Ground Beef & Butternut Squash Breakfast Skillet
A couple of weeks ago, George Bryant, aka The Civilized Caveman, posted this delicious, mouth watering picture on his Instagram account.
I immediately wanted to eat this so bad, I had to do something about it right then and there. There was no time to wait for the recipe to be posted!
Besides, I’m so lousy at following recipes that it wouldn’t have served much purpose to wait that long.
And chances are, I wouldn’t have had all the necessary ingredients on hand, anyway, so I would’ve had to make a few substitutions.
I started to mentally retrace the contents of my fridge.
Conveniently, I had half a cooked butternut squash in there, as well as a whole one pound container of spinach that was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to get used up.
And luckily enough, I had taken a package of ground beef out of the freezer a couple of days prior also.
I figured I was in pretty good shape to come up with a dish that was similar enough to what my brain had seen to calm my craving down AND have it ready right on time for dinner, too.
Hey, who says you absolutely have to have Breakfast Skillets for breakfast?
The beauty of this dish, you see, apart from being incredibly tasty and nutritious, is that it is highly adaptable.
Don’t have butternut squash? No biggie! You could very well use sweet potatoes or acorn squash, or pumpkin or even spaghetti squash. Mashed rutabaga would also be a wonderful addition to this tasty skillet.
No spinach on hand? Sauteed collards or kale, or Swiss chards would very well do the trick.
And if ground beef isn’t your thing, why not sub ground turkey, or chunks of cooked chicken, or ground lamb… even. Oh yes! Lamb! Now THAT would work fantastically well in this.
Or sausage, why not?
Another great thing about this dish is that it reheats fairly well. So even if you’re making it only for yourself, you can very well enjoy one serving fresh out of the oven and put the other 2 in the fridge.
This way, you have breakfast taken care of for the next 2 mornings.
A few minutes in the microwave is all is takes, and voilà, breakfast is served!
Plus, the egg doesn’t even get all rubbery. WIN!
I think all that’s missing is a couple of slices of bacon on the side…
Or crumbled and sprinkled all over the top.
Oooooh yeah! Wouldn’t you agree?
Ground Beef & Butternut Squash Breakfast Skillet
Ingredients
- 1-2 tbsp lard
- 1 lb grassfed ground beef
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 2 celery stalks, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- ½ tsp Himalayan or fine sea salt
- ¼ tsp ground white pepper
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- ½ tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp garam masala
- ½ large butternut squash, cooked
- 1 lb spinach, chopped
- 3 pastured eggs
- ½ avocado, peeled and sliced
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F
- Divide the spinach into 2 or 3 batches and cook them in the microwave for about a minute, until wilted. Allow the cooked spinach to cool until it can be safely handled and press them with your hands to squeeze out as much liquid as you possibly can. Reserve.
- While the spinach is cooling, scoop the flesh out of the butternut squash and set that aside.
- Melt the lard in a heavy skillet (cast iron preferred) set over medium high heat. When the lard is nice and hot, add onion, celery, garlic and salt and cook until the veggies are fragrant and softened, about 2-3 minutes.
- Add ground beef, white pepper, cumin, coriander and garam masala and continue cooking until the beef completely brown.
- Add squash meat and drained spinach and mix lightly, just to distribute the ingredients somewhat evenly.
- Create 3 dimples in the mixture and crack an egg into each dimple. Sprinkle the eggs with a little bit of salt and pepper.
- Place in the oven to bake for 12-15 minutes, until the eggs are set.
- Garnish with the sliced avocados and serve immediately.
Nutrition
If you’ve tried this recipe, please take a minute to rate the recipe and let me know how things went for you in the comments below. It’s always such a pleasure to hear from you!
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27 Comments on “Ground Beef & Butternut Squash Breakfast Skillet”
Yum what a perfect weekend breakfast! (but yes I think I would have mine with bacon. Great combination of protein, good fats and I love the veggie kick 🙂
So I still cant eat beef for breakfast, but I think this would be an awesome dinner. I LOVE butternut squash.
This would be a great place to start if you’re having a hard time eating meat for breakfast. I used to be the same… to me, breakfast had to be somewhat sweet and fairly loaded in carbs. Now, a breakfast without meat feels kind of strange! And I basically started introducing meat through dishes such as this one. Give it a try someday, you might be surprised!
Yum! That looks beautiful! My mouth is watering and I’ve only just eaten 🙂
Awww, thanks for that! 🙂
Breakfast skillets are one of my favorites! And I agree, you can use whatever protein/veggies you have and it will always come out good 🙂
Seriously! They’re the best kind of breakfast, if you ask me. Move aside pancakes and cereal, breakfast skillets are here! 😀
Minus the celery, this sounds wonderful, for any meal.
Why minus the celery, if I may ask? Do you not care for it, Susan?
I generally have a strong dislike of celery, which is a life-long thing. I will use it for some things where it’s critical to the flavor (but doesn’t dominate). If it is critical for this recipe, I would put it in.
Not critical at all, Susan. Feel free to leave it out if you don’t care for it! 🙂
Great power-breakfast! I just need to get my hands on some tasty butternut squash…
Hot and you can cook? Excellent combination! Looking forward to trying this – though never been a big fan of floppy spinach, we’ll see what happens!
HAHA! Thank you so much, Andre! 😀 If you’re not a fan of spinach, maybe try using Kale or Collards instead. They’re not quite as “floppy” and have TONS of flavor to them! 🙂
Yah you know what? NOT BAD AT ALL! The spinach flavour was very under emphasized, and the masala was really a nice finish to this dish. Growing up with slippery bok choy ruined the texture of most leafy cooked dishes, but this one was nice – though the ‘dimple’ for the egg could have been more of a crater, so the egg could cook faster. I was scared to burn the rest while the eggs cooked. A nice change from another Quebecois fan!
Haha! Happy to hear you liked it after all, even with the addition of spinach. So you’re Québécois, too, eh? Where from?
Gatineau (so …just barely Quebec…kind of cheating if you really think about it)
HAHA forgot to ask “And you?” How rude of me! Feel free to email me too if you’d rather 🙂
HAHA! Not at all, Andre! I’m located in the Laurentians! And hey, Gatineau IS officially in Québec! 😀
Had to google map it – what a beautiful area to live! Lucky you! I almost never get that deep into Quebec, but I am beginning to think perhaps I should!
Sonia, is lard heart healthy?
I was googling around and came across your page for a combo of ground turkey and butternut squash as that was what I had in the fridge – I had previously tried Civilized Caveman’s recipe and LOVED it, so this was perfect! Thanks!
Glad you liked, Anna, thanks a bunch for taking the time to tell me that much!
And glad Google led you to my site, too! Thanks for dropping by and don’t be a stranger. There are plenty more delicious recipes where that one came from! 😀
It’s Turkish eggs meets chilli beef. Now you’re talking!
This looks amazing! I cannot wait to try it! Just wondering if I need to bake the spaghetti squash before I bake it with all the other ingredients?
Yaay! A new healthy recipe site! This breakfast looks right up my alley. I’m going to buy the ingredients tomorrow when I go shopping for the week.
Awesome! Make sure you let me know how it turned out, Arlene. I’ve no doubt that you will love it!