Cheesy Potato Breakfast Casserole - Perfect Brunch Recipe! (2024)

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Jarlsberg. All opinions are 100% mine.

This potato breakfast casserole has eggs, turkey sausage, grated apples, sage and lots of creamy Jarlsberg cheese. Makes the perfect brunch recipe!

With Mother’s Day around the corner, this breakfast potato casserole recipe really comes full circle for me.

Jarlsberg is a cheese I grew up with. It’s familiar yellow, red and blue rind brings me straight back to being a kid when mom would slice up a Granny Smith apple and cut us a few pieces of cheese to go with it as an afternoon snack.

To this day, it’s one of my favorite cheese choices when I’m looking for a known crowd pleaser. Its buttery texture and mild but slightly nutty flavor makes it perfect for a party cheese board.

Today, however, I wanted to showcase a way tocook with it drawing on those childhood snack memories.

What was born out of that concept is this potato breakfast casserole filled with eggs, turkey sausage, grated Granny Smith apples and of course, lots and lots of melted golden Jarlsberg not only on top but also throughout.

It’s a breakfast casserole perfect for Mother’s Day brunch or any hearty weekend breakfast when you want something a little more special than a stack of pancakes or some waffles.

How To Make This Easy Breakfast Potato Casserole

Like a typical breakfast casserole, this one has two parts:

• the egg mixture
• the filling

The filling consists of the following ingredients:

• diced Russet potatoes
• grated Granny Smith apple
• cooked turkey sausage
• fresh sage

The egg mixture consists of the following ingredients:

• 8 large eggs
• milk (any kind will do, I used 2% milk)
• 1/2 the grated Jarlsberg for the recipe

The filling is layered into the bottom of a greased baking dish and then the whisked egg mixture is poured on top.

The last step is scattering the remaining grated cheese all over the top so it bakes to a nice golden brown with crispy cheesy edges.

The casserole is baked for about an hour until the eggs are set in the middle (the easiest way to make sure of this is to jiggle the dish, if nothing shakes loosely in the middle, it’s baked through) and then finished under the broiler for 1-2 minutes for that nice golden brown appearance.

The flavors are spot on for breakfast but a little more sophisticated than traditional hash browns and bacon if you know what I mean.

I chose to dice the potatoes in this recipe rather than grate them because I prefer the texture and chew to a diced potato than a grated hash brown type potato in a recipe like this.

If I was making a hash and the potatoes could get nice and crispy in a skillet, I’d grate them but when they’re cooked with an egg mixture in a deep baking dish like this, they’d just become a soggy potato shred.

The turkey sausage brings that quintessential breakfast sausage flavor in a slightly healthier way than traditional pork sausage and pairs really well with the fresh sage and apples.

There’s a bit of a fall like vibe to this recipe but it’s such a delicious combination, it’s definitely all season appropriate.

If you like that breakfast apple flavor combination try these homemade chicken sausage patties which include grated apples and onion. They’re a wonderful savory breakfast option too!

Choosing 2% milk (instead of whole) and turkey sausage was no accident on my part either. It was strategic to leave more room for indulgence with lots of buttery melted Jarlsberg throughout.

You’d likely be content with the amount of cheese just in the egg mixture alone. And, if you’re looking to keep things on the less indulgent side, using just that 1 1/2 cup of grated cheese alone is totally fine.

But when the casserole is then topped with an additional 1 1/2 cups of the Jarlsberg, you get a delicious, cheesy golden top that forms as it bakes.

It’s like a blanket of cheese keeping that flavorful filling all warm and cozy underneath.

We don’t do brunch very often in my family. Lately, just Easter and maybe Mother’s Day (although with my parents now retired and living almost 3 hours away, that hasn’t happened in a couple of years) but this breakfast potato casserole recipe is really making me want to reconsider that.

In Easter brunches past, we’ve done a lot of breakfast casseroles, crustless quiches, regular quiches, frittatas (even slow cooker frittatas) and every other egg dish under the sun. Save this one outrageously decadent French toast casserole from Ina Garten with about 10 million sticks of butter, this potato sausage breakfast egg casserole might seriously be the best one yet.

Unlike Ina’s, you won’t come crashing down off a sugar high or fall into a diabetic coma 15 minutes after eating it either.

Each bite brings a bit of nostalgia with the nutty Jarlsberg melting into the grated apples, potatoes and sausage and it was a fun way to reinvent an ingredient that has such a memorable history for me.

If you’ve yet to try Jarlsberg, I encourage you to grab a wedge and give it a shot!

If you’re like me with a long history and a bit of nostalgia tied to the cheese already, have fun experimenting with new ways to enjoy it again like in this breakfast casserole!

Or, in this grilled Hawaiian chicken recipe where I use the smoked version!

Jarlsberg is located in the specialty cheese section of the grocery store (not the dairy aisle!). And fun fact – if you’re lactose intolerant, you can still enjoy Jarlsberg, it’s naturally lactose free!

Need a veggie version of this potato breakfast casserole? Try this healthy veggie breakfast instead.

Love this cheesy potato breakfast casserole? Try one of these breakfast recipes too:

Everything Bagel Breakfast Strata
Cranberry Mascarpone English Muffin Casserole
Baked Turmeric Oatmeal
Mini Ham Cheese and Spinach Breakfast Pies
Bacon Wrapped Egg Cups