French tarragon transforms this Mushroom Tarragon Strata into an elegant breakfast dish with rustic bread, leafy kale, bacon and parmesan.
Breakfast is Served
What do I like most about a breakfast strata? Breakfast strata can be made with whatever you have in your fridge. Whether you want to use up a few vegetable odds and ends, maybe some leftover ham or that last piece of cheese. These are all perfect ingredients to pair with day old French bread to make a delicious strata.
Whenever I have leftover French bread, you know I’m going to turn it into some kind of strata….and with the Covid baking frenzy, we’ve made our fair share of bread around here. Mushroom Tarragon Strata starts with crusty old French bread torn into large cubes. They don’t have to be perfect, in fact, I like a little bit of size difference for added texture.
Next, I like to render bacon lardons and use the leftover bacon fat a.k.a grease to sauté my sliced mushrooms, onions, garlic and kale. These ingredients need just a quick sauté before they are combined with the other strata ingredients. Once they are lightly cooked and cooled, they get folded into the egg mixture with the addition of grated parmesan cheese and French tarragon. Toss together with the torn bread cubes and place in a prepared baking dish. At this point, you could refrigerate for use the next morning or bake until egg is firm and bread is golden brown.
Mushroom Tarragon Strata
Ingredients
- 4 strips thick cut bacon cut into lardons
- 1/4 yellow onion halved, then sliced thinly
- 1 mounded cup mushrooms sliced
- 2 cloves garlic about 1 Tbsp. minced
- 1 cup kale torn
- 8 large eggs
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 1 pinch salt and pepper
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1 tbsp. French tarragon chopped
Instructions
- Butter an oven safe casserole dish. I like using a 9×9 square dish.
- Place bacon lardons in a medium pan and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until fat is rendered and bacon in cooked through. Remove bacon and set aside, leaving fat in the pan.
- Sauté the onion, mushrooms and garlic in the bacon fat until just softened about 3 minutes.
- Add kale to the pan and stir to combine. This remaining heat from the pan with soften the kale just enough. Add bacon back to pan, then remove pan from heat and let cool.
- In a large bowl, whisk eggs, cream and a pinch of salt and pepper.
- Combine bread cubes, sautéed vegetables, egg mixture, parmesan cheese and tarragon.
- Place evenly into prepared baking dish and bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes or until eggs are firm and bread is toasty.
