Me, I hate them. I am, by no means, a foodie or a good cook, but I am going crazy trying to find a decent recipe for broccoli casserole or corn casserole that does not include Cream of Something as an ingredient!
Nothing against them, but it’s just so salty and seems rather lazy for a holiday meal. And don’t even get me started on fake cheeses - on one recipe site, I had to specifically pick a “No Cheez Whiz” broccoli rice casserole recipe, only to find it called for a Cream of soup. I can’t imagine, outside of dip, where Velveeta would be an ingredient in anything serious.
And Paula Deen? In addition to her racism and diabetes and all that, every recipe seems to call for Cream of soups. That’s a cooking expert? What the hell?
Do you consider using Cream of soups to be real cooking? It seems like when using them, you’re just tossing together a bunch of food, stiring in soup, and then heating it up. Like cheating. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve have some favorites that use Cream of soups, but it’s not like real cooking to me.
***I found a cool sounding recipe from my hero, Alton Brown, for a broccoli casserole that includes a pack of Ramen - anyone have any experience with that one? I sounds crazy, but also tasty.
Cream of Mushroom has been a standard ingredient for pot roasts for generations. My grandmother, mom, me and my daughters use it. I can’t imagine a pot roast without it.
Well, sure, I have a hash brown casserole that I love that’s made with Cream of Chicken, and my husband makes a decent “chop suey” with Cream of Mushroom.
None for me thanks. I can make a bechemel/white sauce, with mushrooms, broccoli, cheddar what have you, very quickly and it tastes so much better. So I make those types of recipes, but I make my own sauces. If I want something super quick, I have other dishes I go to for fast meals.
Well for me it is a decade or two, but otherwise ditto. Also a super-cheap tuna casserole I picked up from my step-mother. That’s it though - I can’t think of anything else I use that stuff for.
Odd thing is, even though I like a lot of good/from scratch food I kinda dislike bechamel in most anything. Bechamel-based lasagnas in particular are a Lovecraftian abomination in my eyes. So I’m in the odd ( tasteless? ) position of using the white trash version in a couple of things, but eschewing the similarly-purposed stuff from scratch completely.
Count me in the cream of soups make fine ingredients for comfort food group.
Probably wouldn’t cook more than one or two recipes with them a month (ignoring the fact that I eat meals I don’t cook way more often than meals I do), but there’s a couple of recipes featuring cream of soups which are a part of my childhood and a part of my present and I like it that way.
I’m fine with it. I don’t use them a lot, but I have no qualms about using cream of whatever in a noodle dish or pot pie kind of thing. Makes for adding a lot of thickness and richness (and salt and MSG) without too many calories (they’re nowhere near as rich as the kind of cream sauce I would make.) Plus my wife loves the condensed soups, so bonus. Easy to deal with for a quick meal.
She is a box-basher, as is Rachel Ray [or at least she was when I first saw her on TV] and believe it or not, knowing which product will do what you want can be tricky. Using something premade makes it less likely that you will end up with trying to get the eggs poached and the english muffins toasted and the hollandaise done without it breaking and everything put together and on the table along with the mimosas and bloody marys while dealing with Aunt Ada trying to help along with 2 kids, a cat and that strange little pomeranian belonging to Aunt Maggie.
And yes, a basic bechamel is easy to make and not all that time consuming if you have all the ingredients. I prefer to make it myself, but in an absolute pinch with the crush of trying to get turkey day out with only 4 burners and a double oven I would probably grab for a can of cream of critter soup, a bag of frozen green beans, a bag of slivered almonds and a can of durkee fried onions so I still have the time to make the gravy, make the mashed sweet potatoes, get the plum pudding out of the pot and wash it so I can make yet something else. If I use a can of critter, that makes a dish I can slap together and pop in to heat while I rest the turkey, put the sides in their serving dishes and get the apples and crusts in proximity to pop into the oven to bake while we eat [we like our apple pies hot out of the oven and the mince and pumpkin cold, not sure if we are wierd or not.]
Yeah they are fine but definitely are a bit of a cheat. If you don’t want to use them, make your own white sauce and add whatever fresh ingredients you want to it. White sauces are incredibly easy to make so go wild.
Cream of Mushroom—broccoli casserole.
Cream of Celery—anything I plan to actually eat myself.
Cream of Chicken—our white trash pot pie which includes Dollar Store frozen peas & carrots and Walmart brand stove top dressing on top. So bad it’s good.
I have a recipe for a divine tuna casserole, lovingly made with leeks and Bechamel and real mushrooms. Although it’s not hugely complicated to make, there are some days that at the end of the workday, I want to throw something together and not have to chop and clean and stir and all that. That’s when the Cream-of-Mushroom, tuna, and noodles come out. It ain’t as good as the fancy version, but it’s plenty good.
Other than that, no cream-of-anything in my cupboard.
I use cream of mushroom in my broccoli casserole and in my tuna casserole. I think the strong flavors of broccoli and tuna help to drown out the yucky can taste.
I think I’ll try making my own sauce next time though, because even though I do like my casseroles well enough, this change could really improve them.
I don’t have any philosophical objection to using them. They’re not for everything, of course, but if you can buy goop that already has the things you want in it, why not use it?
That said,
I can help you out with both of those.
Broccoli-Cauliflower Casserole:
Steam up a bunch of broccoli, cauliflower, and (optional but recommended) a chopped onion. Alternate layers of the vegetables with layers of American cheese (the real stuff, not Velveeta). After the top layer of cheese, add a crust layer of shredded bread (about two or three slices worth) soaked in melted butter. Bake at 350 for long enough for the cheese to melt (about half an hour).
Corn casserole:
Combine 1 can creamed corn, 1 can whole corn, 1 cup sour cream, 1 stick margarine, 1 box corn muffin mix, and two eggs. Stir thoroughly and pour into a casserole pan. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour (it’s done when a toothpick comes out clean). Optionally, include chopped peppers as well.
An onion, a pot roast, and a can of cream of mushroom. Put it in a crockpot for 8 hours and it’s delicious. (And I’m someone who usually omits the salt when making a recipe.)
Cream of [Stuff] soups taste like death-by-sodium, and make anything they’re dumped onto or into taste likewise. So if I’m served something like that, I’ll politely take a few bites, then fill up on bread. This is becoming more relevant as my parents’ tastebuds are dying a lingering death, and my mom’s food will soon make seawater taste refreshing.
Also, while I don’t like mushrooms at the best of times, those things they put into Cram of Mushroom soup are somehow even more vile. Rubbery, slimy, tasting only of salt; it’s like being fed leeches that were killed by salt.
Velveeta, though, is okay in a few applications. That bog-standard tuna casserole works well with cubed Velveeta. It just needs to be made with an actual bechamel, rather than with cream of salty vomit.
Last winter, at a loss for something to serve, I whipped up a quick tuna, noodles, peas, cream of mushroom, cheese casserole. The kids happened in and both got a taste.
All three of my feeders were satisfied. It tasted like Grandma made.
Sorry to say I couldn’t eat it. I knew what it was made of. And it’s just too salty.
As far as sauces on anything I’ve cut way back to help us keep our weight down but I think daughter and I are still the only ones who can appreciate, say, steamed broccoli on its own.
ETA: I can’t prove it but sometime in the late seventies/early eighties Campbell’s changed the recipe for its cream of mushroom soup. The taste and texture were distinctly different. I think they may have even labeled it “new and improved.” I haven’t much cared for it since.
Not fine dining.
) position of using the white trash version in a couple of things, but eschewing the similarly-purposed stuff from scratch completely.