Casserole ("Hotdish") Cookbooks for Autumn

Back in 2019, during the COVID lockdown and a highly-contagious illness was spreading rapidly nationwide and there were no vaccines available at the time to prevent its spread, therefore public health mandated the closure of many public places (including countless restaurants), most Americans were forced to cook at home because dining out was no longer a viable option at the time, some people were forced to find dishes to cook at home, and some turned to cookbooks for dinner ideas and recipes. 

I was one of them.

I discovered one particular cookbook entitled "Hot Dish Heaven: Classic Casseroles from Midwest Kitchens" by Ann L. Burckhardt (I bought it in paperback edition; I'm unsure if there even is a hard-cover edition) which was published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press and is quite possibly the one particular casserole cookbook which I have consistently found the most recipes which I use fairly often. There seems to be a good variety (some 70 recipes) in that cookbook to choose from.

In fact, Hot Dish Heaven had become my go-to source for a whole bunch of different casserole recipes (or "hotdish" recipes as they're called in Minnesota). The author is a retired Minneapolis Star Tribune "Taste" section editor, so she has an established, published history as a food writer based in Minnesota. But her book featured nearly seventy kitchen-tested recipes collected from casserole connoisseurs across the Midwest.

This particular cookbook also had the most recipes which are not only very easy-to-make, but they taste pretty good, too. There's a wide variety of different casserole categories in the book, including casseroles containing different proteins (including ground beef, roasted turkey or chicken, ham, some fish or shellfish and even eggs), as well as recipes which contain different starches (tater tots in some recipes, but others contain rice including native Minnesota wild rice which grows in over 2000 Minnesota lakes/rivers/marshes/streams and is usually harvested annually between August and September. I find that is often sold in a box (being mixed with white rice) nationwide, and includes a salty seasoning packet which you don't really need to use, as well as various noodles or potatoes and/or various other root vegetables). In other words, this recipe book had enough variety to keep me from starving, which I first discovered during the pandemic.

Also, one upside in my opinion was that not all of these recipes used cream of mushroom soup (which flavor-wise, I think tastes kind of yucky; I don't like mushrooms generally), although the good thing is that most types of creamed soups can usually be substituted for cream of mushroom soup interchangeably. 

My personal favorite is using a can of cream of chicken soup, which is readily available including in many store-branded versions for people on a budget. Others, such as cream of celery soup are also still around, but are somewhat less widely-sold today than they once were, but some bigger supermarkets still sell that. Recipes using canned "cream-of" soups are not necessarily the healthiest recipes, but they certainly work well in a recipe as a type of gravy base while adding flavor, they tend to be quick, and they can satisfy a wide range of tastes. She also breaks them up to include separate sections for fish casseroles, and for breakfast casseroles, therefore helping you find what you're looking to cook quickly.

While "Hot Dish Heaven" waxes nostalgic about casserole recipes mined from an era of older cookbooks such as one called the Casserole Cookery, to her credit, Ann L. Burckhardt has taken great care to update the recipes for an audience circa the year 2006. She did this not just in terms of the names of ingredients (e.g. her book uses terms such as "chicken" instead of the terms used in historical cookbooks which referred to the same ingredient as a "young fat hen" or "pheasant" as older, more historical cookbooks sometimes did), and also in terms of more up-to-date cooking times in modern ovens and even preparation methods. 

For that reason, I have found this book was more useful than having to occasionally translate some older casserole recipes for more modern audiences. Also, the recipes in this cookbook were all very easy to assemble, being contained on a single page, or at most, two pages, with ingredients and instructions in the book.

Thanks to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, I am able to pretty easily scan recipes from printed books with relative ease, and convert those scans to text. 

Hence, below is a recipe I opted to share from "Hot Dish Heaven", and this particular recipe is for Turkey Tetrazzini, which has historically been a popular way to use-up leftover Thanksgiving turkey, although one of the most interesting things Ann L. Burckhardt notes in this book's introduction that in many of these recipes (including the one which follows), you can easily swap-out turkey for roasted chicken, ham or ground beef, and suddenly, you have an entirely new recipe variation, which is one reason this particular casserole recipe has endured.

Turkey Tetrazzini

By Ann L. Burckhardt, Hot Dish Heaven 

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

Betty Crocker Kitchens in Golden Valley was my work home in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I learned a great deal about recipe development and about teamwork. In 1958, Betty, our icon, was being transformed from a baking expert to an authority on entertaining. To that end, General Mills contracted with a New York writer, Llewellyn Miller, for a book called Easy Entertaining. The cosmopolitan Miss Miller came to Minnesota to confer with those of us working on the recipes for her book. This delectable casserole was featured in the Midnight Suppers chapter. It rated raves from the homemakers on the "Minneapolis 30" home testers panel. They liked having the choice of alternate ingredients. I've served this tetrazzini regularly since then, most recently for a quiet holiday dinner.

Ingredients:

• 6 oz uncooked spaghetti
• 2 c cooked turkey, cut into small pieces
• 1/2 c cubed cooked ham or 1/4 c crumbled cooked bacon
• 1/4 c chopped green pepper or 4-oz can pimento, chopped 1 c pitted ripe olives (cut into lg pieces), or 1/2 lb fresh button mushrooms halved, 1 egg yolk beaten
• 1/4 c butter
• 6 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 c chicken or turkey broth
• 1 c half-and-half
• 3 tbsp dry sherry (optional)
• 1/2 c grated Parmesan cheese or slivered almonds

Instructions: 

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Heat water to a rapid boil in a large kettle. Break spaghetti in 2-inch pieces. Cook according to package directions. Drain, rinsing with hot water. While spaghetti is boiling, combine turkey, and ham or bacon, pepper or pimento, and olives or mushrooms in a mixing bowl. Separate the egg yolk from white and have yolk ready to add. 
2. Melt butter over low heat in a heavy saucepan. Blend in flour and seasonings. Cook and stir, with heat on low, until the flour paste is smooth and bubbly. Remove pan from burner, stir in half the broth. Return to heat and cook, stirring frequently, while gradually adding remainder of broth and the half-and-half. Boil the sauce for 1 minute—this eliminates any floury taste from uncooked flour. 
3. Remove from heat and stir in sherry, if using. Turn the drained spaghetti into the sauce and toss with two large spoons until pasta is coated with sauce. 
4. Stir egg yolk into the hot pasta mixture. Then add the pasta to the turkey mixture in a bowl, again tossing to distribute ingredients.
5. Pour into a 2-quart baking dish—I use a big square shallow Corelle dish. 
6. Sprinkle on cheese or almonds. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

At least one rival cookbook published around the same time includes one with the title of "The Casserole Queens Cookbook: Put Some Lovin' in Your Oven with 100 Easy One-Dish Recipes" by Crystal Cook and Sandy Pollock (that particular cookbook was subsequently followed-up with a second cookbook entitled "The Casserole Queens Make-a-Meal Cookbook: Mix and Match 100 Casseroles, Salads, Sides, and Desserts" with even more casserole recipes, which also included some side-dishes and desserts as well). 

The two authors established a website found at https://www.casserolequeens.com/ which you can check-out, including a recipe page which is found at https://www.casserolequeens.com/pages/recipes/full including several which were published in Woman's Day magazine which can be found using the following link shared on their website, which I am providing here for my readers https://www.womansday.com/casserole-queens/?src=soc_fcbks. 

Collectively, these sites might be worth a visit if you're looking for some casserole recipes as we head into the autumn season. The paperback edition of the latter cookbook I cited also happens to be the exact same size and fits on a bookshelf nicely right next to the other(s). 

Not long after these authors' cookbooks were published, the self-titled "Casserole Queens" authors Crystal Cook and Sandy Pollock also published a blog where they shared some (but hardly all) of the recipes from their bestselling cookbook(s). That blog is no longer actively updated anymore, although the blog's pages with their recipes remain accessible. 

While I found fewer recipes in the "Casserole Queens" two casserole cookbook(s) which I actually use on a consistent basis, perhaps the most notable exception was author Crystal Cook's family recipe for stuffed bell peppers which she named "Mamaw's Stuffed Peppers" (Mamaw was the name she called her grandmother). That one was definitely a keeper IMHO!

I really enjoyed that particular recipe, and have made that recipe quite frequently, although I usually just call it the recipe for "Stuffed Bell Peppers" (no offense to Mamaw). I also skip the breadcrumbs called for in the recipe, as it's just an unnecessary, decorative addition which isn't really necessary, so I skip that.

Incidentally, the recipe for "Mamaw's Stuffed Peppers" can be found online free at https://casserolequeens.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/mamaws-stuffed-peppers/ and I think it may be the only recipe I have which actually uses allspice as a seasoning! That recipe was also a keeper. Since I did not need OCR software for that recipe, I am also sharing it in this post.

Stuffed Bell Peppers ("Mamaw's Stuffed Peppers")

By Crystal Cook, The Casserole Queens Cookbook

MAKES 5-6 SERVINGS 

Ingredients:

• 5-6 green, colored or mixed bell peppers (depending on the size of the peppers)
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 lg onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
• 2 (14.75 oz) cans diced tomatoes
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1 c cooked long-grain white rice
• Cooking spray
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1/2 c seasoned bread crumbs 

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cut off the top of each bell pepper and remove the seeds. Put the peppers in a large pot of boiling salted water and cook for exactly 5 minutes, but not for a second longer (or they will turn to mush). Drain the pepper and place in ice-water for a minute or two, then drain again-well, and set aside.
3. Set a skillet over medium heat. Add the beef, onion, and garlic, and season with salt and pepper. Cook the ground beef, breaking up any lumps with the back of a spoon, until the beef is browned thoroughly, about 10 minutes. Add the can of tomatoes (including liquid) and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the Worcestershire sauce, allspice, and rice; stir well and allow the mixture to cool.
4. Coat a 9x13 casserole dish with cooking spray. Stuff the peppers with the beef/rice/tomato mixture and place in the prepared casserole dish. Any leftover stuffing may be refrigerated or frozen for later use.
5. If you opt to include breadcrumb topping, in a small saucepan, melt the butter. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the bread crumbs. Scatter the bread crumbs over the peppers.
6. Place the dish in the baking dish in the oven. Bake the stuffed bell peppers at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes, or until the bread crumbs are golden brown and the meat is heated thoroughly. (I don't even bother with the bread crumbs anymore, and routinely skip that part of this recipe.)

Some of my preference for "Hot Dish Heaven" over the "Casserole Queens" was simply the author's writing style (Ann L. Burckhardt seems to be slightly better at writing more succinctly; perhaps that is her editorial background), and the fact that Crystal Cook and Sandy Pollock are young and Southern (from Texas), rather than grandmotherly and Midwestern, hence there may also be a possible editorial writing style factor which I preferred. 

But if you're looking to actually buy a cookbook, I highly recommend "Hot Dish Heaven", although I do recommend that you can and should borrow "The Casserole Queens" cookbook and/or its sequel at your public library (you can also buy it if you wish, but if you only have cash to buy one, you know my preference). You might find some recipe in one or all of them to bring to your next potluck supper, or you can freeze one for a ready-made dinner at some point in the future. 

A third hotdish cookbook I discovered on a trip to Minnesota (although I bought it online when I got back home) was called "The Great Minnesota Hot Dish: Your Cookbook for Classic Comfort Food" by Theresa Millang and Karen Corbett which I discovered at a MSP airport gift shop (and at a Minnesota gift shop at Mall of America). This book was a much smaller cookbook in size, but was published in full-color which is nice for searching and to know what the recipe should look like when you cook it. 

There is some overlap or redundancy in all of the recipes found in these different cookbooks (tater tots, for example, tends to be a recurring ingredient in many of the recipes, although slightly less-so in the "Casserole Queens" cookbooks; that must be the Midwestern culinary influence at work), but some originals in each as well. 

The nice part is because "The Great Minnesota Hot Dish" cookbook is published in full-color with photos, you'll know what your own casserole should probably look like when it's finished and what looks appetizing.

Anyway, if you're searching for casserole (or hotdish) recipes, there are some alternative sources, and they are free online (at the moment, anyway). 

For example, "Parade" magazine, the one which used to be featured in the Chicago Tribune Sunday editions and later expanded to many Sunday newspapers around the country, which continues to be published, albeit now only in an online format, and that also has a good source of pretty decent casserole recipes. For those, visit https://parade.com/986637/parade/casserole-recipes/ — this is good if you're willing to browse for something different which you may not have discovered before, although the recipes there are not really organized in any particular fashion, but what do you expect for no charge? The variety of recipes is nevertheless quite impressive and there are some keepers there, too.

In the end, whether you call them casseroles or hotdishes, I hope this list provides some useful sources for one-dish recipes which can be popped in the oven for an easy, tasty dinner (or frozen for future use). Keeping dinner recipe ideas fresh is a challenge for many household cooks and having access to good sources with free recipes is a resource many people would find useful.