Stuffed Poblano Breakfast Bake

When you’re limiting your diet to lean proteins like chicken, turkey, and seafood—trying to think of new meals centered around those three things can get tough. There’s only so much you can do to chicken before you start to get burned out and bored. Seafood can get expensive, so that’s a once-in-a-blue-moon type dinner. And breakfast, well…breakfast is hard.

Bacon and sausage are out of the picture. Too much salt, too much fat. What the heck can you do to pump up the protein for your first, and arguably most important, meal of the day?

That’s the question I’ve been seeking to answer these last few weeks. You’ve journeyed with me though a veggie-packed breakfast sandwich and a ground turkey breakfast scramble. Now, I’ve been integrating more vegan and vegetarian meals in my prep work. I like to be adventurous and dabble in that world, but I don’t stay for very long.

Enter: a completely vegetarian breakfast.

Spicy poblanos. Beans. Potatoes.

All delicious things you don’t really think fit the breakfast stereotype, but hear me out. Peppers like poblanos are not only a fantastic thing to stuff, but also really good to start your day going. They’ll definitely wake you up, that’s for sure.

Inspiration for this dish came along while perusing the pepper section at the market. Poblanos have long been a favorite of mine, and I knew I could breakfast-ify them. Stuffing them with pan roasted potatoes and more peppers (red bell, to be exact) and then laying them on a bed of enchilada-sauce covered beans made for an unusual, albeit insanely good, breakfast.

You might notice one failure, though: the eggs. I could not get those suckers to stay inside their poblano-potato homes. Only one fit snugly on top, the rest slipped out and away from my grasp. Darn. Makes for weird pictures—but even through that failure, the dish still came out exactly how I imagined it.

There’s no love lost here without having a meat. I didn’t miss it one bit! The breakfast bake is packed full of flavor from all angles. And I think the Brits are onto something; beans with breakfast is awe-inspiring. Color me impressed.

Expect more vegan/vegetarian dishes from me in the future. It’s fun to work through a road block of having no meat. It’s a challenge, and I love a good challenge. I almost bought cashew cheese yesterday from a local market, but decided I wasn’t quite there yet. Soon, though. Soon.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Preheat oven to broil. Place poblanos on a baking sheet and broil until skin is blistered, about 3-4 minutes. Remove and let cool. Halve poblanos and remove seeds. Set oven to 400 degrees. Meanwhile, in a large cast-iron skillet, heat oil over medium high heat. Add onion and pepper and saute until tender, about 3 minutes.

Add garlic, cumin, salt, pepper, cayenne, and chipotle chili powder. Stir and cook for another 1-2 minutes. Add potatoes and cook until cripsy, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes.

Pour potato mixture into a bowl and add spinach, stirring until wilted.

Pour beans and enchilada sauce into used skillet and warm over medium high heat for about 2 minutes.

Spoon potato mixture into halved poblanos. Place on top of beans. Crack eggs on top of each poblano carefully (if they slide out, oh well!). Place skillet into oven and cook for about 10 minutes or until eggs are firm/the way you like them.