Bacon Wrapped Eggs

 “What am I supposed to eat for breakfast?”  It was one of the first questions I had when trying to make changes in my diet.  A bowl of cereal, a toaster pastry, donuts, meal replacement bars and drive-thru windows were all so quick and easy.  I didn’t have time to make an omelet every morning.  I didn’t want to clean up the mess from cooking (or leave it in the sink) every day. 

Do some of these concerns (excuses) sound familiar?  When I first started working toward a healthier breakfast, I was cooking a week’s worth of bacon on the stovetop and frying a dozen eggs over hard in bacon grease.  I found this to be messy and hard to eat on the go.  After a couple of weeks, I started cooking my bacon in the oven and my eggs in a greased muffin pan.  After another week or so and an inspiring conversation with a friend at the gym, I came up with…

Bacon Wrapped Eggs

What you’ll need:

An oven preheated to 375 F

A rimmed baking sheet
A wire rack
A muffin pan
5 or 6 plastic baggies

Ingredients:

12 eggs

12 thick cut slices of bacon
Coconut spray oil
Salt and pepper  

Place the wire rack on the baking sheet and lay your bacon out across it.  Bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes.  Remove from the oven when bacon is “not quite done.”  It should still be flexible, but have quite a bit of the fat rendered from it.  (Feel free to reserve this bacon grease for future cooking endeavors.)

While the bacon is cooking in the oven, grease a muffin pan with coconut oil.  If you cannot find sprayable coconut oil, use a paper towel and grease it like your grandmother would have… by hand.  When you bacon has cooled enough to touch, use it to line the edges of each of the cups in the muffin pan.  Then, crack an egg into the middle of each “bacon ring.”  Don’t want bacon with each of your eggs?... Just crack the egg into a bacon-less cup.

If you prefer, season each of the eggs with salt and pepper.  Place the muffin pan into the oven (still at 375 F) and cook for 15 to 20 minutes.  The cooking time will depend on both your oven and how you like the consistency of you egg yolk.  Remove the pan from the oven when done.  Let the eggs cool.

Run a knife around the edge of each cup between the pan and the bacon to help loosen and remove them.  When they are cool enough to handle, divide them up (I eat two or three each morning) and place them in plastic baggies.  You now have a week’s worth of breakfast on a shelf in your fridge.  You can eat them cold or warm, by hand or with a fork, sitting down or on the go.

Ladies and gentlemen, the bacon wrapped egg.