If there's one thing home ec teachers and I have in common, it's love of a casserole. (Of course, theirs is genuine and mine is often-but-not-always ironic, but we don't have to tell them that.) That's why today, we're checking out a few casseroles from Quick and Easy Dishes (Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers, 1978 edition).
Anything with the word "surprise" in the title should be suspect, and Ground Beef Surprise is no exception.
The surprise? A sogged-out layer of French fries between a layer of greasy (apparently not pre-cooked and drained) ground beef and a slick of canned soups. Yay. 🎉
These casseroles tend to use a LOT of canned ingredients, as it was easy to keep canned food on hand. (Couldn't easily or cheaply order groceries delivered to your door back in 1978!) I'm not (that) snobby about canned foods. I'd rather have canned than fresh tomatoes. I go through cans and cans of tomatoes, beans, pumpkin, and even cream of mushroom soup. Still, I wonder about the '70s combinations, like in Quickie Supper Casserole.
Vegetarian vegetable soup with canned spaghetti and chow mein noodles? I mean-- dry spaghetti is already shelf stable. You don't need the mushy metallic canned version if you want to keep spaghetti on hand. (And I'm not sure why anyone would need spaghetti with chow mein noodles!)
But canned spaghetti was pretty popular, for some reason.
If you're not into serving it over chow mein noodles, layer it up with cheese, onions, corn chips, and pork and beans!
You might hope that the Quick Chinese Supper breaks the overly-reliant-on-cans streak and doesn't even belong in the casserole section, as it should be a stir fry of a few fresh vegetables with a thinly-cut protein (and en casserole was originally a French cooking method anyway!). If so, then you don't really understand vintage "Chinese" recipes, where the term generally means "I dumped in a can of chow mein noodles."
And in this case, it also means "I dumped chow mein noodles, cashews, and canned mandarin oranges into tuna casserole to make it 'Chinese!'" Let that sink in for a moment. (Or don't! I'm trying not to think too hard about it.)
I promise, some casserole recipes are good. Just not these....
I love how they specify vegetarian vegetable soup for their casserole with hamburger in it. What would happen if there was some meat in the vegetable soup? In my experience, there's not much meat in canned soup, so it would hardly be noticeable in a casserole.
ReplyDeleteThe ground beef surprise sounds horrific. I can feel my gut cramping from the grease just reading the recipe. They better live in one of those fancy houses that has multiple bathrooms.
My guess is that they wanted to feel like they were giving a bigger serving of vegetables, but considering how few vegetables are displaced by meat in the canned soups (and that individual diners will only get 1/6th of a 10-ounce can anyway!), I can't imagine there would be a meaningful difference in veggie intake from choosing the vegetarian vegetable version. But you know how home ec teachers are.
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