I stay a 15-minute stroll from “The Massive Home,” aka the College of Michigan’s soccer stadium. I’ve been to at least one recreation — hated it! However I’m right here for the soccer meals. What an attractive delicacies. Cousin Annmarie’s seven-layer dip. A storage fridge stuffed with essentially the most random beer assortment you’ve ever seen. Buffalo every thing.
Earlier than residence video games, pals n’such collect at our home to tailgate in our yard, whereas the wind shakes orange leaves onto our heads and White Claw planes fly overhead. For the midday video games, we all the time serve egg patty breakfast sandwiches. Folks present up as early as 8 a.m., so we must be prepared, and these are a cinch to make forward.
Additionally they appear to blow individuals’s minds. Why? As a result of they stroll into our shabby 1990’s kitchen, unwrap a heat sandwich from its foil wrapper, take a chew, and uncover a creamy-smooth egg patty you thought might solely come from essentially the most processed of processing factories. “McDonald’s? Jimmy Dean? Who made this?” they ask. “Invoice,” I say, referring to the tall man I’ll stay with ceaselessly, who occurs to be an ideal prepare dinner.
We set out an array of ketchup, doctored-up mayo, pickles, bacon, fast pickled pink onions, and sizzling sauces so individuals can customise. There’s often a tray of hashbrown patties as a vegetable facet (ha). Carafes of espresso. Bloody Mary supplies. And we all the time make too many sandwiches, as a result of some guests will stash them of their coat pockets to sneak into the sport, and I prefer to freeze them for later.
Invoice tweaks a Bon Appétit recipe by the good Zaynab Issa, however there’s an ideal one in Prepare dinner’s Illustrated — behind a paywall that’s price each penny — primarily based on the well-known sandwiches at Joanna Chang’s Flour Bakery in Boston.
Principally, it’s nearly such as you’re making a crust-less quiche. Eggs and cream, plus your seasonings of alternative, baked within the oven till they’re simply set and slightly jiggly. (The excessive fats within the cream helps create that custard-like texture.) Then you’ve got a large egg patty to play with. For sandwiches, we slice it into 12 palm-sized squares; for breakfast tacos, sliced into tortilla-long rectangles. I’ve a buddy who makes the eggs as a meal prep, storing them within the fridge and microwaving a couple of every morning.
We additionally served these for Christmas day brunch, when a ton of household came to visit. They had been a success! Some little children had been freaked out by the eggs, since they’d solely had scrambled earlier than, and a {smooth} yellow egg patty is form of cartoonish. However we received them over, finally, with the assistance of ketchup.
Big Egg Patty
Butter (for greasing the pan)
12 giant eggs
1 jalapeño, finely chopped (elective, if you happen to’re within the Midwest lol)
½ cup heavy cream
Salt and black pepper
8-12 squishy buns (relying on the variety of visitors)
8-12 slices of American cheese
Non-compulsory add-ons:
1 lb. cooked bacon
8-12 hashbrown patties (just like the frozen ones at Dealer Joe’s), heated up
Spicy mayo (I love to do 1 cup of mayonnaise: 3 tablespoons of Calabrian chile paste)
Fast-pickled pink onions (sliced pink onion, in a glass jar, coated with white or rice wine vinegar, made at the very least 20 minutes forward)
Preheat your oven to 350°. Grease a 13×9″ baking dish with butter. Line the dish with parchment paper in order that there’s an overhang on either side for pulling the eggs out later. Then grease the parchment with butter, too. In an enormous mixing bowl or blender, whisk all of the eggs, jalapeño (if utilizing), heavy cream, and remaining 1½ tsp. Kosher salt and some cranks of pepper. Pour the egg combination into the baking dish and bake for 20-25 minutes, till set and the middle doesn’t look moist. Take away the baking dish from the oven, however maintain the oven on. Let the eggs cool for 10 minutes or so, then slice into 8-12 patties, relying in your bun dimension.
Add the egg patties to your buns with cheese and assemble them on a sheet tray. Then bake simply the egg + cheese sandwiches for 8-12 minutes to soften the cheese and rewarm the eggs.
In case you make elective add-ons, let visitors add their very own bacon, hashbrown patties, pickled onions, and spicy mayo to their sandwiches.
The way to pull off the make-ahead unfold:
Make the eggs a day forward and after they’ve cooled, cowl the baking dish and stick it within the fridge.
Meeting: Take the eggs out of the fridge, slice them into sandwich patties primarily based on the dimensions of your buns, then add them to the buns with a slice of cheese.
Rewarm: Round 20 minutes earlier than individuals come over, put the sandwiches on a sheet tray within the oven at “maintain heat” or wherever from 150-180°. Earlier than serving, unwrap a sandwich to check the egg temp. You would possibly must allow them to warmth up a couple of minutes longer (but when they’re within the oven too lengthy, at too excessive a warmth, they’ll start to dry out).
Alex Beggs is a author and copywriter who lives together with her companion in Michigan. Her articles have appeared in Bon Appetit, Elle Decor, and The New York Instances. She has additionally written for Cup of Jo about her dad’s meatloaf, chilly cake, and (very) unhealthy hair days.
P.S. 10 dinners with an egg on high and the perfect recipes for brunch with children.
(Pictures by Alex Beggs.)