Comments on: Maybe Sandra Lee Has a Point

By: Nee Nee

Nee Nee — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:25:22 +0000

The campbells soup also imparts quite a bit of sodium to bring out the flavor of your ingredient hodge-podge. If you can manage to procure a ladies club church cookbook from anywhere in the midwest, you’ll be entertained with more funky casserole recipes than you could have ever imagined. The first *chicken enchiladas* that I ever had were in casserole form at a church potluck. They were mos def made with cream of chicken soup with a few chopped Old El Paso canned green chilis for *spice.*

By: Jenna

Jenna — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:34:47 +0000

Of course! So, I made four casseroles – tex mex (http://bit.ly/4zDDkR), tuna noodle (http://bit.ly/Iea6B), brown rice with mushroom and ricotta (http://bit.ly/2doFSO), and dairy free polenta lasagna (http://bit.ly/1Gn3cq). In general, my “findings” were:

1. They are a lot of work if you don’t want to use canned soup, and will dirty many pots.
2. If you’re going to use Bechamel as a binder, make sure to add a lot of cheese.
3. Pre-cook all your ingredients, no matter what the recipe says.
4. Use lots of seasoning – for some reason, they have a tendency towards blandness.
5. Canned tuna really only belongs in tuna salad (trust me).

I may have liked them more if I hadn’t tried to keep them healthy, but I was taking the leftovers for lunch every day, so I couldn’t make anything too decadent (like, say a three cheese lasagna. Yum).

You should try another one and see if you can make improvements. I bet a pumpkin and sage lasagna would be lovely for fall.

By: gansie

gansie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:53:17 +0000

you did a whole project?!?! i’d love to learn more about your casserole findings. (and i hope i’m not taking this too literally)

By: Jenna

Jenna — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:03:09 +0000

I did a whole project on casseroles last month – and yeah, if you don’t use canned soup they’re either a huge pain, or they end up being a little flavorless. You have to pre-cook all the ingredients (I had the same problem you had with the potatoes, although in my case it was beans), which dirties a ton of pans. And you either have to load it up with cheese to help with the creaminess, or make your own Béchamel sauce. So much work! The one binder I had luck with was ricotta cheese – it didn’t add a ton of flavor, but it definitely helped with the creaminess.

No wonder casseroles didn’t become a popular American staple until the mass-production of canned soup!

By: Harmony

Harmony — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:06:27 +0000

No one needs cream of _____ soup! That’s why the goodness of sour cream is out there.