Joan's Casserole

Today at work I was sitting with my podmate and between taking calls, discussed that I was interested in trying new foods for dinner. Now, my usual food preperation involves ground beef, pork, chicken, and bone-in chicken, but I'm willing to evolve beyond that for the sake of making something tasty. What she suggested was a casserole that she makes every now and than and is always a hit! I got her to jot down the recipe and asked a few questions and so that's what I tried making tonight.

Since I had gotten ground beef already, I just had to run to the grocery to get a bag of potatoes, a can of kernel corn and a can of mushroom soup. Too bad when I got there, there was a sale on store brand cream of mushroom soup so there weren't any left! I got Campbell's fancy kind instead.

When I got home, I took about six potatoes, peeled them and sliced them cross wise into many thin discs: about a couple coin's width thickness. That was all the prep work I had to do, aside from draining the corn and mashing up the can of soup so it would pour better. Oh right, and preheat the oven to 350°F .

In my 9x9x2 baking pan, I lined the bottom and sides with ground beef that I broke up and than mashed together. It ended up to be about a centimeter thick from the bottom and away from the sides. I left a good gap between that and the top of the pan.

Then I took the slices of potato and covered over the beef, layered on more slices of potatoes and covered over the beef completely. That made a thick layer of potato and still left a little bit of space on top to pour the corn. After spreading the corn evenly over the top, I poured the mushroom soup over and than spread it out.

The next step was to cover it. Now, since I'm not making it in a casserole dish or anything fancy like that, I used some aluminum foil to cover the pan and toss it in the oven. Not sure what difference it made but I poked two holes in foil for vents. I let it cook for an hour, than took off the covering and cooked it for another half hour. After that long, it still wasn't cooked thoroughly, so I took some shredded cheese I had, coated over the top, and let it cook for another half hour, and voi la! My co worker had tole me that cooking should take an hour to an hour and a half, and was done when a fork could easily slide through the layer of potato.

Overall, it came out quite well! I wish the beef would have stayed with the potato more easily, but it was quite tasty.

Oh! And I made Jell-o!