Crustless Quiche

Helloooo. It's reading week! I am certainly doing a lot of reading.

I've been meaning to share this delicious recipe with you all. I make it a lot, typically two batches at a time so I can make a whole pie for dinner and have personal pies saved for later. This is my favourite recipe for when I have a bunch of ingredients in the fridge that I think might go bad soonish, or if I've made ham or something.

Serving Size: 1 personal pie, makes 4 pies (or) 2 slices, makes 8 slices
Nutritional Information (egg & cheese): 205 cals, 3g of carbs, 14g of fat, 18g of protein
(with egg, cream, & cheese): 405 cals, 7g of carbs, 34g of fat, 19g of protein

Note: you'll have to adjust the nutritional content based on the filling ingredients you use. Recipe calculators are great.

MFP has a user-friendly one.

Prep Time: 10-15 minutes
Cooking Time: 40 minutes

Your Ingredients:

Basic Pie

• 4 whole eggs
• 1 cup of cottage cheese (I use 4% m.f.)
• 1 cup of choice cheese (I typically use medium cheddar)*
• 1 cup of heavy cream**
• Choice seasoning

*If you want to put a bit of cheese on the top of your pie, you'll want 1 1/4-1 1/2 cups of cheese.

**Heavy cream is totally optional. I've made this recipe both with cream and without it. The results were delicious each time. The difference is how fluffy and moist your quiche turns out. More cream means more fluff/moisture. Less/none means your pie will be pretty sturdy (and still delicious). Not sure which you want? Try just 1/2 a cup of cream!

Possible Filling Choices

• Bacon, ham, left over pork chops or steak
• Mushrooms, green pepper, tomato, zucchini
• Swiss, mozzarella, provolone cheese
• Pretty much anything you feel like putting in the pie

Fillings I Typically use

• 1 cup of chopped/diced ham
• 1 cup of chopped/diced white mushrooms
• 10 sliced cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 cup of swiss cheese
• garlic salt, onion powder, and chili powder

Your Tools:

• A medium-large bowl & whisk
• A cutting board & knife
• A cheese grater & something to hold your cheese
• A 10 or 12 inch frying pan
• 1 8 inch pie plate or 4 personal pie plates*

*Personal pies are great for freezing! If you want to make a batch for later, follow this recipe. Once the pies are baked and cooled, just cover the pies with foil and toss them in the oven. Reheat them in the oven directly from the freezer for 40 minutes.

The Directions:

Step 1 -

Preheat your oven to 400F. Chop up your filling meats and toss them in a frying pan at about medium heat. Then chop up your veggies and add them to the frying pan once the meat is roughly cooked. Cover and let the food fry, stirring occasionally.

Left over meat from when I made pulled pork, zucchini, and cherry tomatoes

Bacon and green pepper

Ham and mushrooms

Step 2 -

Grate all your cheese! Eat the chunky bits that don't get grated properly! Yum. Now set the grated cheese aside. In a medium-large bowl beat all four eggs well (add the cream now, too, if you're using it). Oh, don't forget to go back and stir the stuff that's frying. If it looks just about cooked, turn it to low. Now add the cottage cheese to the eggs and whisk those together. Once that is blended, feel free to add whatever spices you want.

Step 3 -

In your pie plate (or personal pies), sprinkle the grated cheese along the bottom to mostly cover it. Don't bother smushing the cheese down or anything. Next, cover the cheese with about half the egg & cottage cheese mixture, making sure to get the edges. When making personal pies I measure out 1/4 cup of the mixture for each pie during this step. 

Step 4 -

Now it's time to add the filling! Turn off that burner and scoop the ingredients onto the cheese & egg mixture already in the pie plate. Top the filling with the rest of the egg & cottage cheese blend. Finally, sprinkle the top with grated cheese (if you grated extra) and any additional spices! I like to sprinkle the top with chili powder. 

Step 5 -

Bake at 400F for 40 minutes. If, while your pie bakes, you think it might explode... it won't. At least mine never has. When you remove it from the oven it will look HUGE, especially if you used cream. The pie will shrink as it cools. Which reminds me - let your pie cool for 5 minutes or so before cutting and serving. 

If you're using personal pie plates, I recommend putting all four onto one cookie sheet to make for easy baking.

no cheese on top!

 Finished Product

This particular quiche was made sans-cream

xo,
Jennifer