Healthy Comfort Food: Hashbrown Casserole with Veggies
Here’s another comfort food that I chose to “healthify.” This one is a healthy hashbrown casserole. Have you seen my Greek-Inspired Healthy Macaroni and Cheese yet? It’s one of my favorite healthy comfort food recipes!
A friend asked me to bring a hashbrown casserole to her house for a potluck. After scouring the internet for healthy recipes, I panicked. I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to make that I also thought my friend’s guests would like. I decided to wing it and take elements from a frittata and a potato kugel, a dish I make for some Jewish holidays. After only two tries, I came up with a delicious healthy hashbrown casserole.
My recipes tweaks for this healthy comfort food
If you know me, you know that I’ll add low-calorie, low-carbohydrate, health-shielding non-starchy vegetables to practically any recipe. And this healthy comfort food recipe is no exception. The combination of eggs, cheese and potatoes practically begged for broccoli. Using lower fat cheeses brought the saturated fat and calories to a manageable level.
It takes just a few recipe tweaks to get healthy comfort food like this hashbrown casserole.Click To TweetHealthy brunch recipes are fun to create and share. One of my favorites is this Smoked Salmon Frittata. My girls and I often make it together for Mother’s Day or some other brunch occasion. But one of my post popular recipes is my healthy take on Shakshuka, a delicious, veggie-packed dish of eggs and tomatoes.
Healthy Comfort Food: Hashbrown Casserole with Veggies
Ingredients
- 9 large eggs, beaten
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 3/4 teaspoon coarse black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed or chopped
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 2 cups lowfat cottage cheese
- 5 cups frozen hashbrown potatoes (no added oil or salt), do not defrost
- 1 large yellow onion, grated
- 6 tablespoons chopped chives, divided (about 3/4 ounce)
- 1 (12.6-ounce) bag frozen broccoli pieces, thawed, with excess moisture removed, cut to bite-sized pieces
- 2 1/2 cups 2% shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- In a large bowl, mix the beaten eggs and the next 5 ingredients (through mustard). Add the cottage cheese and mix well.
- In a separate large bowl, mix the frozen hashbrowns, grated onion, 4 tablespoons chives, broccoli and 2 cups of the shredded cheese.
- Pour the ingredients of the first bowl (egg mixture) into the potato mixture. Combine well.
- Transfer the mixture into a 9" x 13" baking dish that was treated with nonstick spray. Use a spatula or the back of a large spoon to even out the contents of your baking dish.
- Sprinkle the remaining 2 tablespoons of chives and 1/2 cup cheese over the top.
- Bake 40 minutes or until the top is golden and the center has set.
- Cut into 15 squares.
Notes
Nutrition
Cheers to loving the heck out of your food, including healthy comfort food!
Filed Under: Breakfast and Brunch, Breakfast Eggs, Comfort Food Sides, Nutrition, Recipe
Tagged: eggs, healthy brunch recipe, healthy comfort food
Jill Weisenberger
I'm Jill, and I believe simple changes in your mindset and health habits can bring life-changing rewards. And I don't believe in willpower. It's waaaay overrated. As a food-loving registered dietitian nutritionist, certified diabetes care and education specialist and certified health and wellness coach, I've helped thousands of people solve their food and nutrition problems. If you're looking for a better way to master this whole healthy eating/healthy living thing or if you're trying to prevent or manage diabetes or heart problems, you'll find plenty of resources right here.
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Welcome to my Blog
Hi there! I'm Jill, a nutrition & diabetes expert and the author of 4 books.
I believe simple changes in health habits can bring you life-changing rewards.
And I believe willpower is way overrated.
Right here is where you can discover the mindset and habits to stick with healthy lifestyle choices most of the time - and drop the guilt when you don't.
How do you count the fat in this recipe? I don’t think the exchanges on the recipe sound correct
Thanks for double checking with me. It should include 1 Fat exchange. I’ve just added it. Otherwise, I believe they are correct. With a total of 13 g protein, that’s about 2 meat (from the eggs, cottage cheese and cheddar cheese). I rounded up to 1 carb exchange, but you could count it as less than 1 if you are typically that precise.
Salutations! I’m curious if you’ve made this with other vegetable(s) instead of broccoli? Do you have suggestion for broccoli substitution – sautéd spinach? – too moist for this recipe? Thank you for you input and sharing these great recipes. 🙂
I haven’t tried this particular recipe with other vegetables, but I have done a similar one with bell peppers and scallions. I think that would work well. If you can really squeeze the moisture out of the cooked spinach, it would probably work. Otherwise, I suspect it will come out too wet. If you try it, I want to know.