I live a 15-minute walk from “The Big House,” aka the University of Michigan’s football stadium. I’ve been to one game — hated it! But I’m here for the football food. What a beautiful cuisine. Cousin Annmarie’s seven-layer dip. A garage fridge full of the most random beer assortment you’ve ever seen. Buffalo everything.
Before home games, friends n’such gather at our house to tailgate in our backyard, while the wind shakes orange leaves onto our heads and White Claw planes fly overhead. For the noon games, we always serve egg patty breakfast sandwiches. People show up as early as 8 a.m., so we need to be ready, and these are a cinch to make ahead.
They also seem to blow people’s minds. Why? Because they walk into our shabby 1990’s kitchen, unwrap a warm sandwich from its foil wrapper, take a bite, and discover a creamy-smooth egg patty you thought could only come from the most processed of processing factories. “McDonald’s? Jimmy Dean? Who made this?” they ask. “Bill,” I say, referring to the tall man I’ll live with forever, who happens to be a great cook.
We set out an array of ketchup, doctored-up mayo, pickles, bacon, quick pickled red onions, and hot sauces so people can customize. There’s usually a tray of hashbrown patties as a vegetable side (ha). Carafes of coffee. Bloody Mary materials. And we always make too many sandwiches, because some visitors will stash them in their coat pockets to sneak into the game, and I like to freeze them for later.
Bill tweaks a Bon Appétit recipe by the brilliant Zaynab Issa, but there’s a great one in Cook’s Illustrated — behind a paywall that’s worth every penny — based on the famous sandwiches at Joanna Chang’s Flour Bakery in D.C.
Basically, it’s almost like you’re making a crust-less quiche. Eggs and cream, plus your seasonings of choice, baked in the oven until they’re just set and a little jiggly. (The high fat in the cream helps create that custard-like texture.) Then you have a giant egg patty to play with. For sandwiches, we slice it into 12 palm-sized squares; for breakfast tacos, sliced into tortilla-long rectangles. I have a friend who makes the eggs as a meal prep, storing them in the fridge and microwaving a few each morning.
We also served these for Christmas day brunch, when a ton of family came over. They were a hit! Some little kids were freaked out by the eggs, since they’d only had scrambled before, and a smooth yellow egg patty is sort of cartoonish. But we won them over, eventually, with the help of ketchup.
Giant Egg Patty
Butter (for greasing the pan)
12 large eggs
1 jalapeño, finely chopped (optional, if you’re in the Midwest lol)
½ cup heavy cream
Salt and black pepper
8-12 squishy buns (depending on the number of guests)
8-12 slices of American cheese
Optional add-ons:
1 lb. cooked bacon
8-12 hashbrown patties (like the frozen ones at Trader Joe’s), heated up
Spicy mayo (I like to do 1 cup of mayonnaise: 3 tablespoons of Calabrian chile paste)
Quick-pickled red onions (sliced red onion, in a glass jar, covered with white or rice wine vinegar, made at least 20 minutes ahead)
Preheat your oven to 350°. Grease a 13×9″ baking dish with butter. Line the dish with parchment paper so that there’s an overhang on each side for pulling the eggs out later. Then grease the parchment with butter, too. In a big mixing bowl or blender, whisk all the eggs, jalapeño (if using), heavy cream, and remaining 1½ tsp. Kosher salt and a few cranks of pepper. Pour the egg mixture into the baking dish and bake for 20-25 minutes, until set and the center doesn’t look wet. Remove the baking dish from the oven, but keep the oven on. Let the eggs cool for 10 minutes or so, then slice into 8-12 patties, depending on your bun size.
Add the egg patties to your buns with cheese and assemble them on a sheet tray. Then bake just the egg + cheese sandwiches for 8-12 minutes to melt the cheese and rewarm the eggs.
If you make optional add-ons, let guests add their own bacon, hashbrown patties, pickled onions, and spicy mayo to their sandwiches.
How to pull off the make-ahead spread:
Make the eggs a day ahead and after they’ve cooled, cover the baking dish and stick it in the fridge.
Assembly: Take the eggs out of the fridge, slice them into sandwich patties based on the size of your buns, then add them to the buns with a slice of cheese.
Rewarm: Around 20 minutes before people come over, put the sandwiches on a sheet tray in the oven at “keep warm” or anywhere from 150-180°. Before serving, unwrap a sandwich to test the egg temp. You might need to let them heat up a few minutes longer (but if they’re in the oven too long, at too high a heat, they’ll begin to dry out).
Alex Beggs is a writer and copywriter who lives with her partner in Michigan. Her articles have appeared in Bon Appetit, Elle Decor, and The New York Times. She has also written for Cup of Jo about her dad’s meatloaf, cold cake, and (very) bad hair days.
P.S. 10 dinners with an egg on top and the best recipes for brunch with kids.
(Photos by Alex Beggs.)
