Now that you have eggstracted all the info needed to pick the best possible, freshest, and ethically, pasture-farmed eggs for your roasted poblano strata, it’s time to get cooking. But what’s that you ask? What’s a strata?? Come on! You know what a strata is even if you don’t call it that. It’s a poor man’s soufflé, relying on bread instead of whipped egg whites. My mom was legend when it came to the classic one – an egg/milk mixture that she poured over chunks of bread and allowed to sit overnight in the fridge. The “chunkies” could be almost anything, but she (always a measurer) stuck to her recipe and used cubes of ham and cheddar. She called it a fondue, and while really more quiche-like (custard-based), it was probably closer to a fondue with all that melted cheese (yes, you CAN add too much cheese) than a strata which derives from the Latin word stratus, meaning layers. It was the ladies of the Silver Palate that popularized calling a layered brunch dish strata back in the 80s.
In this version, I am bringing layers back. This dish is assembled lasagna-style. And while I roast and peel the poblano peppers, if you are lucky enough to live in a place where you can get big cans of chilis, by all means, go for it. I first fell in love with my inspo on this dish at a cattle branding in Nebraska many many moons ago. It was featured in the Denver Junior League cookbook Colorado Cache and seemed almost soufflé like and probably hard to make, though I was told “doll, if it was that hard, we wouldn’t be making it.” There wasn’t a meal with less than 60 hungry ranch hands at the table. I brought the idea home, found no such canned chilis available, and created this brunch favorite.
Roasted Poblano Strata
- 8 poblano peppers (or 32 ounces canned mild chilis, drained)
- 5 eggs
- 1 ¼ cups milk (plus 1/2 cup more if you are soaking the poblanos overnight – see below)
- 3 Tablespoons flour
- ½ t salt
- 8 ounces habanero or pepper jack cheese slices
- 3 cups shredded cheddar
Prep the poblanos: Grill (or char over a gas burner) the poblanos until blackened. Place in a plastic bag and close to sweat. Once cool enough to handle, run under cold water and peel off the charred skin. Trim off stems and discard seeds and ribs. You should be able to get two or three “filets” from each poblano. If you are prepping your peppers a night ahead (recommended), cover with about 1/2 cup of milk and store in the refrigerator, covered. This will turn down the heat to a reasonable breakfast temp.
Prep the strata: Preheat the oven to 325oF degrees.
Butter a 2 or 3 quart baking dish.
Whisk together the eggs, milk, flour and salt.
Place a layer of poblanos in the baking dish and top with sliced cheese. Repeat, creating as many layers as needed to use all the poblanos and the cheese slices, at least two layers of each.
Pour the egg mixture over the poblanos. Sprinkle with shredded cheddar.
Bake at 325oF for 50 minutes until egg mixture is set and slightly puffed.
Allow to cool for about 10 minutes and serve warm!
Serves 8.
© Copyright: KatyKeck.com 2016. All rights reserved.
Katy Keck, love this recipe! P.S. Your copy is of comedy genius.
Karen – just found your comment lurking in spam. How dare they!! Thanks for showing some love.
Your photos are almost as good as the recipe, golly this is good. I used Hatch chilis I brought home from New Mexico (you can buy them already roasted from roadside farms, they use giant metal barrels and you can smell the sweet smoke from miles away) which made a fabulous breakfast. I also cheated with goat cheese and cheddar…delish.
Sounds fantastic! Very flexible recipe to tweak to personal tastes. Glad you tried it!!
Eggsellent!
Can’t wait to get crackin’ ?
It’s all its cracked up to be.
Beautiful to look at and read. So tempting that the time between looking/reading and making/eating is way too long, no matter how long that is!
Awwww!! Thanks Jay! Hope you get a chance to try it.
I am totally trying this recipe! Living in NM I have easy access to peppers such as poblanos. LOVE THEM. I even grew them in my vegetable garden (back when I had one). Thanks for sharing :0)
One of my readers tried it with Hatch which was I was about to suggest on my own! I bet you can get good canned chilis there too. We only get 7 oz cans of tiny little chilis – too tedious to use. I think poblanos are pretty widely available these days.
Katy, I made this recipe this am and it was delicious! I substituted cup 4 cup because two of my friends are gluten free. It worked great. I will definitely make this recipe again!
Barb – thanks for sharing the gluten-free substitution. I haven’t done much with gluten-free so glad to know how well Cup4Cup works in lieu! I’ve seen great things about the product but happy to have the first hand report! Thanks!!
Katy, This recipe is just what I have been looking for! Sounds perfect for my champagne brunch I’m having next month. I’ll let you know how it turned out. So glad I stumbled upon your website reading a Mambo Sprouts coupon booklet I got at Fruitful Yield 🙂
Cin – Welcome aboard. So glad you found us! I loveluvlove Mambo Sprouts! You will not go wrong with this recipe. It’s always a big hit. And it’s great because you can get the pepper prep out of the way earlier in the week and the rest comes together in a flash. Be sure to post once you have tried it – can’t wait to hear. Thanks so much for subscribing. Cheers, Katy