Crustless Quiche with Summer Vegetables

“Quiche” is such a fancy word.  Every time I see them in bakeries, I always think about how much work it’d be to make one.  However, once you remove the crust factor from the equation, the steps are far less daunting!  This crustless quiche has been THE recipe of summer 2017 for me.  I’ve made it a dozen times to date, and it never gets old.  It’s low-carb, as healthy as you want to make it, and holds up really well as leftovers.  It’s a filling breakfast that you can just pop any leftovers in the microwave, top with a bit of avocado, and enjoy.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 large yellow or white onion, sliced into half-moons
• 1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper, plus more to taste
• 3 to 4 cups chopped vegetables*
• 8 large eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup shredded cheddar or other cheese

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Melt the butter in a cast iron or ovenproof skillet over medium heat. (If your skillet isn’t ovenproof, transfer everything to a deep dish pie plate to bake it.) Add the onion slices and sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper over them. Cook the onions until they are golden-brown and starting to caramelize, about 10 minutes.

   

3. Remove the pan from the heat and spread the onions evenly across the bottom. Spread the vegetables evenly over the onions. The dish or pan should look fairly full.

   

4. In a bowl, use a fork to beat the eggs lightly with the milk, cheese, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper, just enough to break up the yolks and whites. This is a savory custard mixture. Pour the custard over the vegetables and onions and enjoy watching it fill in all the open spaces.

   

5. Transfer the quiche to the oven and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Once the surface is lightly brown all the way across, it’s fully cooked. Let the quiche cool for about 20 minutes, then slice into wedges.

   

*NOTE:  For hardier vegetables — like broccoli, cauliflower, or winter squash — steam or cook them before adding them to the quiche to ensure they’ll be fully cooked. For tomatoes, zucchini, spinach, or any other quick-cooking vegetable, just use them fresh.  My favorite combination (and also what I used in these photos) so far has been zucchini, dry-packed sun dried tomatoes, and steamed broccoli.

Also, if you HATE scrubbing burnt egg and cheese out of a cast iron skillet, you can also make make this in an 8×8 Pyrex baking dish.  I would even recommend lining it with nonstick foil to make clean up impossibly easy.  Just use a frying pan to cook the onions prior to tossing them in the Pyrex. Your servings will be more like rectangles if you use a Pyrex, like the photo below: