Slow Cooker Egg and Sweet Potato Breakfast Casserole
Eggs, diced sweet potato and spinach cooked slowly into a soft breakfast casserole with cottage cheese folded in.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
An egg casserole in a slow cooker is not the same dish as one in the oven, and that is the point. There is no dry browned top and no crisp edge. What you get instead is soft all the way through, closer to a very thick custard, and it holds that texture for days in the refrigerator in a way an oven bake never does. Three hours is the thing to plan around, since that is too short to leave overnight: either start it early on a morning you are not in a hurry, or cook it in the evening and spoon out breakfast from the refrigerator for the rest of the week.
Sweet potato is here because raw diced potato and raw eggs finish at almost exactly the same time in a crock. White potato needs a head start or it turns up hard in the middle. Half-inch cubes of sweet potato go in raw with everything else and come out fully soft at three hours. Cut them any larger and that stops being true, so it is worth taking the extra minute at the board.
Cottage cheese is the ingredient people leave out and should not. It disappears completely into the eggs, adds protein without adding heaviness, and keeps the whole thing tender instead of rubbery, which is the way most slow cooker eggs go wrong. Whisk it in properly rather than folding, since it stays in curds until the eggs have been worked all the way through it, and any lump left in the bowl bakes into a dry white patch.
Ingredients
- 14 large eggs
- 1 cup cottage cheese
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
- 5 oz fresh baby spinach
- 1 medium yellow onion, finely diced
- 1 large red bell pepper, diced
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tbsp olive oil, for the crock
- 1/3 tsp salt
- 3/4 tsp black pepper
- 4 scallions, thinly sliced, for serving
Instructions
- Line and grease the crock: Line a 6-quart slow cooker with parchment if you want clean edges, then rub the parchment or the bare crock generously with the olive oil. Eggs weld themselves to a dry surface.
- Whisk the eggs: Crack the eggs into a large bowl and whisk with the milk, cottage cheese, smoked paprika, salt and black pepper until the cottage cheese has broken up and no long ribbons of white are left.
- Prep the vegetables: Cut the sweet potato into 1/2-inch cubes and dice the onion and pepper small. Size matters more than usual here, since anything much bigger will still be firm when the eggs are set.
- Layer it in: Scatter the sweet potato, onion, pepper and garlic across the bottom of the crock, then add the spinach in handfuls and press it down. It looks like far too much and it collapses to almost nothing.
- Pour and cook: Pour the egg mixture over the vegetables and give it one gentle stir to settle everything. Cover and cook on low for 3 hours, until the center is just set and no longer wet when you press it.
- Rest and serve: Turn the cooker off and leave the lid ajar for 10 minutes so the casserole firms up before you cut it. Scatter the scallions over the top and serve it in wedges straight from the crock.
Variations
- Instant Pot: Cook in a greased heatproof dish on a trivet with 1 cup of water below, on high pressure for 20 minutes with a natural release of 10.
- Mediterranean: Swap the sweet potato for a cup of chopped artichoke hearts and a half cup of halved cherry tomatoes, and stir in a tablespoon of chopped dill at the end.
- With goat cheese: Crumble 2 oz of goat cheese over the top before cooking. It stays in soft pockets rather than melting through and gives the whole thing more tang.
- Southwest: Add a teaspoon of cumin and a can of drained black beans, and serve it with salsa and avocado instead of scallions.
- Egg white version: Use 20 egg whites in place of the whole eggs. It sets firmer and paler and drops the fat considerably, and it needs the cottage cheese even more than the original does.
Storage & Leftovers
Cooled leftovers keep in the refrigerator for 4 days. Cut it into portions before it goes in the container, because a whole casserole chilled solid is much harder to divide cleanly than warm wedges are.
Reheat portions covered in the microwave in short bursts, or in a low oven. Eggs turn rubbery fast at high heat, so stop as soon as it is warmed through rather than hot.
It freezes for up to 2 months, though the texture softens. Wrap individual portions, thaw overnight in the refrigerator and reheat gently. Eggs release a little water on thawing, which you can blot off.
Notes & Tips
- Grease more than you think: Egg protein bonds to metal and ceramic. A thin film is not enough, and a well-oiled crock is the difference between wedges and scrapings.
- Cut the sweet potato small: Half-inch cubes finish exactly when the eggs do. Anything larger stays firm in the middle and there is no way to fix it once the eggs are set.
- Do not skip the cottage cheese: It is what keeps slow cooker eggs tender. Without it the same three hours give you something noticeably closer to rubber.
- Press the spinach down: Five ounces of raw spinach fills most of a crock and cooks down to almost nothing. Push it under the egg mixture so it wilts evenly rather than steaming on top.
- Stop when it is just set: Overcooked eggs weep water into the bottom of the crock. Check at three hours and take it out when the center springs back.
- Rest before cutting: Ten minutes off the heat lets the casserole firm up. Cut it straight away and the wedges slump instead of holding their shape.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- Fourteen eggs across six servings works out to a little over two eggs each, and together with the cottage cheese that is where nearly all of the protein in a portion is coming from.
- Egg yolks carry the choline, the vitamin D and the lutein, which is the reason this recipe uses whole eggs rather than whites and why the egg white version in the variations reads quite differently.
- Sweet potato is the source of the beta-carotene here, and the tablespoon of olive oil in the crock is doing more than greasing, since that carotene is fat soluble and needs some fat present to be absorbed.
- Spinach brings folate, vitamin K and non-heme iron, and the red pepper alongside it supplies the vitamin C that helps your body take that iron up.
- A third of a teaspoon of added salt across six servings is very little for an egg dish. The cottage cheese carries some sodium of its own, and the smoked paprika and scallions are what keep it from tasting flat.
- As you eat, notice how soft this is compared with an oven baked egg dish, and let that softness slow you down rather than speed you up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use white potatoes instead?
Not without a head start. White potato is denser and stays firm past the point where the eggs are set. Microwave the cubes for 4 minutes first if that is what you have.
Do I have to line the crock?
No, but greasing it is not optional. Parchment simply makes it easier to lift the whole casserole out in one piece and keeps the edges tidy.
Can I add meat?
Yes. Brown 8 oz of turkey sausage or diced ham first and scatter it in with the vegetables. The nutrition on this page is calculated without it, so it will read higher in protein and sodium.
How do I know when it is done?
Press the center gently with the back of a spoon. It should feel set and spring back rather than wobble or leave liquid. An extra 20 minutes is fine, an extra hour is not.