Turkey Bacon Wrapped Ricotta Egg Breakfast Muffins

This recipe was a little bit and a little bit of that...

One of my biggest pet peeves is wasting food. I HATE  (1) when I buy too much of an ingredient and it goes bad before I use it in another recipe or (2) when I make too much of a meal and I have too much left overs we get sick of it and the rest goes to waste.

Welp, ricotta cheese has been that ingredient for me in the past, but NOT this week. This week I was determined (or it was a fluke) to use the rest of the cheese before it went “belly up”. I had left over ricotta spinach mixture from the lasagnas I made last week, and about 1/2 a contained of ricotta sitting in my fridge. Ricotta is one of those ingredients that I am not super familiar with, and therefore it can be challenging for me to use it in new and creative ways.

In the past I have incorporated it into homemade pizzas, but you can only put so much ricotta on a pizza before it becomes too much. Therefore, I have been trying to think of different ways to use the ricotta spinach mixture and the left over ricotta into NEW recipes.

I recently read about incorporating ricotta with eggs and omelets so I decided to try ricotta breakfast muffins by yours truly. This recipe has three out of my three favorite components, they’re easy to make, they’re low calorie-high protein breakfast great for on-the-go mornings (to improve healthiness I would scrap the turkey bacon), AND they keep well. If you whip up a batch of these on Sunday night you will have a grab-and-go breakfast already ready for the WHOLE WEEK! Of course I think it’s a four out of four forks recipe, so I would be happy to hear any comments or suggestions! ENJOY!

Turkey Bacon Wrapped Ricotta Egg Breakfast Muffins

Serves: 12 people (2 small muffins from a 3x4 muffin tin, or 1 large muffin from a 2x3 muffin tin)

Total time: 30-4o min

 

1/2 chopped onion

1 package of turkey bacon (12 slices)

2-3 cups fresh chopped spinach

2 cups part skim ricotta cheese

1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese  

 1 seeded and chopped jalapeno
12 eggs
*2 tablespoons fresh chopped basil
(or 1/2 tablespoon dried basil) [optional]
*1 tablespoon dried oregano [optional]

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix spinach, onion, ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, jalepeno, basil and oregano together in a medium bowl.
3. Beat together eggs together in a large bowl.
4. Combine eggs and spinach mixture together, until you have a smooth, homogenous liquid.
5. Spray or coat the muffin tins with oil *I didn't spray mine well enough and had a hard time getting them out, don't skip this step. Eggs/milk/cheese are extra sticky.
6. Wrap the turkey bacon on around the inside of each muffin tin. Line each cup with 1 piece of turkey bacon. *Note, if you have larger muffin tins, you could wrap them with two pieces (as seen in pictures).
7. Using a ladle fill each muffin tin 3/4 way full.
8. Bake the muffins for 8-10 minutes (3x4 muffin tin) IF you're using the large muffin tin (3x2) bake for 10-12 minutes. Carefully watch, dried egg muffins are not as tasty!

Nutritional Info:
Serving Size (2 small muffins or 1 large)
Calories: 154, Total Fat 8.8g, Sodium 271, Carbs 3.6g, and Protein 14.4g