Hash Brown Casserole

A group of our friends decided to have a dinner get-together with brunch foods as the theme, and the term Brupper (brunch/supper) was born. We had a great time tasting all of the creations; from pancake cupcakes with maple syrup icing to pumpkin french toast and pigs in a blanket. Our contribution was a hash brown casserole found in the Cooking Light Recipe Makeovers magazine. For 293 calories with 12 grams of protein and 214 mg of calcium, here is a delicious hash brown dish!

Grocery List:
serves 6

6 slices of lean bacon
1 tablespoon of butter
1 cup chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 (32-ounce) package frozen hash browns (shredded)
1 cup of shredded cheese
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1/2 cup fat-free sour cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 (10 oz. can) condensed, fat free cream of mushroom soup (I dislike anything mushroom so I used an organic cream of chicken soup instead)
Cooking Spray
Tony's Creole Seasoning

Start by cooking your bacon in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon from heat, let cool and then crumble. Set aside.

Add 1 tablespoon of butter, 1 cup of chopped onion and garlic to pan, cooking until tender, about 5 minutes. Add 3 shakes of Tony's Creole Seasoning to the onion mix. Once translucent, stir in the hash brown potatoes. Cook for about 15 minutes, adding a few more shakes of Tony's.


Meanwhile combine the crumbled bacon, 1/4 cup of the cheese, green onions, sour cream, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add soup and stir well.


Add potato mixture, tossing gently to combine.


Spoon the mixture into an 11x7 inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle with remaining 3/4 cup of cheese.


Now at this point, I hit the last sentence of the recipe and I saw "refrigerate 8 hours or overnight" - well, obviously that wasn't going to work, so I plugged ahead as planned, praying for the best. If you would like, you could try it that way and let me know how it turns out!

With the oven at 350 degrees, bake for 30 minutes, or until bubbly around edges and cheese begins to brown.


While we were in a bit of a hurry, I feel this could have cooked longer to be more crisp but it was really good and demolished!!