Ground Beef & Egg Casserole Recipe

This ground beef and egg casserole recipe is simple, nourishing, and endlessly adaptable. It’s packed with flavor and hardy enough to be a meal for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Also, if you have a cast iron pan, you can easily turn this into a one pot meal. If not, no worries. As long as you have a skillet for cooking the beef and some kind of oven safe baking dish, you can make this recipe.

What you’ll need to make this ground beef and egg casserole

• Ground beef – grass fed and finished beef will be leaner, more nutritious and filling. It can be expensive though, so buy in bulk to offset some of that cost. Otherwise, conventionally raised beef is okay but strive to get away from that as soon as your situation allows.
• Eggs – again, pastured eggs are going to be way more nutritious than the conventionally raised stuff. But buy whatever will fit your budget. You could also look into getting yourself some hens to save more money long term. Plus they’ll eat your food scraps so what’s not to love?
• Cream of chicken soup – it is so easy to make this yourself with some homemade bone broth. Canned cream of chicken soup is full of additives that undermine your overall health. Plus, you can make cream of chicken in bulk and freeze that for later use. It freezes well in a ball jar.
• Milk – for both this and the cream of chicken soup, you could opt to use a nut milk instead of dairy milk if you are sensitive.
• Cheddar cheese – cheese and beef go so well together, as do eggs and cheese. Really is there anything that isn’t improved with the addition of cheese? Even ice cream and cream cheese are a match made in heaven.
• Veggies – what makes this recipe so great in my opinion is that you can almost add any vegetable you want, or none at all. You can add leafy vegetables to the egg mixture or chop up any root, shoot or fruit veggie to cook with the beef. You can really optimize on whatever is in season. As a bare minimum we typically do garlic and onions.
• Herbs & Spices – This recipe does use a bit of seasonings. These include oregano, marjoram, basil, parsley, garlic and onion powder, ground mustard, salt, and pepper. You could use a premade blend of Italian seasonings instead of the individual herbs if you prefer. You can also add any kind of herb not listed above to your hearts content.

The process

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

In a cast iron skillet, (at least 8 inches if making without veggies, 10-12 inches if making with veggies), heat up some olive oil, or other cooking fat, and sauté the vegetables. Alternatively cook the vegetables in a stovetop pan.

The sauté time will vary depending on how many veggies you plan to add to this recipe. For onions and garlic, three to five minutes will suffice, if adding peppers, celery, carrots or any other vegetable cook for at least 8 minutes before adding the beef.

It is totally up to you what kind and how many vegetables you’d like to add to this recipe. Or, if you don’t want any at all. Whatever floats your boat.

After the vegetables have cooked for a few minutes, add in the beef and seasonings, excluding the ground mustard. Cook until fully browned and remove grease from the pan, unless you’d like to mop it off the top of the eggs after it’s all done cooking. Sprinkle half the cheese over the beef and set aside.

Now it’s time to mix up the eggs. Doing this step after cooking the beef gives some time for it to cool down before we add the eggs. This is important if you want to turn this into a make ahead meal. You don’t want partially cooked eggs and raw eggs sitting on top of each other in the fridge all night. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t make you sick after it’s fully cooked but the texture could be affected.

Add the eggs, cream of chicken soup, ground mustard (if using) and remaining salt. (We’ll divide the salt between beef and eggs.) If you want to add any leafy greens to this recipe, add it to the eggs now. Stir until fully combined and pour over the ground beef.

If you don’t have a cast iron pan, transfer the beef and vegetables to a baking dish, such as a 9×13 or 9×9 casserole dish. You could even use a meatloaf pan if that’s all you have. Then add the egg mixture over that. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese and parsley if you’d like.

Bake for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. You can opt for runnier eggs, we just prefer our eggs to be well set if it’s in an omelet or quiche.

That’s it!

Serve this with bread, rice or just eat it by itself. If you’re feeling fancy you could whip up some tomato soup to go along with 🙂 Mmmmm that sounds nice.

If you are feeding a big crowd, double up the egg mixture and bake in a 14″ cast iron skillet or a tall 9×13 casserole dish.

This recipe calls for cream of chicken soup. While we make our own, we still use about 10.5oz about the amount you’d get from a typical can at the store.

I’d love to hear what kind of creations you all make with this recipe. Especially would love to see how you all incorporate fresh veg into your home cooking 😀

Happy cooking!