JULIE WELLS: Christmas breakfast casserole a time-saving meal for the holidays

Christmas casserole is what is on the menu today.

I decided to run this breakfast casserole right before Christmas in hopes it would help take one more thing off of your plate right before Christmas.

We all get caught up in the hustle and bustle of everything during the holidays and then it seems like cooking because a task. This is the perfect dish for you to throw in a Crock-Pot and move onto other things.

As I mentioned before, this is a breakfast casserole and it is made up of eggs, sausage, hash browns and cheese.

I can’t recall ever making a dish before that required baking eggs in a Crock-Pot, so I was a little worried how it would turn out, but it was delightful.

If you just don’t want to deal with cooking the sausage before hand, you can purchase the precooked sausage and that will save you the hassle of cooking the sausage and it will be one less pot to clean.

Also, the recipe calls for yellow mustard, but if you have ground mustard on hand, use that instead of the yellow mustard. And throw in some diced onions and peppers for a different flavor.

One cautionary statement I would like to make. I wouldn’t recommend using more than a 26-ounce bag of hash browns. Using more than that seems to soak up too much of the eggs and leaves the dish dry.

Merry Christmas!

Julie Wells writes The Recipe Box, a weekly cooking column, for the Rockdale Citizen.

CHRISTMAS

CASSEROLE

What you need …

One bag of frozen hash browns

12 eggs

1 cup of milk

16-ounce bag of shredded cheddar cheese

One package of sausage

2 tablespoons of yellow mustard

What you do …

Brown the sausage according to the package and then drain any grease from the sausage.

Spray the Crock-Pot with a nonstick spray.

Pour the hash browns in the bottom of the Crock-Pot and then add the sausage.

Whisk together eggs, cheese and mustard.

Pour the egg mixture over the sausage and hash browns and stir thoroughly.

Cook for 6 to 8 hours.