Why You Should Always Use Whole Eggs When Making Slow Cooker Breakfast Casserole

Making a breakfast casserole in a slow cooker is an easy way to turn ingredients like bacon or sausage, cheese, eggs, and sometimes hash browns into a complete meal. Using your slow cooker, or cooking in the oven at a lower temperature, gives the breakfast casserole time to fully cook, allows all of the flavors to meld, and makes for an easy cleanup. But if you typically prefer egg whites over whole eggs in your breakfast, it's not the best ingredient for this slow-cooked casserole.

Egg whites are mostly water and therefore won't hold up to the long cooking time; you won't get the fluffy consistency needed to meld with the other ingredients. If you don't want to use all whole eggs, you could combine whole eggs with a couple of egg whites, just keep in mind that the casserole might not result in the same amount of servings. You can also make a breakfast casserole with only egg whites, but you'll need to mix it with an ingredient like Greek yogurt to obtain creaminess and it will require a reduced cooking time.

How many whole eggs you need for a casserole depends on the recipe, but you'll likely need quite a few. For example, here at Tasting Table we have a recipe for a slow cooker breakfast casserole that uses a dozen eggs for eight servings. Some other recipes might only use eight to 10 eggs, but you won't get away with using much less. If you want to combine egg whites and whole eggs, you'll need two egg whites for every whole egg replaced. But we don't recommend swapping too many of the eggs in the recipe for the whites for those reasons we explained earlier. 

To make your next slow cooker breakfast casserole even creamier and fluffier, mix it with dairy like milk. Some recipes for breakfast casserole will call for cream or milk to obtain a casserole-like consistency that will rise in the slow cooker. If you don't want to use milk, try cottage cheese, cream cheese, ricotta, or a dairy alternative made with almonds or oats instead for your slow cooker breakfast casserole.