Hello, everyone! Today I’m excited to share a delicious frittata recipe (<3 feed me all the eggs) from my friend Heather who offered to write up a guest post for me! Enjoy!

When you think of the ideal brunch food, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

As a quick test, we asked our close friends and family just to see what they’d say. And more often than not, the answers were pretty standard. The two most common answers we got were eggs benedict or a continental breakfast. Now these brunch foods are delicious, don’t get me wrong, but they won’t win any prizes for being the most healthy anytime soon.

But what if I told you there’s something even better? A food perfect for a brunch that’s super healthy as well?

Enter the frittata!

Surprisingly, you’d be hard-pressed to find frittatas on the menu in your typical Italian restaurant (let alone your typical brunch place), but the frittata is as quintessentially Italian as it gets. It’s the dish regularly made in every Italian home yet, despite its elegance, doesn’t makes it out of the home cook’s kitchen. What a shame.

To call a frittata an “Italian omelette” would only be doing it half justice. Yes, egg is the main ingredient, but the methodology and cooking techniques for making a frittata make it a much more delicate and exquisite preparation than the regular omelette would.

One key distinction between a frittata and an omelette is the point at which the ingredients are mixed in with the egg. For a regular omelette, you’ll first add the egg into the pan followed by the ingredients as the egg is already cooking. For a frittata, however, you mix the ingredients together before they meet the pan, and only after the flavors of your ingredients have marinated together and flavored your eggs as well.

Another major difference is how to cook the frittata to absolute fluffy perfection. Whereas the omelette may not ever leave the stovetop, a frittata is best either baked or broiled in the oven after a few minutes of simmering on low stovetop heat.

Beautiful in Its Simplicity

What makes the frittata especially beautiful is how truly simple it really is. For the most part, so long as you follow a few simple steps, any types of ingredients or toppings can go into a frittata. It’s a great way to use up all your leftovers too!

And it’s super healthy. Since the dish is egg-based, you’ve by default got a great source of high protein, healthy HDL cholesterol (the “good” kind), and very useful vitamins and minerals. And when you add ingredients like kale and spinach, you’ve just hit your daily quota on key nutrients like vitamin A, vitamin K, magnesium and potassium too!

Generally, it’s a good idea to slightly pre-cook your ingredients first, especially the vegetable ingredients. Briefly cooking your ingredients removes water content that would otherwise leave the frittata soggy. Without this water content to weigh it down, you’ll get that much-desired fluffy and airy texture to the dish.

For this recipe (and for most any other type of frittata we’ll cook), we definitely recommend using a cast iron pan if you have one. Cooking with a cast iron makes it just so simple to transfer the frittata from the stovetop to your oven without any headaches of switching from stovetop skillet to an oven-safe pan. On top of that, cast iron cookware makes for a great and rustic look for when you serve the frittata, too.

For those that can only bake without broiling, the solution is simple. Instead of turning on the step in the recipe where you turn on the broiler, just add another ~3-4 minutes to the oven baking time, and you’ll get the same desired result.

There you have it! It’s so incredibly simple to make a perfect frittata, but it’s something that will have your friends and family talking for a long time afterward.

And soon enough, you’ll be in complete agreement with us that it’s the best brunch option out there.

What do you like to add to your frittata? Share your favorite ingredients with a comment below

Cyrus and Heather are the food enthusiasts behind Arousing Appetites. Together, they explore diverse cuisines, recipes, ingredients, spices, and techniques from all over the world. Want some worldly flair in your cooking life? Join their newsletter and savor vibrant flavors today! You can also find them on Facebook and Pinterest.

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