Quiche! With hash brown crust!

On Pintrest, I found a recipe for a quiche with a hash brown crust.  There are a ton of them.  The one I referred to was a Martha recipe.  The crust is basically a bag of frozen hash browns thawed and drained well, a couple tablespoons of butter melted, an egg, and some salt and pepper mixed together.  You press it into your pan and bake it for about 15-20 minutes.  You don't need to weigh it down like you do a traditional pie crust.  Win-win!  Easy-peasy!  Faster, in fact, and less messy than a regular pie crust.  

Pumpkin waffle mix, optional.

I used a traditional quiche pan instead of the springform pan Martha wants you to use.  I also used 365 Brand hash browns from Whole Foods, so I'm not sure if that made a difference.  My crust didn't quite come up to the top of the pan.  No biggie.  I have grated swiss, thawed and squeezed frozen spinach, and this amazing Nieman Ranch uncured ham steak (also from Whole Foods) that I couldn't stop eating.  I was hungry and it was just... so... tasty.

A traditional quiche batter is one large egg to one half cup of dairy.  Traditionally, it's heavy cream.  Oof.  I can't do it.  I can't help but equate that to a giant serving of whipped cream.  Double oof.  Don't get me wrong, I loooove whipped cream, but I don't want to eat a pint of it.  I use whole milk.  It makes a lighter quiche and I don't miss the fat, personally.  You could use anything from skim (but why?!) to heavy cream.  A nice touch is to whiz up your batter with a stick blender (or real blender).  It smooths out the eggs and gives it a nice texture.  But don't go crazy, you just want to combine those things.  For this recipe I used four eggs and two cups of whole milk.  I added a stray egg white to this since I needed a yolk for the egg wash for my cheddar dill bread that I'm also making (tune in tomorrow!).  If you end up with a bit of extra batter, never fear!  I added it, a little cheddar, and a little dill to a small baking dish.  Et, voila!

Dinner is served!

In my crappy apartment oven, this baked for about 40 minutes.  Your (nicer) oven time and temp may vary.  Another point worth mentioning, if you make a cheese quiche, use a little less cheese than you might think.  If you really load it up, it gets hard to cut when it's done as copious amounts of cheese make it really soft.

The verdict?  Delicious!

Now, get cookin'!