Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Casseroles

It’s been just under three months since I moved into this townhouse. I vowed when I moved in that I would not eat food from a box. So far I’ve mostly been sticking to that. I had a moment of weakness/laziness last week and heated a pre-made pizza. But if I can keep to one slip-up every quarter I’m doing pretty good.

That’s not to say I’ve been cooking gourmet food every time. I’ve been leaning pretty heavily on the Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Casseroles. Fairly tasty and filling food. Nearly 400 recipes worth. Not that I’m anywhere close to trying all of them. Every one of them was pretty easy (in classic BH&G style) and fed me for two to three days.

Here are the recipes I’ve tried so far:

Ham-Apple-Cheddar Casserole (p. 14)

Decent, but as directed it didn’t have as much apple flavor as I was expecting. Not sure what I would do to fix it.

Corn Pie in Ground Beef Crust (p. 131)

Really tasty. I was expecting a more bread-like crust for this. I’m not sure if I should have pressed the meat layer smoother or if this is just how it is.

Beef and Rice Casserole (p. 137)

This casserole was pretty good too. One nice bonus is that it calls for a half cup of olives. In Ferndale, that means canned olives, so I had olives to snack on after making the dinner. I miss the olive bars at Whole Foods and Larry’s Market in Seattle.

Cheeseburger Casserole (p. 139)

I didn’t care for this recipe. It calls for using canned condensed cheese soup as the cheese flavor base. It made for a not very cheesy casserole. But as my friend Deirdre told me, It’s probably not a proper casserole unless there’s a can of soup somewhere in the recipe.

Baked Ziti with Three Cheeses (p. 227)

Mmmmmm cheese! Parmesan, gorgonzola, and fontina cheeses. Just make sure you are not using illegal Parmesan cheese.

Mom’s Tuna-Noodle Casserole (p. 282)

There are several other tuna-noodle casseroles in this book. Next time I’ll try one of those instead instead as this one wasn’t very good. Kind of flavor-less.

Cranberry Sweet & Sour Chicken (p. 338)

Wow! This was super super sweet. It could have been good. Next time I’ll add more rice to spread the sweet flavor over more food. But as it was, all the citrus is concentrated and overwhelming.

Herbed Sausage & Stuffing Casserole (p. 357)

All the flavor from this comes from using a stuffing mix. Tasty though.

Bean and Beef Enchilada Casserole (p. 158)

Pretty decent.

Cheesy Shrimp & Rice (p. 284)

I ended up throwing most of this out. It didn’t taste horrible, but it wasn’t the comfort food that a casserole should be.

Chicken & Wild Rice Casserole (p. 311)

Kind of a poor man’s version of Chicken ala King. Which is a pretty low-class dish to start with, but still tasty.

Hearty Turkey & Mushroom Casserole (p. 351)

This calls for 6 cloves of garlic. I put more in. Mmmm garlic!

Turkey-Stuffing Bake (p. 361)

I thought this one would have most of it’s flavor from the stuffing mix like another recipe above. It actually didn’t. Rice, onion, red pepper, sour cream, and a bunch of other flavors made this better than the other one, despite the presence of stuffing mix.

Gruyère, Bacon & Caramelized Onion Grits (p. 297)

Fry up some bacon and onions, then mix with cheese and grits and bake for something really really tasty. Highly recommended, though this probably won’t fall on any healthy diets’ allowed foods list.

Chicken-Spaghetti Casserole (p. 278)

This was really good. Pretty much every food group on the pyramid is represented, even vegetables. The spaghetti does get a little soft if you save the dish in the fridge, so I’d recommend undercooking it if you are cooking for yourself like I am.

Corn Bread-Topped Chicken Pie (p. 279)

I didn’t like this one so much. A little too much of the canned soup flavor. Plus, the directions cal for using corn muffin mix for the topping, which is way too sweet. I liked the idea, just not the execution.

Come back to this page as I add more recipes.

Title: Better homes and gardens biggest book of casseroles
Editor: Tricia Laning
Series: Biggest Book
Imprint / publisher: Meredith Books
Format: Spiral bound
Length: 415 p. (includes index)
Publication date: September 2005
ISBN-10: 0-696-22439-9
Subject: Casserole cookery