Breakfast for dinner: Breakfast Pasta with Bacon and Kale

Bacon, kale and a freshly beaten egg give this weeknight-quick pasta a satisfyingly breakfasty flavor. Recipe below.

Our younger daughter just moved to a new city and started a rewarding, but demanding, job. To her credit, she is still managing to cook at home more often than not. Sunday evenings will often find her cooking a batch of something that will serve as at least a few lunches. For dinners, she frequently improvises something like this quick pasta.

Breakfast for dinner is something we all occasionally fall back on—and happily so. But it takes the more traditional form of eggs, maybe some bacon, toast and, if we’re getting fancy, some grits. Breakfast pasta incorporates some of those ingredients, but feels closer to dinner. There are quite a number of breakfast pasta recipes out there, but this is how our daughter made it—at least how she described making it on a recent phone call.

The ingredient list is short and sweet: bacon, kale, pasta, an egg, salt and pepper, and maybe some olive oil. It also cooks up nice and fast, perfect for fixing at the end of a busy day.

Breakfast Pasta with Bacon and Kale
Serves 2

4 strips of bacon
olive oil, if needed
3 to 4 cups, tightly packed, torn kale (thick ribs removed)
salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 ounces uncooked dried linguine or other long pasta
1 egg, beaten

Start a pot of water to boil for the pasta. Cook the bacon until just crisp in a large nonstick skillet or sauté pan. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate to drain. Don’t drain the bacon fat from the pan. In fact, if you have less than 3 or 4 tablespoons in the pan, add a little olive oil.

Add the kale and cook over medium heat, tossing with a little salt. Ideally, the kale should hit the pan when the pasta is about 5 minutes from being done cooking. In any case, cook the kale for about 5 minutes. If it’s done before the pasta is almost al denté, just turn off the heat. Crumble the bacon.

When the pasta is almost al denté, drain it (reserving a little cooking water) and add it to the pan with the kale. Add the bacon and toss everything together. Let the pasta finish cooking for 1 or 2 minutes, adding a little pasta water if it seems dry.

Remove the pan from heat. Pour the beaten egg over the pasta quickly and toss to coat. Ideally, very little of the egg will cook cook—it will mainly coat the pasta, adding a nice silkiness. Season generously with pepper and less generously with more salt—taste to see if you need any. Divide between 2 shallow bowls and serve.