Four-Layer Beef & Bacon Casserole {GIVEAWAY}

This Four-Layer Beef & Bacon Casserole is comforting, easy to follow, has deliciously balanced flavors, is nutritionally sound, and includes a generous sprinkling of bacon.

Collaborations are my favorite.

Favorite!

You get a little of this, a little of that, and BOOM – something unique and with twice the awesome power is born.

My sweet friend Juli Bauer of PaleOMG teamed with the fantastic George Bryant of Civilized Caveman Cooking Creations for a collaborative cookbook that will knock your flipping socks off.

The Paleo Kitchen has over 100 brand new recipes (which is really saying a lot because they’ve both got an extensive wealth of fabulous recipes already on their blogs), some great tips for how to stay motivated, ideas on maintaining food freshness, advice on how to have fun in the kitchen, and much more.

They graciously allowed me to feature this very special recipe from their book with my step-wise photo instructions. I really believe that this Four-Layer Beef & Bacon Casserole is a great representation of their style!

Juli and George, backed by their wonderful publishers Victory Belt, ALSO provided one copy to giveaway to one lucky Fed & Fit reader! That could be you! Go to my Facebook page to enter.

In the meantime, you can order your own copy of the book here.

So it goes with all our favorite foods, this recipe begins with bacon. ½ a pound of bacon, to be precise. Preheat your oven to 375 F and then choose your baking tray. I like to use this large casserole dish for baking bacon – it’s got a nice big lip to help avoid any scary grease spills. I also like to line it with a big sheet of aluminum foil …easy cleanup, n’all. Lay the bacon out in one layer on your baking sheet.

Pop this puppy in the oven for 12-15 minutes. I bumped my cooking time up to 22 minutes because I like my bacon crispy.

Bacon is done! …and tempting. Roughly chop the bacon and put it in a bowl to save for later!

If you manage to make it through the rest of this recipe without snacking on the bacon, you have more willpower than I.

Potatoes are next! Bump your oven up to 400 F and snag 3-4 medium sweet potatoes. Put the potatoes on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil (easy cleanup again …can you tell I hate washing dishes?), and poke with a fork. Once your potatoes are thoroughly aerated, pop ‘em in the oven for 35-40 minutes, or until they’re soft and easily cut with a knife.

While the potatoes bake, let’s turn our attention to the low-carb veggie star of this show …cauliflower! Chop the florets away from the stem. Toss ‘em in a steamer basket and steam covered over simmering water! When they’re easily pierced with a fork, they’re done. Mine took about 10 minutes.

Drain the cauliflower and pour it into a food processor. Add ¼ cup of full-fat coconut milk, ½ tsp of coarse sea or kosher salt, and then 1 tsp of ground black pepper. Whirl your food processor (about one minute) until it looks like mashed ‘taters! Nomz.

Spoon your cauliflower mash into a bowl and set aside. Now is also a good time to rinse out that food processor, we’re going to use it to make the sweet potato mash next!

When your sweet potatoes are finished baking, let them cool – like, a lot. There’s nothing worse than thinking you’ve got a cooled potato in you hands only to find out there was boiling hot lava under that skin. Peel the cooled potatoes. Pinch and put the potato innards into your (now) cleaned food processor. Add ¼ cup of full-fat coconut milk. Toss in ¼ tsp of coarse sea or kosher salt. And then ¼ tsp of ground black pepper.

½ tsp of dried sage.

If you need any dried sage, just let me know. I have about 5 jars of the stuff.

Why, every time I decide to cook with dried sage, do I convince myself that I don’t own any? Spice cabinet amnesia is real.

It looks good already, doesn’t it?

Whirl this puppy for about a minute, or until it’s velvety smooth and absolutely finger-dipable.

Spoon it into a bowl for later.

Now the last part of our 4 layers! The meat! Toss 2 lbs of ground beef into a large pan.

I opted for 95% lean because that’s all the very nice Whole Foods butcher had left in grass-fed. I need to order more beef from US Wellness Meats! Once the meat begins to brown (some pink left) it’s time to add our extras. We only need one clove of minced garlic. Next up, snag yourself one of those dozen medium yellow onions you’ve got in your pantry for that time you promised to make french onion soup …and then kept forgetting. Throw the entire deiced onion into the pan.

Would you just look at these little cutie pies? I think button mushrooms are the most adorable.

We’re going to need 8 ounces. Dice ‘em up and toss ‘em in! Next, add 1 tsp of coarse sea or kosher salt. And then finally ½ tsp of ground black pepper. Stir it all up!

When the meat is cooked through and the veggies all nicely wilted, it’s done.

Time to bring all our players to the table!

Turn the oven to 350 F and grab a 9”x 13” baking dish. Mine was a little smaller – but it worked out great.

Using a slotted spoon (so’s to drain the grease), add half of the meat mixture to the bottom of the pan. Smooth it out into one even layer.

Next, add all of your cauliflower mash. Smooth it out into one nice even layer, too. Layer #3! With that slotted spoon again, add the rest of the meat over the cauliflower. Nice and even like.

Last one! Spoon that delectable sweet potato mash over the meat.

Spread it out evenly and then pop it in the oven to bake for about 30 minutes!

At the end of the 30 minutes, crank the heat up to the broiler and toast the top for an additional 5 minutes.

After it’s finished, sprinkle your patiently waiting chopped bacon (or what’s left of it) over the top and then leave the beef & bacon casserole to cool and thicken on the counter for at least 10 minutes.

All done! Isn’t it marvelous?

Enjoy!