Paleo Egg Muffins with Ham and Bacon

Egg Muffins are awesome for breakfast! If you are focused on Keto, Paleo, Grain-free, Clean or Low Carb eating, you definitely want to try making these.  They can be made pretty cheaply with a variety of ingredients. Left over protein or veggies from yesterday’s dinner or lunch are perfect for egg muffins. I love using spinach, mozzarella, herbs, mushrooms, onion, broccoli, low sodium sliced turkey, bacon, chicken breast and turkey sausage. My family loves them. Whip up your own recipes and make them to fit your taste. Alter the calories by using lean meat, egg whites and lots of veggies.  Add fresh herbs, dried herbs/spices, salt, etc for more flavor. (Full recipe at the end of this post)

Calories, Protein and Carbs: The serving size is one muffin. The way we’ve made this recipe, you get approx. 144 calories/11 grams of protein for the bacon cups and 120 calories/13 grams of protein for the ham cups. Carbs will depend on your ingredients.  This recipe has about a gram of carbs per serving…depending on how much onion is in the serving. (Fat: one whole egg has 4.9 grams of fat.)

We were inspired by Oh Snap Let’s Eat‘s recipe for Baked Ham in Egg Cups. We started by trying out these Reynold’s baking cups.  The thought was that it may have been easier to remove than baking right in the pan, which we did in the past.  The eggs really stick to the sides of the pan and it is messy, so we thought this might be a great solution. You can use a non stick spray, olive oil or coconut oil as well.

The aluminum cups worked OK…but I think I’ll keep looking for a better solution.  The muffins stuck to the inner paper liner, so it was only a little bit better.  However, the foil helped the mixture to cook very well, especially the bacon.  That was a plus.  If you have silicone baking cups, I’m pretty sure they would work very well. I’m going to try porcelain ramekins next.

For the egg mixture, we used; One egg per cup = 12 eggs.  Green onion = 2 tablespoons chopped.  1 tablespoon of oregano. Salt and pepper to taste.  Meat: 3 slices of bacon and 9 slices of ham.  That’s all…very simple.

The first step is to mix your eggs with the veggies, herbs, spices, cheese and other ingredients you choose.  It’s like whipping up a large batch of scrambled eggs.  Next, turn on your oven and set it to 400 degrees. Side Note: You can also drop whole eggs into the cups if you prefer.

Moving on, we added the ham and bacon into the muffin tins.

Then, we used a 3/4 cup measuring cup to ladle in the egg mix into the cups.  We didn’t put a full 3/4 cup in each one…we just used it as a guide.  Don’t full the cups to the top because the mix will rise while it cooks.  Add too much and could be scraping egg out of your oven for a few days.

This is what the egg muffins looked like before cooking.  Cook for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

Here is what they looked like fresh out of the oven.  Issue: We had to cook them a bit longer than we did when we used only ham because the bacon was so thick.  So, I would recommend doing either sandwich meat or bacon, not both at the same time, to avoid this.  You could of course remove the ham muffins and keep cooking the bacon ones.  Perhaps I should have done that…but I’m scatter brained when I cook in the morning. The hunger takes over.  😀  Also, you’ll need to cut into one of the muffins to make sure that the egg has cooked through. If you add a lot of wet ingredients like tomato or crab meat, it could take longer to cook.

Freeze and Eat: Egg muffins can be frozen for 3-4 weeks (depending on the ingredients), so you can make a couple days worth to heat and go to save time.  Let them cool down before prepping them to be frozen.  Wrap them individually with plastic wrap and then put them in a freezer bag.  Microwave to reheat or let them thaw overnight in the fridge and re-warm in the oven in the morning. (Of course you need to remove the plastic warp before reheating.)