She baked up a batch a couple weeks ago, and I was stunned how amazing this simple dish is. It’s a perfect dinner for cold midwestern evenings. This past week, she subbed ricotta cheese for the sour cream, and it was good too. She’s used macaroni both times she made it, but most recipes I see call for something like egg noodles. I think I might prefer it with macaroni, as it would be easier to eat with a spoon (personally, my favorite utensil for comfort-food eating). Recipes call for shredded cheddar too, but we’ve foregone that temptation so far.
Anyone else make this? Have any special additions or substitutions?
Shovel a pound of cheese on there. You’ve basically got the blueprint of every Upper Midwest casserole ever made there. Protein + Carb (pasta or tater tots) + Cream of Whatever + Gratuitous Vegetable(s) + (optional) Buried in Cheese. Always good on a winter day if, well, you don’t eat meat or aren’t a True American. (I love the stuff in moderation.)
I’m surprised by “cream soup” as an ingredient. I would have expected that buying canned soup from a store would be “too English” for most Amish, and if you’re making your own cream sauce specifically for this dish, it wouldn’t be “soup”.
Amish have big families with few to no labor-saving devices. Convenience is a very big thing. They often use no-iron wrinkle-free cloth for their clothing, too, because ironing everything a large family wears would be time-consuming and laborious even with a modern iron, much less the non-electrical ones they’d be using. They might not use an electric sewing machine but a treadle-powered one is definitely OK and far better than hand sewing.
It’s hard to declare what the Amish actually do or don’t do because each district/sect sets its own rules. But some Amish communities have diesel-powered laundry facilities to cut down on the labor involved in that chore. Some communities allow the use of solar power for various items, from charging lights to razors to probably a bunch of other small appliances.
They don’t reject technology for the sake of rejecting technology, they reject technology they feel would negatively impact the personal bonds in their communities. So sometimes their decisions don’t make much sense to the English.
This is a pretty common mid-western dish, I’ve had it here in NY state. It’s a good low-cost fill-em-up casserole. My friend makes it with tomato soup, noodles, hamburger, a couple other things. I don’t like her version because she also puts brown sugar in, and tomato soup is sweet enough. This stuff is probably horrifying to the kale-and-organic quinoa crowd, but there are little permutations and it can be dressed up or dressed down. Sour cream, mushrooms, shallots - yum!
Try this sometime: Chicken livers sauteed in olive oil; chopped onion, celery, carrot, peas; simmer with Campbell’s Cream of Tomato and Cheddar Cheese soups. A friend of mine would add a handful or two of shelled peanuts. Yum-O!
There’s a real Italian version of this in which you substitute tomato sauce for the canned soups. Serve over rice. (No peanuts.)
Good lord. I eat anything and everything, but that just sounds so disorienting (I’m being diplomatic.) Just the idea of cheese and liver alone is weird enough for me. (And I actually enjoyed the Flying Jacob.)
(I love the stuff in moderation.)