfer the dough to your pizza peel that’s been dusted with cornmeal and ladle on a bit of sauce. I don’t like a lot of sauce on my pizzas. About half a cup per pizza is usually enough for me.

No need to over-sauce.

Spread out the sauce, then top with mozzarella cheese. Follow that with your bacon, sprouts, and blue cheese layers.

This guy is ready for the oven!

High and deep!

Slide the pizza right onto your hot stone and let it cook for about 10 minutes.

The crust should get nice and crispy and the cheese should be bubbling hot.

I snuck a peek at mine at about minute nine.

Bubble Bubble.

When you pull the pizza out, immediately top it with some fresh basil. You wouldn’t want to bake the pizza with the basil on it because it would just shrivel up and lose a lot of flavor. Fresh is best when it comes to basil.

Fresh basil. Key.

Let the pizza cool for a minute or so and then slice it up!

It's really good, people.

I usually judge most pizzas by crust alone, but I have to say that toppings on this guy surprised me. They were really flavorful. The brussel sprouts just give a light veggie flavor to the pizza. It’s really not an intense flavor and I think most people would like it.

Homemade pizza is one of my absolute favorite things to make and this recipe is a keeper for me.

A simple little thing.

Sometimes I have these dreams of opening a restaurant that’s only open for breakfast and happy hour.

I would make awesome breakfast/brunch dishes and cocktails.

The place would be called The Before and After.

Then I wakeup and remember how much I would absolutely hate my life if I ran a restaurant.

But if The Before and After was a real place… I would sell these for $3 a piece. Or $7 for three obviously.

Breakfast Sliders

Yield: 6 Sliders

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

6 Hawaiian savory butter rolls
6 strips of thick bacon, crispy
4 eggs, scrambled
2 Tablespoons cream
4 ounces pepper jack cheese, grated

Directions:

1) Bake bacon on a wire rack over a baking sheet at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes until bacon is very crispy.

2) Whisk eggs with cream and cook on medium heat until fluffy, about 4-5 minutes.

3) Cut open rolls and toast them in a 350 degree oven until they are nicely browned, about 3 minutes.

4) Add grated cheese to one side of each roll and return to oven for another minute.

5) Add bacon and eggs and serve immediately!

The Rolls

When it comes to slider rolls, it’s hard to beat the soft rolls that come in packs of twelve in the deli section of most grocery stores. You could make your own definitely, but these are just so tasty and easy, I just use them.

I have a strange addiction to these things.

Bacon and Eggs

I didn’t want to get too fancy with these sliders. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t. You could put almost anything that goes well with scrambled eggs in with these sandwiches.

For me though, on this day, bacon and some cheese is all that I wanted. If you were at The Before and After, this would be called The Original.

Hard to go wrong here.

If you’ve been a Macheesmo reader for a while, you’ll know that I really only cook bacon one way.

I lay it out on a wire rack over a baking sheet and bake it at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. This makes perfectly crispy bacon that stays in really nice strips which is great for stuff like sandwiches.

The only way to do bacon!

For preparing the eggs, just whisk together the eggs with the cream. Add the eggs to a small nonstick pan over medium heat and stir the eggs as they start to cook. After five or six minutes, they should be light and fluffy. Try not to cook them rock hard. They will keep cooking for a minute after you kill the heat.

These guys are perfect.

Easy peasy.

Building the Slider

Whatever breakfast stuff you want to shove in your slider, the most important part is toasting the little buns. Just cut them open and lay them cut side down on a baking sheet. Bake them at 350 degrees for about 3-4 minutes and they should get perfectly toasted.

A must-do step.

Then pile your grated cheese on one half of each slider bun.

Return the tray to the oven for another minute just to melt the cheese a bit.

Blam!

Then stack on your bacon!

One strip per slider is perfect.

Slider building 101.

Add a heap of scrambled eggs and put the top on the slider and you’re ready to go.

These were super-delicious.

Fast and delicious!

I don’t know why it is that sliders are somehow tastier than a full sandwich. But it’s true.

So just make these.

Or, if you happen to open or work in a brunch restaurant, stick these suckers on the menu. People will be busting down the doors.

It's all about the hash!

I had a few friends in town from New York City a few weeks ago and they really only requested two things in the meal department:

1) A good Tex-Mex dish. (post coming soon)
2) A great brunch dish.

I don’t think I disappointed on either, but I thought the brunch dish was especially good. Granted, I’m biased because eggs benedict happens to be one of my favorite things ever.

I rarely order it at restaurants though because I become irrationally irate if it isn’t perfect. Luckily, when I make them at home, I can normally pull off a pretty solid version.

For this version, instead of switching up the middle layer between the egg and the bread, I switched up the bread by using a really crispy layer of hash browns!

It was a huge hit.

Hash Brown Benedicts

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

4 large russet potatoes, grated
1/4 Cup vegetable oil for cooking hash browns
8 large eggs
8 slices crispy bacon (or a filling of your choice: spinach, ham, crab, avocado, tomatoes, etc.)
1/2 Cup vinegar for poaching eggs
Salt and pepper

Hollandaise Sauce:
2 large egg yolks
3 Tablespoons water
1 Teaspoon vinegar
1 Teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 Teaspoon salt
10-12 ounces clarified butter (made from one pound butter)

Directions:

1) Lay out bacon on a wire rack over a sheet pan. Cook at 350 degrees in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the bacon is really crispy. Remove and turn the oven down to 250 degrees.

2) Grate potatoes and dunk them in ice cold water. Keeping them in water will keep them from discoloring.

3) When ready to cook potatoes, dry them off on a few paper towels. Add to a hot skillet or griddle over medium-high heat with a few Tablespoons of oil. Cook potatoes in batches and as they cook, shape them into 8 bundles. They will take probably 10-12 minutes to get really crispy.

4) Add cooked bundles of hash browns to a sheet pan and store in the warm oven until ready to use.

5) For sauce, mix yolk, water, lemon, salt, and vinegar in a large bowl. Place bowl over simmering water bath. Be sure bowl doesn't touch water.

6) Whisk until egg mixture is frothy and hot. It should at least double in volume and be slightly steaming.

7) Slowly whisk in clarified butter until it forms a smooth sauce. If the sauce gets to thick, add a bit more water and whisk.

8) Poach eggs in water with added vinegar. Cook them for 90-120 seconds.

9) Plate hash browns topped with bacon while eggs cook. Then immediately top with eggs and sauce and serve right away!

Prepping the Base

The thing that can really go wrong with hash browns is discoloration. Potatoes will oxidize really quickly when they are grated and turn this horrible dark purple brown color that is in no way appetizing.

The only way I know of to prevent this is to dunk the hash browns in cold water as soon as you grate them. This will keep them looking nice and fresh.

Shredded and soaking.

When you’re ready to cook the hash browns, pull out a few handfuls from the water and press them on some paper towels to dry them out. Then add them to a large skillet with a good amount of oil over medium-high heat. They’ll hiss and complain for a bit, but that’s good.

While the hash browns cook, use a spatula to kind of portion them out into small segments. Ideally, you are looking for eight hash brown chunks if you are serving four people. The hash browns will probably take 10 minutes total to get nice and crispy.

Once they are done, you can put them all on a sheet pan and keep them in a warm (250 degree) oven until you’re ready to use them.

Nice and crispy.

The Sauce

In my opinion, there are three tricky parts to making a good benedict: timing, eggs, and sauce. We’ll get to the first two in a second, but let’s handle the sauce first since I think that’s the trickiest of the three.

Hollandaise sauce is a lot like homemade mayo, except instead of oil, we’ll use clarified butter. It’s also a warm sauce which makes it a bit easier to mix actually, but you run the risk of over-cooking the eggs which isn’t good.

There are lots of ways to make this sauce and I’m sure there’s an official cooking school way that I don’t know. What I do know is that my way works… so whatever.

Start with two egg yolks in a bowl. To this bowl add all your other ingredients except the butter.

sauce basics.

Whisk everything together and then put the bowl over a pan with simmering water. You want to be sure that the bottom of the bowl isn’t touching the water. You just want it to steam.

Whisk the bowl pretty continuously as the yolk mixture starts to heat up. It’ll be a bit runny at this point, but that’s fine. Keep whisking for about 3 minutes and eventually your mixture will at least double in size and turn really frothy. This should also be hot to the touch at this point and very lightly steaming.

Steamy and frothy is good.

One common mistake that I’ve seen people make when they try to make hollandaise is just to melt butter and whisk it in. This might work, but you won’t get a great sauce with it because butter is about 20% solids which is going to mess up your sauce.

So, even though it’s kind of a pain, if you want to make a really good sauce, you need to clarify your butter before mixing it in with the sauce. I did an entire post on how to clarify butter a year or so ago, so just check that out.

My clarified butter was far from perfect for this version, but it’s still way better than just melted butter. I got about 12 ounces of clarified butter out of 1 pound of butter and I used it all for this sauce.

Not perfect, but it'll work.

Once your egg mixture is frothy and hot, start slowly whisking in the clarified butter. Start slowly and whisk furiously!

As your butter incorporates, the sauce should get really nice and thick.

It’ll be a delicious thing.

Pretty solid if I do say so myself.

You wouldn’t want to make hollandaise sauce way before you serve the meal, but it will keep fine for 15-20 minutes. If it cools down, just put it back over the heat and add a few drops of water. It should loosen up and return to a nice hot sauce without a problem.

The Timing

More than any one ingredient, the timing of eggs benedict can throw some people off. This is the general schedule I used for these:

1) Make bacon in oven
2) Cook hash browns (and hold in hot oven)
3) Put large pot of water on to boil for eggs later
4) Make Hollandaise sauce
5) Poach eggs
6) While eggs poach, lay out each plate and make sure your sauce is hot.
7) Plate and serve right away!

Baked is the only way to go.

Doing this schedule means that the things that are most time sensitive (the eggs and the sauce) are the very last to be prepared.

If you wait more than about five minutes between when the eggs are done and you eat the darn thing, the eggs will be cold and the sauce won’t be great. This is why it’s a hard dish to pull of in a restaurant.

Stack it up!

The Eggs

I haven’t talked about poaching eggs yet and that’s because I find them to be pretty easy to do honestly. Using this method, I can poach four eggs at a time and have about a 95% success rate with the eggs. (You’re bound to lose one occasionally though so have extras ready.)

Get a large pot of water simmering and add about 1/2 cup of plain white vinegar to the water. The acid in the vinegar will make the eggs stick together really nicely.

Give the water a stir with a slotted spoon to create a small whirlpool. Crack the egg in a bowl. Don’t crack it straight into the water. Gently pour the egg into the simmering water from the bowl. Do as many as you feel comfortable with. I used to do two at a time, but these days I can handle four. How many also depends on your pot size.

Set a timer for 90 seconds. Once 90 seconds is up, start checking the eggs. Use a slotted spoon to carefully scoop one out and gently poke it. It should feel firm in the white sections and liquid in the yolk. As the eggs finish, move them to a plate with a paper towel to drain slightly.

Top each hash brown and bacon stack with one egg and a good drizzle of sauce.

Egged and sauced!

To be honest, I’m not sure I would recommend the hash brown method if this is your first benedict ever. Stick with the english muffin just because it removes an element of cooking.

But if you’re feeling ambitious or an eggs benedict expert, this was a freakin’ awesome variation. The potatoes do a great job of sopping up all that delicious sauce and egg mixture. Obviously, if the bacon is too heavy for you, you could use something lighter like tomatoes, spinach, or even crab cakes!

Three ingredients. Delicious.

Sometimes an idea for a dish smacks me across the face and I can’t shake it until I make it. Even if I think that it might be an awful idea.

That happened with this sandwich. I was pretty certain that it wouldn’t work and that it would taste weird. But I just couldn’t not make it.

Turns out that my stubbornness paid off for once because it was one of the best sandwiches I’ve made. Only three ingredients needed!

Apple Butter Breakfast Sandwich

Yield: 2 sandwiches

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

4 slices of good sandwich bread, toasted
Bacon, 3 strips per sandwich is good
4 eggs, over easy
Butter, to cook the eggs
Apple butter, for sandwich
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Cook bacon. I like to cook it on a wire rack in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes until it's really crispy.

2) Toast bread and slather with apple butter.

3) Top with bacon.

4) Add a teaspoon of butter to a non stick skillet over medium high heat.

5) Once melted and bubbling, add two eggs. Cook for a few minutes on side one and then flip.

6) Cook for a few seconds on side two and top sandwich with eggs.

7) Eat immediately!

Three Ingredients

There are really only three ingredients to this bad boy besides bread. One of them you just buy unless you feel like making your own apple butter.

So that leaves us with bacon and eggs to cook. So let’s make sure to do them right.

The best way to cook bacon, in my opinion, is in the oven, on a wire rack over a sheet pan at around 350 degrees.

The right way to cook bacon.

Add a good amount of fresh ground pepper to the bacon and let these cook for about 20 minutes or until they are nice and crispy.

The benefit of cooking the bacon this way is that it stays really nice and straight and the grease drips away from the bacon as it cooks which makes it really crispy.

It’s bacon perfection.

Crispy and perfect.

The Apple Butter

Apple butter isn’t a very common ingredient, but there are a few different kinds in the store normally. You can find it in the jelly section and be sure to look at the ingredients in your apple butter.

Good apple butter will contain exactly two ingredients:

- Apples
- Apple juice or concentrate

Don’t get anything with added sugar or high fructose corn syrup. It’ll be too sweet. Just get the real stuff even if it costs an extra buck or two. Completely worth it.

Get the good stuff.

Once your bread is toasted you can slather one side with a good amount of the apple butter.

It’s pretty hard to over-do it so do a nice thick layer.

Healthy butter!

Then pile on that nice crispy bacon right on top of the apple butter.

Three strips should do the trick.

A bacon layer never hurts.

The Eggs

Anytime I’m putting eggs on a sandwich, I always cook them the same way: fried over-easy. There’s really no other way to make them in my opinion.

Assuming you have a decent non-stick pan, just add about a teaspoon of butter to it over medium-high heat. Once the butter is melted and bubbling, crack in a few eggs and let them cook on side one for a minute or two.

Use real butter. Not apple butter.

The whites should be mostly cooked before flipping them. Once you flip them, cook them for only 15-20 seconds on side two or you’ll run the risk of over-cooking the eggs which is possibly the worst thing in the world.

Then add your eggs right on top of the bacon. Two eggs per sandwich. Don’t wuss out and just use one.

BOOM!

I like to cut my sandwich in half which makes it easier to eat and prettier to photograph.

Delish.

There’s something really wonderful about the slightly sweet apple butter flavor, the crispy salty bacon, and the creamy egg.

It’s seriously one of the best breakfast sandwiches I’ve had.

Sometimes a few ingredients is all it takes.

It's like a beginner benedict...

A good Eggs Benedict is absolutely one of my favorite brunch dishes ever. There’s a few issues with it though.

For starters, they require a small amount of skill. The hollandaise sauce can break. The eggs might not be cooked perfectly. Either of these things can pretty much ruin the dish for me.

So I came up with this starter Benedict which I’m calling a “stack”. The hollandaise sauce isn’t really needed because of the over-easy egg and the fact that the dry English muffin is replaced with a creamy polenta circle.

Loyal Eggs Benedict fans might scoff, but I thought this worked out just fine.

Polenta Stack

Yield: Enough Polenta for 5-6.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

Polenta:
1 3/4 Cups corn polenta
6 Cups water
2 Teaspoons salt
1 Teaspoon pepper
3 Tablespoons butter

Other stuff:
Bacon, 1 strip per stack
Tomato, 1 slice per stack
Eggs, 1 per stack

Helpful Equipment:
Round Cookie Cutter

Directions:

1) Bring water to a boil in a medium pot. While simmering, whisk in polenta along with salt.

2) Stir until thick, about 10 minutes. Add pepper and butter.

3) Pour polenta onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Chill for thirty minutes.

4) Cut circles out of the polenta (or any shape).

5) Cook bacon until crispy. Slice tomatoes.

6) Fry polenta circles over medium-high heat for about 4 minutes per side or until they are lightly golden browned.

7) Top polenta circle with slice of cheese. Broil for 20 seconds to melt cheese.

8) Top with tomato, bacon, and an over-easy egg.

Making Polenta

Now some people might say that I’ve made benedicts harder by subbing the english muffin for a polenta piece, but polenta is dumb simple to make.

I mean it’s just corn people!

The raw stuff

Start by bringing your water to a boil in a medium pot with a good pinch of salt. When it’s simmering, just pour in your polenta in a steady stream while whisking.

Turn the heat down to medium-low and continue to stir it for about 10 minutes until it’s nice and thick. Then add in some butter and pepper.

Done deal!

More people should cook this.

Now you could eat it just like this (grits), but if you pour it out onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and let it cool for about 30 minutes in the fridge, it’ll become a firm block.

Then you can cut shapes out with it!

Cooled and cut!

Once you remove the extra, you’ll have these perfect little polenta circles.

People will be really impressed, but seriously these are pretty fail proof.

Shapes are fun.

Other Ingredients

Now you could use traditional Benedict ingredients like ham, spinach, or even crab for this, but I went with some fresh tomato, sliced pretty thick.

Thick slices people.

And some good bacon that I fried up until crispy.

Can't go wrong here...

Finishing the Dish

The key to serving these little polenta guys is to lightly sear them on each side before building your stack. This will make them a bit crunchy on the outside, but still nice and soft on the inside.

I used the same pan I used for my bacon and even left some of the bacon grease to give them some flavor.

About 4-5 minutes per side over medium-high heat should do the trick.

Using bacon fat isn't a bad idea...

Once they came out of the pan, I topped them with a slice of Provolone cheese that I cut to the same size.

These went under the broiler for about 20 seconds just to melt the cheese.

Perfect fit!

Then add the tomato, bacon, and a lightly fried egg.

Over-easy is really the only way to go on the egg since we don’t have a sauce.

Stacked high!

When you cut into the egg, it kinds of spills all over the place and mixes with the polenta. The bacon and tomato go well together as always.

Perfect.

This was a really delicious brunch and I found that I didn’t even miss the heavy hollandaise sauce really.

Ok. Maybe a little bit.

But the polenta was kind of the star of the show actually which I liked. And you could easily make this for a good amount of people for brunch without too much fuss.

If you like the idea of stacking things and topping them with eggs (who doesn’t?), give this a shot.

It's a banana people.

I’m assuming that I have at least a few Arrested Development fans reading.

The whole time I was making these guys, I was replaying this scene (Hulu w/ sound) in my mind:

George: You what?
Michael: Burned it right down to the ground.
George: Are you crazy? There was money in that banana stand.
Michael: Well, it’s all gone now dad, and it was my decision. So next time you want to have a little power struggle, remember that you’re playing with fire.
George: There was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars lining the walls of the banana stand.
Michael: What?
George: Cash, Michael.
Michael: Why didn’t you tell me that?
George: How much clearer can I say, there’s always MONEY IN THE BANANA STAND!

Seriously though, after having one of these for dessert one night, I can see how there is definitely money in a frozen banana stand. These were completely delicious.

The Frozen Elvis

Yield: Makes 4.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 bananas, cut in half
2 strips bacon, crispy
1/3 Cup peanuts, chopped
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, melted
1/4 Cup milk, cream, or half and half
4 Popsicle sticks

Directions:

1) Peel and cut bananas in half and insert popsicle sticks.

2) Lay bananas on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and freeze for an hour.

3) Cook bacon until crispy and drain. Chop with peanuts. Set aside.

4) Melt chocolate and cream together in a double boiler or in the microwave if you're careful.

5) Make a bed of toppings on the baking sheet where you'll place the bananas.

6) Dip frozen bananas in chocolate and lay on topping bed.

7) Sprinkle with more toppings and freeze for another 30 minutes.

8) Serve whenever the mood strikes you!

From On A Stick.

The Elvis, Frozen

There’s a pretty classic sandwich that I guess Elvis always ate which was banana, peanut butter, and bacon on toast. This genius take on it is from Matt Armendariz’s new book, On a Stick! I met Matt at SXSW this year. We were on a panel together.

He’s written a totally fun appetizer book. There’s around 80 awesome recipes in it, all of them involving things on sticks!

This frozen version of the classic sandwich makes it much easier to, well, put on a stick.

Start by cutting all your bananas in half and sticking a few popsicle sticks in them. Lay them on a baking sheet with parchment paper and let them freeze for about an hour.

Always money in bananas!

The Toppings

Incorporating the peanuts and bacon as a topping is pretty genius.

The key is to make sure your bacon is cooked very crispy. I do this by cooking it on a medium-low heat for about 15-20 minutes. This way the bacon won’t burn, but the fat will slowly melt out leaving the bacon very crispy.

Can't go wrong with bacon!

Let the bacon drain for a few minutes with some paper towels to absorb the oil and then chop it up roughly with some peanuts.

As an aside, this would be an amazing topping for an ice cream sundae.

Awesome topping alert!

The Chocolate

So obviously bacon and peanuts won’t just magically stick to a frozen banana, so we’ll need some help.

Nothing like chocolate to do the trick. Just add your chocolate and cream (or milk) to a mixing bowl over some boiling water. Stir it until it’s melted.

You can also melt the chocolate in the microwave if you’re careful. Just be sure to not over-zap it or you’ll scorch it.

Yum.

Making the Desserts

It should be pretty obvious what you do at this point. Just take your frozen bananas out of the freezer (they might not be entirely frozen which is fine) and give them a dip in the chocolate. Use a spoon to make sure they are covered completely.

This is easy people.

THE TRICK that I learned only after failing at one is that you need to lay down a bed of toppings to set the choco-banana on after it comes out of the bowl.

If you lay the banana right back on your cold baking sheet, the chocolate will freeze to the baking sheet and when you pull it off later you’ll leave a layer of chocolate on the sheet and only have a half-coated banana. NO GOOD.

But if you do a bed of toppings, like this, then you can set the banana on that and it’ll stay slightly raised off the sheet.

Important step!

Don’t forget to sprinkle toppings all around the bananas so they are evenly coated.

Freeze these a second time for at least 30 minutes and then you can chomp into them!

Not only are these super-fun to make and eat, they also happen to be very good.

CHOMP.

You know what’s shocking about these is that they aren’t actually that bad for you. Half a banana, a relatively small amount of chocolate, plus a tiny amount of bacon and peanuts?

I’d guess this is better for you than an ice cream sundae and I found it to be just as satisfying. The banana kind of melts as you eat it and is nice and creamy.

And the salty sweet thing is right up my alley.

How good do these look? Leave a comment if you’re an Elvis fan (sandwich or singer).

I like my pizza over easy.

I’m pretty sure that I could count on one hand the things that aren’t good on a pizza. Ok. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration (or Nickxaggeration as Betsy would say), but it’s not too far off.

I had some pizza dough left over from my grilled pizza this week so I figured I would use it with a fun pizza idea I’ve been carrying around in my back pocket for a while.

It’s pretty basic: Take all your standard breakfast ingredients. Stick them on a pie. Add cheese and sauce. Consume immediately.

As it turns out, I like my pizza over-easy.

Breakfast Pizza

Yield: 2 pizzas

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes + dough time

Ingredients:

Dough: (From American Pie)
This is enough dough for four pizzas actually, but you can freeze any leftovers.
5 Cups (22 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon instant yeast (or active dry yeast, dissolved)
3 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 Cups room temperature water

Other Stuff:
1 Cup Tomato Sauce
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes (sauce)
1 Tablespoon dried oregano (sauce)
Pinch of salt and pepper (sauce)
6-8 ounces bacon
2 Russet potatoes, cubed
6 eggs, 3 per pizza
10 ounces pepper jack cheese (you could use more or less to your tastes)
Handful of spinach, roughly chopped

Helpful Equipment:
Pizza Stone
Pizza Peel

Directions:

1) To make dough, combine water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast in a mixing bowl. Stir together and let sit for 5 minutes to make sure yeast is active. It should bubble.

2) Stir in flour until it’s well-incorporated and forms a ball. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Then mix either with your hands or with a stand mixer. If using hands, repeatedly dip one hand in water and work the dough vigorously until it’s smooth, about 8 minutes. If using a mixer, mix with dough hook until smooth, about 6 minutes. If at any point, the dough is very sticky, mix in more flour.

3) Cut dough into 4 even pieces, coat with olive oil and add to a large plastic bag. Let rest for 20-30 minutes.

4) Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but ideally overnight.

5) Remove from fridge at least an hour before making pizza.

6) Wash and cube (or shred) potatoes.

7) Slice bacon into chunks and cook it over medium heat in a large skillet. After about 10 minutes or when bacon is just turning crispy, remove bacon.

8) Cook potatoes in bacon grease for 10 minutes until they are cooked through and slightly crispy.

9) Prepare other ingredients: chop spinach, shred cheese, mix sauce.

10) Roll out pizza dough an add it to a peel lightly dusted with flour or cornmeal. Add a thin layer of sauce.

11) Add ingredients: cheese, potatoes, bacon, spinach leaving small holes for the eggs in the center.

12) Crack eggs onto the pizza being careful not to bust the yolks.

13) Bake pizza for 12-14 minutes in a preheated 500 degree oven on a pizza stone.

14) Remove and let cool for a minute before slicing and serving.

The Dough

I’m not going to go into detail on the dough in this post because I just used leftover dough from my grilled pizza dough. It’s a pretty standard pizza dough though, but you could use any pizza dough for this guy really.

Besides some dough, you’ll need some breakfast ingredients!

Breakfast!

I knew that I wanted to pre-cook the potatoes and bacon a bit because they won’t have time to get really crispy on the pizza.

I just roughly cubed up my potatoes to make for easy cooking. Nothing special. In hindsight, I realized that it might have been fun to shred them and do a kind of hash brown pizza thing.

Makin' hash...

I also roughly chopped up the bacon and cooked it in a large skillet for about 10 minutes over medium heat until it was just turning crispy. Then I removed all the bacon and cooked the potatoes in the same pan using the bacon grease.

Here’s all my ingredients ready to go!

All set for some pizza!

Making and Baking

I did my traditional oven cooking for this pizza which meant heating up my oven and pizza stone to 500 degrees. I let it preheat with the stone in for about 30 minutes normally to make sure it’s good and hot.

Then I rolled out my dough, put it on my pizza peel dusted with cornmeal, and added a thin layer of sauce.

Gettin' sauced!

Next, all the toppings: cheese, bacon, potatoes, and spinach.

Notice that I kind of made three little holes using the toppings. I bet you can guess what’s going in these guys.

Notice the holes...

I was worried that if I didn’t leave little spaces for my eggs, they would overflow and run all over the place which I think is right.

As is though, they kind of just nestled right into the holes perfectly.

If you want runny eggs on your pizza (good idea), then try not to break them. If you break a yolk, it’ll cook completely in the oven.

I know this because I broke one of mine!

Try not to break them...

When you’re sliding this guy into the oven, be gentle. The eggs will want to slide right off the pizza which would be very bad. I found that it helped to use a spatula in my free hand to kind of lift the pizza a bit as a slid it off the peel. If you’re careful you should be able to get it safely on the hot pizza stone with minimal issues.

Bake it at 500 degrees for 12-14 minutes. The eggs will take the most time to cook. They should be set, but still runny in the center.

Then pull it out and let it sit for a minute before slicing and serving!

Pretty!

Here’s the thing about this pizza: It’s delicious. But it doesn’t keep for anything. It’s basically awesome right when it comes out of the oven and an hour later it’s not so hot.

It doesn’t store well and doesn’t microwave or reheat well. So it breaks a lot of the normal pizza benefits in that respect. But as long as you have a few people to help you eat on it, it’s a fantastic breakfast dish!