If You Want Quiche Without the Work, Make This Savory Cobbler

I consider quiche to be an all-day kind of food. Sure, it’s egg-forward and that makes it a prime candidate for breakfast, but pile a loose salad next to it and suddenly you’ve got a lovely lunch or dinner. Sadly, many people avoid making quiches because the pie crust means extra work. Consider, then, a quiche cobbler. It's quick and easy—and bonus, it can feed a crowd.

What is a "quiche cobbler"?

I wanted a dish that had all of my favorite parts of quiche sans the rolled-out flaky crust. A logical person would just make a frittata—the Italian crust-free answer to the French quiche—but I didn’t want to lose the carbs entirely. That would be an unnecessary demotion. After some soul searching, I remembered how fruit cobblers have their easy-breezy dollops of biscuit dough. 

The quiche cobbler is a savory twist on a fruit cobbler. Instead of cooked-down fruit sauce, you drop quick-cooking biscuit dough on top of scrambled egg, meats, and cheeses. It’s an extremely flexible dish, a real fridge-clean-out meal. You can make the egg mixture with whichever ingredients you have on hand, and you can use whichever biscuit dough recipe you like. 

How to make a quiche cobbler

1. Make the egg mixture

I whisked eight eggs together with a bit of cream, and seasoned the mixture with salt and a dash each of garlic powder and onion powder. Then I added some chives, cooked potatoes, chopped ham, havarti hunks, and sautéed mushrooms to the bowl. You can really go anywhere with this: Add cooked bacon and cheddar, try onions and peppers, or mix in salmon and cream cheese chunks. Anything you’d eat with eggs will work in this dish. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish. 

2. Prepare the biscuit dough

Once again, the world is your casserole. You can use any drop biscuit recipe you’d like for this and maybe even cut biscuit dough (I haven’t tried that type yet, so keep me posted). Drop biscuit dough is different from flaky, cut biscuit dough because of its texture. It’s soft, shapeless, and delightfully low maintenance. Instead of fussing with cold butter chunks or using a knife or biscuit cutter to shape them, you just scoop the dough and drop it by the spoonful. You can make this type of biscuit with pancake mix, Bisquick mix, or from scratch with my recipe below or your favorite go-to. 

Mix the dough together until just moistened. Spoon and dollop the biscuit dough into the casserole dish. Stagger the biscuits so it looks cobbled together. I like to spoon a little bit of the egg mixture over the biscuit tops as a lazy egg wash to help the biscuits brown. 

3. Bake your cobbler

Bake the quiche cobbler in a 375°F oven for about 25 to 35 minutes depending on how large your casserole dish is and how deep the layer of quiche is. I baked mine in a seven by nine-inch dish, which made it rather deep, and on a sheet tray to prevent the bottom from over-browning. These factors meant my quiche needed the full 35 minutes.  

Once the edges are puffed, the biscuits are risen and browned, and the center is set but slightly gelatinous, take the casserole out of the oven and let it cool. The resulting dish is sliceable, tender, and savory with a puffy, moist biscuit for each person. It's a great way to start your day (or continue or end your day).

Quiche cobbler is best enjoyed within the day, but it keeps in the fridge for up to four days and reheats decently in the microwave.

Quiche Cobbler Recipe

Ingredients:

• 8 eggs

• 2 tablespoons cream

• 1 to 2 cups of add-ins (I used cooked potatoes, mushrooms, ham, and cheese.)

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• Pinch garlic powder

• Pinch onion powder

For the biscuit dough:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 2 teaspoons baking powder

• 1 teaspoon sugar

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• 3 tablespoons canola oil

• ⅓ cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F and butter a baking dish. Set it on a sheet pan. 

2. Whisk the eggs thoroughly with the cream. Add your add-ins and seasonings. Mix them together and pour them into the casserole dish.

3. Make the biscuit dough by stirring the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Add the wet ingredients and stir until they’ve just combined. The batter will be soft and lumpy but there shouldn’t be any flour pockets. Drop spoonfuls of the batter all around the quiche mixture. Spoon a bit of the egg over the biscuits as a lazy “egg wash.” Bake the quiche cobbler for 25 to 35 minutes, or until the biscuits are set and brown on top, and the egg is no longer liquidy in the center. Cool thoroughly before eating.