Another breakfast recipe coming at you today. Yay!! You know how much I LOVE breakfast. Any time of day. Usually involving eggs and some serious #yolkporn. Like this breakfast burger with roasted delicata squash. or my smoked salmon and chive scramble. Or my delicata squash pancakes. Ahhhh yes, eggs how I love you.
So here’s the thing about the autoimmune protocol. It makes me feel great. I know my stomach is being healed while I’m doing it. But…NO EGGS. wahhhhhhhh (insert dramatic crying/sobbing noise here).
Totally not being overdramatic or anything. At all.
Needless to say my breakfasts change completely while I’m on AIP. When transitioning to an autoimmune protocol, it’s really helpful to rework your idea of what breakfast is. Leftovers from dinner last night? Throw them in a pan. Maybe some leftover chicken or pulled pork with roasted veggies. Or have some soup. Even salad! Seems non-conventional, but I definitely don’t miss what sugary cereals do to my stomach and intestines.
Still, I miss eggs. So I’ve got to be really creative and come up with some really delicious breakfasts to distract me from them. The struggle is real. Lucky for YOU, I already posted one of my favorite AIP breakfasts last week: Sunny Sweet Potato & Pancetta Hash. Here’s some other great AIP breakfast ideas from my recipe archives:
Pumpkin Pie Spiced Squash with Coconut Cream
Truffle-Sage Cauliflower Soup with Prosciutto (Leave out the eggs)
Cinnamon Roasted Delicata Squash with Balsamic-Fig Compote
Delicata Squash, Apple & Fig “Stuffing”
I just realized typing all those that I should probably shorten my recipe names. So this one is short and sweet. But the recipe is bursting with flavor! Butternut squash, apples, thyme, BACON…And who doesn’t like breakfast sausage? Sorry vegetarians, no (meat) soup for you.
- 1 tsp coconut oil
- 1 lb ground turkey (or chicken)
- 1 cup small diced butternut squash
- ½ large apple diced (about ¾ cup)
- 2 large slices of bacon
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- leaves from a few sprigs of thyme (about 1 Tbsp)
- 1 tsp salt
- ¼ tsp pepper (optional - AIP omit)
- (optional: 1 Tbsp maple syrup)
- Preheat oven to 375.
- Melt the coconut oil and use it to grease a 9x5 loaf pan.
- Cook the bacon in the microwave or oven until it’s crispy, but not burned. Set it aside until cool enough to handle, then chop into small pieces the size of bacon bits.
- Meanwhile, measure out all the other ingredients in a mixing bowl. Add the bacon, and mix with your hands until the spices are well distributed.
- Pour the mixture into the loaf pan and use your hands to flatten it out, so it’s spread evely throughout the pan.
- Pop the pan in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, until fully cooked through.
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WOW! This looks amazing. I can’t wait to integrate it into my 2nd Whole30. I am a few days in 🙂
Thanks so much Corey! How’s it going so far? I hope you make a bunch of fun recipes like this one to really enjoy it AND feel great too! 🙂
Do you cook the meat and squash first or just mix together and bake?
Hey Gina,
Just mix them all together and bake. If you dice the squash up, it will cook all the way through when it bakes with the meat. Enjoy!
What a great idea! I love to make my own breakfast sausage but don’t do it very often because of the work of cooking it in a skillet. I love that this is baked! Like a breakfast meatloaf with one of my favorite veggies: squash!
Thanks Heather! I love to make my own too, especially if I’m doing something like a whole30 or autoimmune protocol where you really have to watch the ingredients in the sausage you buy at the supermarket. And so true – it’s exactly like a breakfast meatloaf! My family was really skeptical of it too…until they tasted it. That shut them right up as they devoured every bite haha!
Hi there! I also featured this recipe on my healthy fall recipe round up today. Thanks for the great inspiration! http://physicalkitchness.com/healthy-paleo-fall-recipes/
Hey Chrissa,
Thanks so much for including the recipe! I love your site, you have so much great info and great recipes on there too 🙂
Instead of “dicing” the squash, can you just “chop” it? I am so not a cook! I bought pre “chunked” squash. To dice it seems like a lot more work than to just chop it up in the food processor! I think I’m going to try that this morning to see what happens….
Hey Dana,
Yes! You can. You want the squash to be in small, bite sized pieces – however you slice and dice it to get there is fine! I think the food processor might make it too small. You can bake it pre-chopped (how you bought it) first, then when it’s cooling decide if the pieces are too big to be bite-sized. After you bake the squash, it will be soft – so it’s not like you’ll be eating huge chunks of it! Hope that helps 🙂 Let me know how it turns out!
Turns out the chopping wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be! I doubled the recipe because if I’m going to cook I want to make it count! I have a stone that has 4 “mini-loaves” so I used that instead of making one “loaf”. I had to cook it longer but it turned out pretty darn good. I now have breakfast for my husband and myself for the week! I can’t wait to try other “breakfast” recipes! 😀
Great! I do the same thing, I almost always cook in big batches so I can eat multiple times with all the leftovers! Especially with things like this because it’s so versatile, and you could eat it for any meal! So glad you loved it 🙂
Hi,
I received this recipe in a Whole 30 email I subscribe to. It sounded so delicious that I bought the ingredients I didn’t have on hand and made it this evening.
It smells wonderful as its baking; however, here is my question: 20-25 minutes only? For 3# of meat? I pulled it out after 25 minutes and tried a little. The squash was not soft (excepting for what was on top and ‘exposed’. And there was quite a bit of juices coming off the meat. So I cut about an inch off and the interior wasn’t cooked, so back in it went, for another 20 minutes and I just gave it 10 more, so 55+ (cause it’s now sitting in the warm, turned off oven)….
I reread the recipe several times, as well as the comments, and wonder if I missed something?
I can’t wait to have it tomorrow morning for breakfast with some paleo mayo and a side of blueberries.
Hi Judy! So glad you liked the recipe 🙂 The instructions are 20-25 minutes for 1 lb of meat, it will be on the shorter side if you’re using very lean ground turkey, and on the longer side if you’re using turkey with more fat in it, like thigh meat. Make sure your squash are diced into little pieces, about 1/2 inch squares, otherwise you’re right they will be undercooked. Did you use 3 lbs of meat? I’m not sure what 3# means. If you did that, it will definitely take 2-3x longer than the recipe calls for! Let me know. Sounds delicious to serve it with paleo mayo and blueberries!
Thanks Dana!
I copied the recipe over from email-not this site. My email called for 2 lbs(aka #s) of ground beef and one of turkey.
So, yes, I was baking 3 lbs of meat. I think the bacon may be a bit ‘lost’, however, the flavor is delicious and I can’t wait to try it as above with only 1 lb of meat!
It did pair well with the mayo and blueberries!
Namaste,
Judy
Hi Judy,
What email did this come from? That’s not my original recipe…no wonder it was so undercooked! 3 lbs of meat would definitely take closer to at least 45 minutes, especially in a loaf pan. Let me know, thanks 🙂 I want to make sure nobody else has the same baking time issue as you!
This is AMAZING!!! I made them into patties, and they came out awesome! Thank you so much!
Yay! So glad you liked them 🙂 Great idea making them into patties!
I was just coming on to ask if they could be made into patties as I’m hunting for a new patties recipe. Did you just mix ingredients as listed and then fry instead of baking? Thanks! 🙂
Hi Alanna,
Yes, you can definitely make them into sausage patties and fry them in a pan instead of baking 🙂 Hope you enjoy them!
Dana
I’m a single mom of three so I prefer to batch cook on the weekends. Can this be made and frozen in single servings? I’m doing the chicken soup for breakfast but it would be nice to throw in some yummy sausage on days I feel like I need a bit more, but I’m afraid I won’t finish it before it spoils in the fridge.
Hi Tanya,
Definitely! I would double the batch, cook them in individual servings (like patties), and then you can freeze them and reheat whenever you’re ready to eat. 🙂 Enjoy!