A full breakfast is a weekend treat. Use some of these tips for saving time and having it all hot at the same moment.
If it were up to me, coffee and a slice of toast would be breakfast. I’m good with that most days. Unless I have the makings for those skillet-poached eggs and greens. Oh my! I could eat those every single day. Yum!
Years of having babies and nursing babies have taught me to eat a better breakfast, so I now usually lean toward some kind of dairy and fruit to add to my toast.
The fam? They want the whole deal. For them that means eggs, a meat, a baked good, and potatoes.
Enjoying breakfast at a local diner is one of our favorite pastimes. But the cost can add up. So, if I cook it all at home, it’s a reasonable substitute.
I don’t cook full breakfasts everyday, but I try to do it at least once on a weekend. Since I want to be able to serve everything reasonably hot at the same time, I use a few tricks to save time while I’m cooking to feed a small army.
(Psst… the same techniques work really well for those nights when you serve breakfast for supper.)
1. Make your mixes ahead of time.
I can’t tell you how much time I save when I prep baking mixes ahead of time and store them in the freezer. It’s always pretty sad when we run out. Thankfully, it doesn’t take more than a few minutes to mix up more.
2. Bake in bulk.
Don’t spend your time baking small batches of things. I can’t imagine the patience of Ma Ingalls cooking every child a pancake on Christmas morning — in one cast iron skillet!
We’ve got a huge waffler as well as a large electric griddle for cooking up breakfasts. These are huge time-savers when I want to make many of one thing. I can make four waffles or eight pancakes at a time with these two small appliances.
Make enough for everyone to have his fill. My Mix and Match muffin recipe makes 24 regular size muffins. If you don’t have a large toaster oven, you can use your regular oven to toast bread or English muffins. Get as much bang for your buck as you can!
3. Bake many things at once.
If you’re heating the oven, make it do double duty. Bake your bacon and your egg dish and your muffins all at once — provided that you have a regular size oven. For years we had a Holly Hobby oven and it was hard to make it multi-task.
But, if you can make use of the space and the heat that you’ve got going.
4. Limit your stove time.
I don’t know about you, but standing at the stove first thing in the morning trying to keep track of frying eggs, splattering bacon, cooking hashbrowns and flipping pancakes is not my idea of a sunshiny morning.
Instead, I limit the stove time so I can avoid that hot and bothered feeling. The pancakes are relegated to an electric griddle where an older child can do the flipping. The bacon goes to the oven. I cook the eggs. And the hashbrowns?
Well, the panini press takes care of that!
I’ve done this a few times recently with great success! The hashbrowns turn out nice and crispy and no one needs to babysit them. Love that!
Panini Press Hashbrowns
Ingredients
- 1 30-ounce package frozen shredded potatoes no need to thaw
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 1 tsp salt or more to taste
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
Instructions
- Heat your panini press.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the potatoes, olive oil, salt, paprika, and pepper. Toss to combine.
- In two or three batches, depending on the size of your press, spoon potato mixture onto the press and close tight. Allow to cook for 5 to 10 minutes, until desired crispness.
- Remove from press and continue with the rest of the potato mixture.
Sheri
Just tried this…it worked great and was so much easier!!
Jessica Fisher
Yay! Don’t you love those wins?
Kelly
The same, not different. Overall size is the same, even though the shape is different. It would take 12 sessions on this iron to give each family member the quantity they like to eat.
Kelly
Just yesterday I was thinking there’s got to be a waffle iron that can make more than one at a time and today your post shows up in my Facebook newsfeed. What brand is it and where did you get it?
Jessica Fisher
Its availability is hit or miss but right now Amazon has it for a great price! http://amzn.to/1gEeWjj (affiliate link)
Kelly
How many of these do each of your kids eat? To me, that’s just one waffle because my 7, 8 and 9 year old will eat two full ones each. I have the round Belgian waffle maker, so the shape is different, but it looks like the overall size is different.