Ham and Green Chile Breakfast Casserole

We recently inventoried and organized our freezers. One of the best ways to save money on groceries is to meal plan with what you have on hand. While going through the freezer, I realized I had all the ingredients for Ham and Green Chile Breakfast Casserole. It’s one of our favorite ways to use leftover ham.

This recipe is also good using sausage instead of ham. To use sausage, I use about a half pound of cooked breakfast sausage. Sausage is another thing you can cook ahead and freeze to use later.

This recipe for Ham and Green Chile Breakfast casserole can be made ahead, frozen, thawed and then baked. But I find it quite easy to put together so I don’t usually make it for the freezer.

I always use mild green chile so that it’s family-friendly, but if you like spicy food, you can use hot chile. Grampy makes his spicy by adding salsa to his. It also makes a great breakfast burrito. Just stuff it in a flour tortilla, add some salsa, and you have a meal to go.

Here are the ingredients and instructions:

You will need:

• 6 cups frozen hash browns
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups cooked diced ham
• 1 cup shredded cheese
• a sprinkling of chives, minced onion, or sliced green onions
• 4 oz can of diced green chile
• 4 eggs
• 12 ounce can of evaporated milk
• salt and pepper to taste

First spray a 9 x 13 baking dish with cooking spray. Layer in the hash browns, ham, cheese, chives or onions, and green chile.

Then, whisk the eggs, milk, salt and pepper together. Pour the egg mixture over the potato mixture. At this point, you can wrap the casserole dish in foil and freeze it. If you do freeze it, it does take a while to thaw in the fridge and longer to bake. I prefer to make it fresh.

If you are baking it now, bake it in a 350-degree oven for an hour or a little longer. After an hour, I check the middle to see if it’s still runny. If it is, I keep baking it until the eggs in the middle are done.

Enjoy!