Breakfast Hot Pockets – Cheesy Egg and Sausage Pastries

I’m thrilled to bring Breakfast Hot Pockets -flaky puff pastry pockets filled with cheesy scrambled eggs, green onions, and breakfast sausage- to you in partnership with the great folks at the Cabot Creamery where they make the very best cheddar cheese.

Few things are as fun as a spectacular breakfast. Unless, of course, it’s a spectacular breakfast you can hold with your hands, and today’s recipe is!

We’re talking about homemade Breakfast Hot Pockets. Cue the cheering from my children.

Unlike the ones you grab in the freezer section at your local grocer, though, these do not come in a cardboard sleeve. They won’t be molten hot on the inside yet frozen on the outside when you bite into them.

The homemade version of Breakfast Hot Pockets is also infinitely more delicious and arguably more nutritious. Word has it, too, that the store bought version of this has been discontinued.

We have a divine take on the convenient (but flawed) commercial product. We load up equally convenient frozen puff pastry with fluffy, scandalously cheesy scrambled eggs amped up in flavour with a goodly amount of green onions.

Those cheesy, green onion-studded eggs, my friends, are where the real flavour is in these savoury breakfast pastries. On top of the bed of irresistible cheesy scrambled eggs, we nestle two cooked breakfast sausage links.

Hot Pocket Breakfast

For these hot pockets breakfast pastries, we have a pretty short ingredients and equipment list. Aside from the puff pastry, you’re likely to have everything you need on hand. And if you’re like me, you do actually have a box of puff pastry stashed in your freezer!

Ingredients

1. Puff pastry dough
2. Butter
3. Eggs
4. Kosher salt
5. Green onions
6. Breakfast sausage links
7. Shredded sharp cheddar cheese

I prefer to use fully-cooked country style breakfast sausage links. You can substitute any fully cooked breakfast sausage link (or even strips of fully cooked sausage patties) that you like best.

Go wild and sub in cooked sausage crumbles or vegetarian/vegan sausage substitute if it floats your boat. There’s definitely some room to play here as long as you remember that whichever sausage or sausage substitute you choose, you want it to be fully cooked before it goes into the breakfast hot pockets.

Cheesy Scrambled Eggs

This is the most cooking you’ll need to do for the entire recipe and it’s not at all intimidating. Scrambled eggs are one of the easiest things to cook correctly.

You crack your eggs into a bowl, add a splash of milk, whisk until evenly coloured, then pour into a pan over low heat with some tasty oil or butter. Don’t be tempted to hurry the process, though, by raising the heat.

The most perfectly fluffy eggs are cooked patiently over low heat. And once they’re looking like fluffy but still moist scrambled eggs, you toss in a generous amount of grated Cabot Sharp Cheddar Cheese, stirring gently until the cheese is fully melted.

After you stir in your thinly sliced green onions, you could call it a day and tuck into a bowl of these divine cheesy scrambled eggs and call it a day. Nobody would blame you.

But why stop at “good enough” when you can go for “great!” with very little extra effort? You’ll just need to remove the pan from the heat and let the eggs cool for at least 20 minutes until you can comfortably handle them with your hands.

This serves two purposes. You don’t burn your hands as you mound up to 1/4 cup of the eggs onto your puff pastry rectangles. More importantly, you don’t melt the fat in the puff pastry before it hits the oven.

Equipment

It’s funny because our equipment list is longer than our ingredient list, but it’s still all very basic. Here we go!

1. Cutting board
2. Chef knife
3. Pastry brush
4. Liquid measuring cup
5. Whisk
6. Silicone spatula or wooden spoon
7. Non-stick skillet
8. Fork
9. Half sheet pan
10. Parchment

Why is this important? Let’s get into puff pastry a bit!

How to Work with Puff Pastry

Puff pastry delivers maximum wow factor with minimum effort. It has dozens of whisper thin layers separated by butter.

Just keep in mind these 4 simple rules for working with puff pastry for the most dramatic puff from your frozen puff pastry.

Chill out! Keep your puff pastry cold. You want to keep the puff pastry as cold as possible before it bakes. This helps preserve the puffing power of that fat and get a nice flaky crust.

Puff pastry is a matrix of fat and flour. If you keep the fat cold before it goes into the oven, you get a magical effect when the fat DOES melt in the high heat.

The heat helps produce steam which creates a little air pocket in the flour matrix. This helps makes the finished pastry flaky.

If you find the dough getting warm while you work with it, cover it with a clean towel and pop it into the fridge. When it’s cold again, resume work.

Handle the dough as little as possible! Try to avoid stretching and tearing the knife. Handling it as little as you can will also avoid warming the dough.

Cut straight down with a sharp knife! Cutting straight down preserves as much of that fat and flour matrix as possible. This, in turn, helps the pastry puff higher in the oven.

Dragging your knife through the dough stretches it and rips it, damaging the carefully made matrix.

Only brush the top of the dough with egg wash! Do not brush the cut edges, as that seals the dough and keeps it from rising dramatically.

Are you looking for a sweet breakfast or brunch choice? Try our ridiculously delicious Churro Waffle for a fun and easy twist.

Breakfast Hot Pockets

Preheat your oven to 400ºF.

Crack the eggs into a bowl or liquid measuring cup and whisk with the milk and salt until even in colour. Ladle out about 1/3 cup of the eggs into a small bowl and save this for brushing on the pastries.

Melt the butter in a non-stick pan over low to medium low heat, and pour in the eggs. The eggs should begin solidifying quickly on the bottom of the pan.

Use a silicone spatula to scrape the solidified egg gently from the edges of the pan toward the center. Keep repeating this process until most of the egg has solidified and rumpled up and resembles soft set scrambled eggs.

Sprinkle the cheese over the top and continue pulling the spatula from the edge toward the center of the pan until the cheese is melted and no liquid egg remains. Stir in the thinly sliced green onions.

Remove the pan from the heat and spread the eggs on a large plate and transfer to the refrigerator to cool, stirring from time to time.

Unfold 1 sheet of puff and cut straight down along the fold lines (lengthwise) to create 3 long rectangles. Then cut across them in the center to create 6 evenly sized rectangles.

Separate the rectangles and place them on the parchment paper, leaving at least 2 inches between each rectangle. Set the pan in the refrigerator.

Lightly flour your work surface and unfold the second sheet of puff pastry. Roll it gently with a rolling pin until it is about 4 inches wider and 4 inches longer than it was, or 14″ by 19″. Once again, cut this along the fold lines (they should still be barely visible) lengthwise into 3 long rectangles, then crosswise once down the center so you have 6 slightly larger rectangles than you got from the first sheet.

Take the pan of puff pastry rectangles from the refrigerator. These will be your bases.

Brush the perimeter of the bases lightly with the reserved egg wash. You do not need to brush the whole pastry base.

Divide the cheesy scrambled eggs evenly between the bases, leaving a 1-inch perimeter, using your hands to mound the eggs slightly. Nestle 2 fully cooked breakfast sausage links lengthwise in the center of the eggs.

Lay one larger pastry rectangle over each topped base. Tuck any filling that’s falling out back under the pastry.

Use a fork to crimp the edges gently together. Don’t mash them mercilessly, but use enough pressure to leave fork marks and press the pastry together.

Use the remaining egg wash to brush the tops of the pastries. Use a sharp knife to cut to small vent slashes in the top of each pastry.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and set and is a deep golden brown. Remove the pan from the oven and let the pastries rest on the pan for 5 minutes before serving.

Do you love these homemade breakfast hot pockets?

Try these Overnight Taco Breakfast Enchiladas, these Breakfast Baked Taquitos, and these Banana Bread French Toast Breakfast Cups.

Originally published December 17, 2020. Republished March 2023 with improved notes.