Breakfast Egg Biscuit featuring Jarlsberg

Dec 30, 2019 · 32 Comments

This post has been sponsored by Jarlsberg® Cheese. All opinions expressed are my own.

The bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit is perhaps my single favorite breakfast. Unabashedly comfort food, this recipe combines a fluffy no corners cut biscuit, sandwiching a combination of fried eggs, crisped bacon, caramelized onions, and melted cheese, with layers of buttery goodness at every level.

Simple to prepare, and blissfully satisfying, this sandwich can brighten any morning.

Naturally, we’re putting together today’s recipe with a little help from our dear friends over at Jarlsberg® Cheese, but more on them in just a moment, without further delay, let’s get to it.

Building a Better Biscuit

1) Grated Frozen Butter. Throw everything you’ve ever learned about melted or ‘malleable’ room temperature butter out the window when it comes to biscuits. For truly ‘soft’ and ‘fluffy’ biscuits, you want frozen butter, and then you want to grate that butter into the batter. Grating the butter ensures small, evenly sized ‘chunks’ of butter, which then spread uniformly throughout the dough, which has the nice side-effect of preventing you from having to handle ice cold butter.

2) Why Not Buttermilk? Buttermilk adds two things to a recipe – acid and ‘sourness.’ Acid acts as a tenderizer during cooking, which is why buttermilk is such a popular ingredient in things like pancakes, where a moist, spongy interior is very desirable. That said, it should come as no surprise that buttermilk biscuits tend to be very moist and ‘spongy’ on the inside, which is why they are so beloved as dinner biscuits, or as the base for ‘biscuits and gravy.’ However, for larger, ‘roll like’ biscuits, while you still want a ‘pull apart’ soft biscuit, the acid from buttermilk would actually make these too ‘sponge-like,’ resulting in a biscuit that would simply fall apart rather than holding the filling.

3) Don’t Overwork It. This goes without saying, but please do not overwork your dough. This will ‘press’ all of the air out of the dough, which will result in hard or even ‘rubbery’ biscuits. Work the dough just enough to form a ball to cut into biscuits, and then leave it alone.

Filling a Better Biscuit

1) Cilantro, not Parsley. Cilantro is for heavy recipes, while parsley is for lighter, ‘fresher’ dishes and for garnish. Today’s recipe features a trio of ‘fatty’ or ‘heavy’ ingredients, particularly crisped bacon, fried eggs, and melted cheese, in addition to spicy jalapeno. Parsley would simply be ‘overwhelmed’ by this combination, and fade into the background such that it would add nothing to the recipe. Thus, we use cilantro. In addition, cilantro is more ‘herbal’ and ‘earthy’ than its lighter counterpart, which in my opinion melds with the overall composition of the recipe much more nicely.

2) Grape Tomatoes are a Must. Ounce for ounce, grape tomatoes contain less water than cherry or ‘standard’ size tomatoes. As such, an equal amount of cherry or standard tomatoes would add more water to the recipe, and risk turning the biscuit into a soggy mess. Furthermore, cherry tomatoes tend to be sweeter, and so would change the flavor profile ever so slightly. Thus, if you don’t have grape tomatoes on hand, reduce the total amount of tomato you use by about a fifth to avoid an overly watery sandwich.

3) The Cheese. For today’s recipe, you want a mild cheese, a cheese that will allow the caramelized onions and bacon to really shine through. However, you also want a cheese will that melt hard in order to help bind the sandwich together, rather than oozing all over the place. To fill this bill, I’m using Jarlsberg, which is a mild flavored, semi-soft cheese. This makes it absolutely ideal for sandwiches, both warm and cold. It’s also simply a great ‘all purpose’ cheese to keep on hand, since it goes great on cheese boards, and can be used in more ‘complex’ recipes such as pasta bakes and burgers. For more info, or to order some cheese for yourself, check out Jarlsberg over at www.jarlsberg.com.

More from my Collaboration with Jarslberg

1) Marinated Cheeseboard. This is a great antipasto spread for the holiday season, combining marinated cheese, roasted almonds, assorted olives, and shrimp prepared with fresh lemon juice, capers, red pepper, and olive oil.

2) Bacon and Onion Burger. Honestly, this is probably my favorite burger recipe ever, combining bacon, caramelized onions, and lots of melted cheese. Seriously, you need to try this.

3) Lasagna Rollups. A delightful pasta recipe the entire family will adore. This recipe features hardy lasagna noodles wrapped around a ricotta filling with a tomato and mushroom sauce, topped with melted Jarlsberg.