Hashbrown Breakfast Casserole

This was a nice recipe for the Crock Pot. I had a few minor complaints on it, some easy to fix, and some a littler harder. I'll get to those at the end. This easy recipe calls for 6-7 hours to cook so in my opinion, it's not really easy to use for breakfast unless you want to start it at 2 in the morning. :) Recipe as follows:

1 20 oz bag refrigerated hashbrowns

1 cup diced onion

1 lb bacon

1 red bell pepper, diced

10 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup shredded cheese, cheddar or monterey jack would be fine but I used a four cheese blend.

Start by cooking your onion and bacon. For me, this took quite a while to get the bacon to cook, so I would put the bacon in first and let it cook for awhile, then add the onion. After the bacon is completely cooked, drain off excess oil. Add red bell pepper and cook for a few minutes more. Layer 1/3 of the hashbrowns in the bottom of your Crock Pot (the 4-qt size works really well for this.), then layer 1/2 of bacon mix. Layer another 1/3 of hashbrowns and the remaining 1/2 bacon mix. Cover the casserole with the rest of the hashbrowns. In a large bowl, whisk eggs and milk together, then pour over hashbrown/bacon layers. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-7 hours. Before serving, top with cheese.

OK - so what did I think? I loved the casserole! My complaints were 1, that the prep time seemed to take a long time; dicing the onion, bell pepper and bacon took awhile and then the bacon took awhile to cook, probably just because I put them in at the same time as the onions. 2, when I actually ate the casserole, it really needed salt. This was easy but it would have been nice if the salt had already been in the casserole. 3, the hashbrowns turned out just a little on the mushy side. I would have liked them to be a little more solid and crunchy. Overall though I really liked this recipe! It was very tasty and it was easy to portion up to take with me for breakfast for the rest of the week. The original recipe called for sausage, but since I don't really like most sausage I substituted the bacon. Enjoy!