Jalapeño Cornbread Breakfast Scramble
Cornbread, sausage, and eggs rebuilt from dry goods in one pot.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 131
- protein
- 32 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 12 min
- total time
- 17 min
- water
- 400 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Backpacking
- Basecamp
- Car camping
- Bikepacking
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Cornbread mix | 3/4 cup | the just-add-water kind |
|---|---|---|
| Powdered whole eggs | 6 tbsp | equal to about 6 eggs |
| Powdered whole milk | 2 tbsp | |
| Freeze-dried sausage crumbles | 2 oz | or a shelf-stable summer sausage, diced |
| Powdered cheddar cheese | 1/4 cup | |
| Dried jalapeño flakes | 1 tsp | start low, they bloom in water |
| Dried red bell pepper and onion | 1/4 cup | |
| Dried spinach flakes | 2 tbsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Black pepper | 1/4 tsp | |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Hot sauce | to taste | small squeeze bottle |
Method
- Boil about 200 ml of water. Pour it over the sausage, peppers, onion, and spinach in the pot and let them sit five minutes off heat.
- Stir in the cornbread mix and enough of the remaining water to make a thick batter. It should mound on the spoon, not run.
- Add the oil to the pot and cook the batter over a low flame, stirring and scraping, until it firms up into crumbles. Five to seven minutes.
- Whisk the egg powder, milk powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper into 150 ml of water in a mug until no lumps remain.
- Pour the eggs over the cornbread crumbles. Stir constantly on the lowest heat you can hold until set, then kill the heat and stir in the cheese powder.
- Hot sauce goes on at the table.
The original is a baked casserole built on day-old cornbread, a pound of sausage, and a dozen fresh eggs. None of that travels. What survives the translation is the structure: a starch that soaks up egg, fat from meat and cheese, and enough jalapeño to keep it from tasting like beige powder.
Cooking the cornbread batter into crumbles first is the part worth doing carefully. Dumped in raw, the mix turns the eggs to paste. Cooked out and broken up, it stays as distinct bits with body, which is what the stale cornbread was doing in the oven version. Low heat throughout — powdered eggs go rubbery fast, and cheese powder scorches on a hot pot wall.
Packing
Three bags: dry cornbread mix, the egg and milk powders with the seasonings, and the dried vegetables with the sausage. Cheese powder rides with the eggs. Keep the oil in a dropper bottle.
Variations
- Skip the cornbread step and eat it as a plain scramble if you are short on fuel.
- Bacon bits in place of sausage cut a minute off the rehydrate.
- Instant refried bean powder stirred in at the end stretches it to three people.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/blogs/recipe/jalapeno-cornbread-breakfast-casserole