Our Best Breakfast Casseroles

Breakfast Sausage Casserole Recipe

This satisfying breakfast recipe is perfect to make for weekend guests. Assemble and refrigerate the casserole the night before, and just pop it in the oven the next morning. Look for turkey sausage near other breakfast-style sausage in the frozen foods section.

Spinach, Bacon, and Gruyère Breakfast Strata Recipe

This dish has fewer than 20g of total carbs--about half of what you'll find in classic bread-based casseroles. Greek yogurt, eggs, and cheese pack a mighty protein punch, while a touch of bacon seasons to perfection.

Creamy Brioche and Egg Bake Recipe

This stand alone breakfast dish is an upgrade from the usual breakfast casserole. Baking eggs in brioche and heavy cream allows for perfectly set, soft, and runny eggs. Fresh herbs and rich egg and meaty sausage flavors round out this bake and give it irresistable texture.

Berry-and-Walnut French Toast Casserole Recipe

This overnight casserole saves you the trouble of standing over a griddle flipping individual slices of French toast. If using a fresh baguette, cut it up the day before, and let it sit in the bag overnight to become slightly stale—that'll help prevent sogginess when the casserole is baked.

Jazz up traditional French toast with sweet peaches and heavy cream in this make-ahead breakfast casserole dish. It's perfect for holiday mornings, birthday celebrations, or any day you want to make extra special.

Artichoke and Spinach Strata Recipe

Thaw the artichoke hearts according to microwave directions, or in the refrigerator for 2 hours. You can also place artichoke hearts in the baking dish and bake at 375° until thawed, then remove from the pan and continue the recipe.

Mini Cheese Grits Casseroles Recipe

This make-ahead recipe is ideal for a brunch or holiday breakfast. Prepare the grits the night prior to serving, and then bake the casseroles before everyone arrives. Ramekins in pastel hues help dress up this recipe for your Easter table. Plus, the single-serving portions feel more formal than a regular casserole dish. If you don’t have 8-ounce ramekins, our recipe can be made in a 2-quart baking dish (increase the baking time to about 50 to 55 minutes). The key to creamy, lump-free grits is to stir or whisk the grits while you are slowly pouring them into the water. Stir occasionally until the grits are tender. Make sure the pot of grits does not start popping or bubbling, and reduce heat to low

Cheesy Sausage-and-Croissant Casserole Recipe

This casserole is rich, delicious, and worthy of a special occasion breakfast. Gruyère cheese browns beautifully and adds a nutty flavor to the dish. You can substitute Swiss cheese if you prefer.

Breakfast Enchiladas Recipe

Associate Food Editor Mary Allen Perry likes the make-ahead ease of this breakfast casserole recipe. Prepare the recipe, without baking, and refrigerate overnight. Let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes; bake as directed. Tip: Make the Cheese Sauce before scrambling the eggs so the sauce will be ready to add at the proper time.

Slow-Cooker French Toast Recipe

You may think you don’t need another French toast recipe, but actually, I think you do. More like a creamy bread pudding, this slow-cooker French toast is filling and packed with flavor, yet completely low-maintenance. It’s also perfect for mornings with a chill in the air, when you’re craving something a bit more cozy than cold yogurt or a piece of fruit dipped in nut butter.

Slow-cooker French toast layers thick slices of egg and milk-soaked French bread or challah with thinly sliced bananas and raisins for sweetness (try other dried fruits for different kinds of sugary fun). With the slow-cooker set to low, this French toast takes 2-3 hours to finish, but it’s completely hands-off. In the meantime, text back your friend, take a shower, have first breakfast—the time is yours to do what you wish. When the toast is done, cover it with jam, maple syrup, or a drizzle of smooth tahini.

Slow-Cooker French Toast

Mix together eggs, milk, vanilla extract, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Whisk in a glug of heavy cream if you have some in the fridge. Slice bananas thinly. Cut each slice in of bread in half diagonally. Grease a slow cooker with cooking spray, and lay the half sliced bread in a single layer in the pot. Layer half the sliced bananas over the bread. Throw in a handful of raisins over the bananas if using. Cover the first layer of the French toast casserole with 1 tablespoon of the butter, shredded to make for easy scattering. 

Make another bread-and-banana layer, then drizzle the egg mixture over the whole thing. The liquid shouldn’t cover the bread completely, but it should reach more than halfway up the side of the slow cooker. Add more milk if the liquid doesn’t reach the halfway mark. Top the mixture with another tablespoon of grated butter, then sprinkle with another tablespoon or two of brown sugar. 

Turn on the slow cooker set to low and cook for two and three hours.

Serve slow-cooker French toast with fruit, maple syrup, chopped nuts, melted nut butter, or tahini.

Double-Berry French Toast Casserole Recipe

A feast for the eyes as well as the appetite, this french toast creation is at the top of its game. Use in-season berries for a delectable morning feast.

Smoky Sausage-and-Grits Casserole Recipe

You can assemble this up to four days ahead, and keep in the fridge; then let it stand at room temp for 30 minutes before baking.

Cheesy Hash Brown Casserole Recipe

That down-home flavor comes together right here in the baking dish. This casserole makes the perfect accompaniment to any breakfast or brunch spread.

Chilaquiles Casserole Recipe

This Mexican classic is commonly served topped with eggs, but it's just as delicious without, as a savory crowd-pleaser that skews more toward the lunch end of brunch. Simply bake the casserole, top with cheese, and serve

Marmalade French Toast Casserole Recipe

If one piece of French toast isn't enough (and let's be honest, it never is!), then we've got the perfect dish for you: a casserole filled with French toast. This dish combines the tangy flavor of sourdough French bread with sweet, citrusy orange marmalade and crunchy walnuts. Orange rind-infused syrup and a splash of orange juice punch up the flavor even more.

Sausage-Hash Brown Breakfast Casserole Recipe

This is one of our top-rated recipes for a reason: It's easy, it's quick, and it's absolutely delicious. Combine frozen hash brown potatoes with sausage, eggs, and cheese for a hearty, 5-star breakfast or brunch casserole that can be prepped ahead and baked the next morning. Sauté one large onion and one bell pepper in the pork drippings for extra flavor and color. Tip from the recipe developer: To make mini frittatas, cook in 6-inch cast-iron skillets for 30 minutes at 375. Top with sliced avocados, pico de gallo, and a dollop of sour cream and sprinkle with green onions.

Spring Vegetable Frittata Recipe

"A frittata is a great brunch dish for entertaining because it makes for an effortless and beautiful family-style presentation."

Smoked Salmon Breakfast Casserole Recipe

When you're looking for a breakfast that is both elegant and easy this holiday season, our crowd-pleasing casserole is just the ticket. This multilayered marvel is loaded with crispy potatoes, hot-smoked salmon, and a smattering of fresh herbs. Cottage cheese naturally melds into the eggs, creating pillowy lightness throughout the mixture, while goat cheese creates dense pockets of creaminess. Hot-smoked salmon, unlike cured, is fully cooked—look for it in the fish case or packaged in the meat aisle of your grocery store. Our recipe hits all the marks for a hearty one-dish meal, with 25% fewer calories, 7g less saturated fat, and over 600mg less sodium than traditional meat-and-cheese breakfast casseroles. Use a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet for best results.

Sausage and Polenta Breakfast Casserole Recipe

Andouille sausage, two types of cheese, and a splash of hot sauce add flavor and a little kick to Sausage and Polenta Breakfast Casserole. This make-ahead breakfast casserole is perfect for holiday mornings--just cook and enjoy.

One-Dish Blackberry French Toast Recipe

Perfect for a holiday breakfast or a weekend brunch, this french toast recipe is loaded with tasty, sweet ingredients. Of course, you can always add a little extra sweetness with maple syrup or whipped cream.

Ham Biscuit Casserole Recipe

Christmas Breakfast Casserole  Recipe

This warm and comforting casserole is everything you could want in a Christmas morning breakfast: rich and cheesy grits, rounded out with sausage, bacon, and poblano. 

Hash Brown Breakfast Casserole Recipe

The classic egg, sausage, and potato breakfast casserole combo gets a little kick from picante sauce and sour cream for a south-of-the-border brunch experience.

Tex-Mex Breakfast Bake  Recipe

This flavor-packed take on breakfast casserole is a great way to use up leftover Texas toast or garlic bread. Rich, indulgent, and spicy, its gooeyness is perfectly complimented by the tang from the crema, which can be found in a Latin market. Play around with frozen toast flavors to spice things up, or serve it as breakfast for dinner. 

Spinach, Artichoke, and Gouda Casserole Recipe

If you're looking for some sophisticated ingredients for your next breakfast dish, look no further than spinach, artichoke, and gouda cheese. Mixed in with eggs, these ingredients tap into a wonderful flavor combination that can't be beaten.

Sweet Potato and Sausage Strata Recipe

If you make this dish ahead, bring it to room temperature before baking so it will reheat evenly.

Bacon-and-Cheddar Grits Quiche Recipe

Spread cheese to the edge of the warm, bacony grits "crust" to prevent any custard from seeping out while the quiche bakes.

Eggs Benedict Totchos Recipe

Potatoes have been a breakfast staple for a long time, but until some genius decided to turn hash browns into little fried cylinders Americans didn't know the joy of tater tots. Who doesn’t love french fries that are engineered for breakfast? For those of us who understand the importance of the tater tot as a meal and not just a side dish, you can throw them in your breakfast mac n cheese or make a full-on tater tot casserole that will make your little tater-loving heart happy. But the ultimate tater tot-lover’s dream is eggs Benedict totchos.

What are totchos? Totchos are the divine combination between cheese-drenched nachos and crispy tater tots. I feel like not much more needs to be said here, but for the sake of making you drool: These tots are loaded with Canadian bacon and doused in a creamy hollandaise. And they’re so easy to make. All you have to do is bake freezer-section tots, cook the bacon, poach two eggs, and whip up the hollandaise. 

Eggs Benedict Totchos

Instant Pot Egg Casserole Recipe

Essentially a frittata or a crustless quiche, this Instant Pot egg casserole really couldn’t be easier. This one-pot meal can be served at brunch this weekend, or made ahead of time, wrapped up and reheated right before heading to work on weekday mornings. Sweet with onions and bell peppers, with pockets of savory breakfast sausage and shredded cheddar cheese, this fluffy egg casserole proves just how crafty you can get with an Instant Pot.

Let the onions and bell pepper brown in the pressure cooker on the sauté setting until caramelized along with a few links of breakfast sausage. The casserole itself cooks inside a springform pan and sits on the grate insert of the Instant Pot. After beaten eggs are poured over the cheese, vegetables, and sausage, the casserole cooks for just 12 minutes. 

Instant Pot Egg Casserole

Breakfast Lasagna Recipe

Lasagna is a powerful, thoughtful act of love, care, and precision. Lasagna is an art form. Lasagna cannot be just thrown together last minute to get dinner on the table. Good lasagna is better than the greatest casserole, and great lasagna is a desert island dish, a death row request for a last supper. A good lasagna can be achieved with store-bought noodles, a good meat sauce, creamy ricotta and mozzarella. A great lasagna is about a zillion layers of super-thin homemade noodles, rich béchamel sauce, homemade ragu made with three to four meats, fontina and Parmigiano reggiano.  

On the rare occasion I make it, I cannot help but overindulge, including warming slices of the leftovers for breakfast. Which got me thinking: Instead of just having leftover dinner lasagna for breakfast, what if I made breakfast lasagna?  

For starters, I swapped out the noodles for homemade crepes. Italians have done this for ages, making crespelle and swapping them for noodles in all sorts of dishes. Crepes are much easier than homemade noodles, and I am a big believer that breakfast should be easier than dinner. Not wanting to start the day with a long-cooked ragu, I looked to my husband’s Southern roots for inspiration, landing on a classic sausage gravy. Breakfast sausage suspended in a rich creamy sauce essentially covered the béchamel and meat in one fell swoop. I went with roasted tomato slices which are easy to make and bring all the tomato flavor without adding an extra sauce element, some ricotta to lighten it up a bit, soft scrambled eggs, and a blanket of mozzarella and Parmesan to hold everything together.  

Is it a quick before-school breakfast? No more than lasagna is a quick weeknight dinner. But it is the perfect thing for a weekend breakfast when you can assemble most of it on Saturday and then finish Sunday morning as an act of devotion for the ones you love, which I sincerely hope includes your own fabulous self. No one deserves lasagna more than the cook. 

Breakfast Lasagna

Note: I often roast fresh tomatoes in large batches and freeze them in the summer when tomatoes are ripe, but this calls for roasting canned tomatoes, which is easier and doesn’t rely on seasonal produce.  If you have roasted tomatoes in your freezer, use them.

Note: You can make the dish ahead without the eggs. Store covered in the fridge and just bake at 350°F covered for an hour or so before finishing the dish per recipe instructions.

Overnight Blueberry Croissant Breakfast Bake Recipe

Blogger Chungah Rhee of Damn Delicious created a fun twist on a traditional French toast bake that calls for buttery, flaky mini croissants instead of thick Brioche slices. This French toast bake recipe from her latest cookbook Damn Delicious: 100 Super Easy, Super Fast Recipes suggests prepping the night before to give the croissants a chance to soak up all of that sweet egg batter. Sleep in, snooze your alarm a few times, and just pop the pan in the oven when you’re ready to eat. To finish it off in the morning, drizzle the bread pudding-like base with a cinnamon-cream cheese glaze. This make-ahead breakfast casserole is truly the most genius way to use up day-old croissants.

Overnight Blueberry Croissant Breakfast Bake

Ingredients

Excerpted from Damn Delicious: 100 Super Easy, Super Fast Recipes by Chungah Rhee. Copyright © 2016 Chungah Rhee. Reprinted with permission from Oxmoor House, an imprint of Time Inc. Books. All rights reserved.

Baked Pasta Benedict Recipe

If you are currently jockeying with family or friends for an annual event to host, you should absolutely be fighting for the right to nab brunch. Brunch is the unsung hero of affairs, the sleeper hit of the shindigs. Lunches and dinners require so much more than godly cleanliness. It is not enough to be cleaning, cooking, and wearing pants—you now have to consider guest towels and decorative soaps. Brunch? It’s cool if your house is just a little bit messy. We’re just chillin’ all cazh, no need to hurry or get to anything, just enjoying the day. Nobody’s got the time to be uptight when they’ve got an excuse to drink vodka and eat a Brunch Baked Ziti Benedict Casserole at 10 a.m. Brunch sounds warm and hospitable, yet expectations are lower than other holidays.

Consider your other choices:

Thanksgiving. You've seen this on TV, pored over a thousand magazines designed to make you think that hosting this feast will be the single most soul-defining moment of your life. What food pros know that you don’t: You will screw this up. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got every Thanksgiving edition of Martha Stewart Living dating back to 1984, or own a closet full of holiday-themed china you’ve been collecting to use only one day a year. Thanksgiving calls for a multitude of dishes that are all supposed to be prepared in the oven, so you’ve already been set up to fail. You may knock 95 percent of things out of the park, but one thing—inevitably someone’s absolute favorite dish—will end in disaster. Regardless of your successes, you will be able to see nothing but scowls and utter disappointment for the entire night. Don’t do this to yourself. Let some other idiot claim this one and allow yourself to be the party disappointed over improperly creamed pearl onions.

July 4th, Memorial Day, or any other “barbecue” holiday. These always seem like a such a fun idea until family gets wasted from drinking in the sun and pour potato salad and barbecue sauce all over your lawn. Then the ants come. They inch closer and closer to the house every minute. You will spend days trying to destroy any barbecue residue that may be hiding the crevices of your property, but you’ll never find them all. But the ants will. And they are coming for you. 

Mother’s Day. I have two kids and I do not want to be doing jack shit on Mother’s Day, so if you make me dress up and come to your house to have “a light luncheon” I will punch you right in your Pinterest-loving face.

You want to score brunch. It doesn’t matter the holiday, it doesn’t even need to be a holiday, you just need to get people over once a year and write a big fat “X” in the “annual gathering” box on your proper adulting checklist. For one, you don’t have to dress fancy. I’ll wear nice pajamas, because I did not go out and spend all that money on them to have no one understand how good I look in them. Wearing pants in my own house is my person equivalent of black-tie, so this is an all around win for me, and everyone who has to look at me. It’s my time to shine in so many ways. 

The biggest problem with hosting brunch is that many breakfasts need to be made hot to order. Yes, there are fritters and baked French toast, but where’s the WOW factor? Where’s the “Oh my, what’s this? This most certainly takes my mind off the lack butterfly-shaped geranium soaps in the bathroom!”  

Everyone is impressed by eggs Benedict, but it’s a pain in the ass to make even without the crowd factor. Luckily, that’s hackable. There’s no reason we can’t take those same exact flavors, use them in a different way, and add the most important element in the world, the element of surprise! 

Baked pastas are the answer to most cooking-for-a-crowd-quagmires, so why not use it here? You can even make this the night before so you can sleep in, or spend a little bit more time primping to make people believe that you really do look that good in the morning. 

Barbecues are for suckers. Brunch is the answer.

Baked Pasta Benedict