Let’s start with the elephant in the room – is that the right metaphor? Maybe not. Anyways.
Casseroles Get a Bad Rap
It’s true! There’s nothing inherently wrong with casseroles. Much like fruit cake, they’ve been done dirty here in the US by a deadly combo of poor execution and confirmation bias. I think a great example of this is the recent trending topic of “hot dish”, which is…a casserole. But media coverage portrayed it as a nostalgic comfort food!
Likewise, “green bean casserole” is often a beloved staple of Thanksgiving tables. Heck, a lot of people’s family recipes of mac ‘n’ cheese are definitely in the casserole family. But yet the overall public opinion of casseroles is yuck rather than yum. So why is that?
Poverty and Flash-freezing
I’ve consistently found that a lot of the resistance to mid-century dinner dishes tends to be their reliance on what I call Pantry Staples. This includes, but is not limited to, canned vegetables, which I agree are often not great. I had a roommate who, in the year 2006, was voluntarily eating canned green beans. Bonus – she was majoring in nutrition – well technically something adjacent but work with me here.
Nowadays, I associate canned vegetable eaters with people who are really, really stretching their grocery budget. Heck, one of the ways they might be doing so is by relying on a local food bank, where canned items are vastly overrepresented. But even when I was receiving Food Funds, I never once bought canned green beans, or peas, or carrots, or what have you.
Was I living on ramen and beans? Nope, I just bought frozen vegetables instead. I ran a price check, and the store brand canned stuff costs a buck, averaging to about 7 cents per ounce. Frozen? You can get about the same amount for a buck sixty, putting you at 13 cents an ounce. Well Kelp, I can do that math, and that’s a significant cost increase! To which, yeah, sure, but now we’re getting into “if you didn’t buy milk tea you could have bought a house” levels of nitpicking. Even if you went through, say, a can of vegetables a day, switching to frozen would cost you $18 more a month. And many would agree, the difference between frozen and canned is between something that tastes fine and something that’s barely edible.
But during, shall we say, the ahistoricized Age of Casseroles, frozen foods were a relatively newfangled thing, and they hadn’t really gotten it (or the price) down yet. One part of this was simply the average household freezer – they weren’t as big as what many households have now, and they needed to be periodically manually defrosted to boot. I won’t get into the weeds when it comes to Advancements in Agribusiness, but it wasn’t really until the 90’s that frozen vegetables really became a consistent, competitive replacement in many supermarkets.
Back to the poverty element, casseroles were (in)famously a way to use up leftovers. Leftover meat, leftover pasta, leftover mysterious canned vegetables you found in the back of the pantry. So a lot of them were doomed from the start. The goal wasn’t to make a delicious dish, it was to produce a palatable pie.
They also tend not to photograph well – this sounds perfectly fine, but looks…beige
Adequate Drainage
Another thing that contributes to mediocrity in casseroles is sogginess. There’s a number of things going on here.
The first is, you guessed it, those canned vegetables. Even if you drain them off thoroughly, they’re still gonna add a lotta liquid to the equation. They come pre-sogged for your convenience.
The second is another ubiquitous ingredient in casseroles, ground beef. Ideally you want some sort of soak-up stuff, like breadcrumbs, along with an egg binder to produce a nice firm texture. But a lot of casserole recipes are heavy on the liquid and light on the dry ingredients, leading to an oozy eating experience.
Spoiler: I don’t really remember seeing anything particularly novel in this section
The third one I’ll mention here is Crust. Many of the casserole recipes in the cookbook I’m using for this blog post have you line the pan with some sort of pastry or pie crust. Still others have you put something on top, much like the tater tots atop a hot dish, or mashed potatoes on a shepherd’s pie (another beloved casserole!!). But many subpar casseroles are lacking this, further contributing to their downfall.
Yes, a carefully laid lattice pie crust made out of…painstakingly cut-up crescent roll dough
Recommended: just plop some biscuits around the edge and call it a day
Why Have People Had So Many Bad Casseroles Then, In This, The 13th Year of Luigi?
Mom’s tired! That’s why. Casseroles are often a dinner of last resort, something you can throw together with what you have without going to the grocery store. Corners are cut. Compromises are carried out. And so, the casserole is cooked.
This is why I was so intrigued by Pillsbury’s Bake Off Main Dish Cook Book. These are Competition Casseroles. But also…
Shortcutted?
Tired: lady-in-waiting, wired: lady-in-the-kitchen
Putting aside what the heck ingredients disappeared from the United States by 1968 compared to (checks notes) eighteen years ago, we return to my point – casseroles are meant to be easy. They are the OG dump dinners. But that doesn’t mean they can’t taste good!
So, Did You Make a Casserole?
Geez Louise, are there a lot of Ideas in the book. They start out with some very useful general information about how to stew a chicken, pros and cons of different casserole dishes, make-ahead techniques, and even Casserole Theory.
Who is using their deep-fat fryer to cook soup
Creamed, buttered and raw is definitely an adult video
As per usual, I ran into constant obstacles to making savory dishes – my taste tester and I have acid reflux, and, bonus! Our triggers don’t fully overlap. So I decided that maybe I would take this opportunity to test a more single-friendly casserole, the kind you make in cute little babby ramekins. Ah, but Kelp, you can freeze and reheat casseroles! Yes, yes, but I don’t want to make a week’s worth of something I don’t know will agree with me or not.
It wasn’t too far in before I ran into my frenemy, (Tomato) Cheeseburger Pie…and then on the next page a new challenger, Man-Cooked Meal, which featured Condensed Tomato Rice Soup?? But really, by this point, I already had narrowed down my search terms back on the Dish List – I wanted to make a souffle. Is that not the fanciest of casseroles?! Also how are we shortcutting the souffle. Inquiring minds want to know.
The first one listed in the index actually looked pretty okay: Chili Cheese Surprise. What’s the surprise? No idea. Maybe just the fact it’s a souffle? However this also wanted a condensed soup I wasn’t sure still existed, karma perhaps for me cracking the joke about ingredient substitutions earlier.
Next up, in The Loveliest Luncheons category, was Elegant Cheese Puff. As well as the Imitation Souffle next to it, which…I’m not clear on why it’s an imitation.
You gotta admit Tun-au-Gratin is pretty clever
Getting back to the Elegant Cheese Puff, this had few ingredients, and one of them was sour cream, which is a plus for me. Indeed, two of the other souffles listed involved fish (I’m allergic), and another one veal (would have to drive a couple towns over to my butcher). And the final souffle had zucchini, which sadly is one of those soapy vegetables for yours truly. This was all fine and dandy though, as I realized the Elegant Cheese Puff was also the Suitable Cheese Puff (for both me and my other taste testers dietary restrictions). Plus I had some bread I needed to use up. We have a winner.
My new resident grocery shopper hesitated when it came to the parmesan cheese, opting to get me the basic store brand bag of grated instead of a block of The Good Stuff. I assured him this was probably the right play – it’s more in the spirit of shortcutting. Indeed, besides having to whip up a meringue, this souffle came together relatively quickly.
It’s that gif of the baby barn owls but in the meringue version of latte art
Most of my time was spent mulling over my pan options – my one souffle dish is a big boy, and this called for measly 1-quart. I decided to just use a glass loaf pan, and that too, was the right call. I also substituted the pinch of cayenne pepper for a teaspoon or so of paprika.
Shortcutted Souffle
Behold!! (my elegant?? cheese puff)
It didn’t really puff up that much, but it didn’t really dramatically fall, either. It’s definitely very light and airy, and the combo of sour cream and parmesan gives it a subtle tang. I can see people calling it a bit bland, but I think it’s moreso “delicate” compared to a full on cheese souffle.
My other taste tester immediately pegged it as a ‘mock souffle’, saying “it does what it set out to do”, before waxing philosophical, comparing it to a pizza bagel: “you know it’s not pizza, you have different expectations”.
However, I don’t think this really deserves mock souffle status, because I still had to whip up a dang meringue to stiff peaks. That involves refrigerating both the egg whites and my dedicated copper bowl for this purpose. Plus, they wanted it cooked in a bain-marie!
Double rectangles all the way across the cutting board
Anyways, there was some interest when I mentioned the Chili Cheese Surprise, so I might make something else less Elegant out of this to continue my trend of trying two recipes per vintage cookbook.
I definitely won’t be making this
recipe
2 cups soft bread cubes, with crusts cut off
1 cup sour cream
⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon chopped chives
½ teaspoon salt.
1 teaspoon paprika
4 eggs, separated
Combine soft bread cubes, sour cream, Parmesan cheese, chives, salt, paprika and egg yolks in large mixing bowl. Cover and let stand 30 minutes. Whip egg whites to stiff peaks, and fold into everything else. Pour into ungreased 1-quart casserole dish (I just used a glass loaf pan). Set in pan containing at least an inch of hot water. Bake at 350°F for 45 to 50 minutes until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Serve immediately.
Yield: 4~6 servings
kelp 