Turkey Bacon & Cheddar Quiche

When my good friend Jim came over for brunch last month, I was excited for the chance to make a quiche in my new quiche pan.  This recipe is exciting because you can modify it in so many ways.  In fact, this recipe is modified from a swiss cheese and mushroom quiche recipe in my Moosewood Cookbook.  I modified it because Drew and I would have to eat the leftovers, and Drew doesn't like mushrooms.  So I changed it up a bit and made a turkey bacon and cheddar combo. 

Ingredients:

Crust

6 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
1 ½ cups flour
about 4 tbsp cold water

Filling
1 small onion, chopped
¾ cup turkey bacon, chopped (or substitute real bacon)
½ salt
a dash of black pepper
¼ tsp thyme
4 large eggs
1 ½ cups milk
2 tbsp flour
1 ½ cups grated cheddar (substitute whatever cheese you like)
paprika 

First, I made a crust.  You could use this one, which uses butter, or this fabulous recipe for pie crust that uses shortening.  Whatever you feel like using!

Here are the small pieces of cold butter.

Cutting the butter into the flour.

All done!  It resembles a course cornmeal when you're done.

Here's my ice water.

Adding a few tablespoons, just a little at a time.

Now we're ready!

Roll the dough out into a flat round.  The edges always look like crap when I do this.  I don't know how you keep it from getting a craggy.  Hahaha craggy is a hysterical word.  I just google imaged it and tons of mountain pictures came up.

Before smoothing it out...very ugly and frustrating.

Acceptable.  I don't really care how it looks, this is how you know a person, not a machine, made it.  :)

Okay, let's now construct the filling!  First, I chopped up a small onion into small pieces like this.

Here's my turkey bacon.  Don't get me wrong; my favorite animal in the whole world to eat is piggy, but considering the amount of eggs and cheese that is in this recipe, not to mention all the butter we just cut into the crust, I think using turkey bacon is perfectly acceptable.  It's only like 35 calories a slice!

So i just cut up about half a pack, which yields something like 3/4 to 1 cup of chopped up turkey bacon.  It doesn't matter a whole lot, just eyeball it.

Normally, I use vegetable oil or olive oil to saute my onion, but I had some butter out and I became Paula Dean for a split second.  Oops, in goes the butter.

Our spices.  Pepper, salt, and thyme.  Add these to the onions as they cook.

After sauteing the onions, they become very soft, translucent, and delicious.  Take them out and set them aside in a bowl.

Now, add the turkey bacon to the pan.  Note: If you are using real bacon, you might cook the bacon first, then cook the onions in the remaining bacon fat.  If you're using turkey bacon like I am here, you don't need to worry about the order, since turkey bacon won't render much fat at all as it cooks.

Separately, you wanna blend together the eggs, milk, and flour until it becomes a nice uniform substance.  I think you can do this with a whisk, but maybe the blender does it faster?  Who knows.

Now, time to construct the quiche!  Step one: layer the cheese in the bottom of the unbaked crust.

I used sharp cheddar because I wanted the flavor to transcend all the egg and bacon and play an equal part in this equation, taste-wise.

Next, add the bacon and onions.  Lastly, pour the egg mixture over the top!

Mmm!  It's like pouring milk over your cereal.  Haha gross, except nothing like that.

All done.

Now, it's ready to go in the oven.  I would highly recommend placing the pan on a cookie sheet or something, in case you wobble going into the oven and spill egg mixture in the bottom of your oven.  Then you have to get all angry and scrub burned egg off the bottom of your oven.

When it's all said and done, this is what you get.

Ahhh yes!

Here's a nice hearty slice of the quiche, which I served still warm with some hash browns.

Looks yummy, yes?  I absolutely loved making this quiche, and it tasted just as good (if not better?) as cold leftovers.  Delicious!  Hope you enjoyed this recipe, let me know how it goes for you!

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For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.