Casserole #2 - Acapulco Casserole

 The Year of Casseroles

Casserole #2 - Acapulco Casserole

    Finally writing about this recipe, which I made almost a month ago. Life has been a whirlwind since the beginning of the year.  I found this Acapulco Casserole recipe in the Woman's Day - Plain & Francy Ground Beef Cookbook published in 1978. There are a ton of recipes in this book and I'd love to try more of them. I like that substitutions exist for ground beef. Maybe you don't eat red meat or maybe you just want a healthier meat substitute. For this recipe, I used ground turkey. Use whichever ground meat you prefer. I would say that I used a 3-quart casserole dish, instead of a 2-quart dish and I'm glad I did, because it was really full and I've no idea how it would have fit in a 2-quart dish. That said, although I liked this dish, it would be better to eat fresh; eat leftovers quickly. I had so much that I froze some of the casserole and I didn't like the texture of the tortillas in the casserole after it had been frozen.  I'm always glad I try a recipe, even when it is not a favorite. I did like the taste of this, so try it! Serve with a side salad. 

Ingredients:

1/2 to 1 lb - ground beef/turkey/chicken/pork

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup chopped celery

1 clove garlic (I love garlic, so I added more like a tablespoon of minced garlic)

1/2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp chili powder

16 oz red kidney beans, drained

16 oz creamed corn

1 cup tomato sauce

8 flour tortillas

1/2 - 1 cup shredded cheese (I used my favorite, Monterrey Jack)

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Brown meat in a large skillet. Drain fat when meat is browned and add all ingredients, except for tortillas and cheese. In casserole dish, layer meat sauce and tortillas; you can start with a tortilla on the bottom. Break up tortillas if needed before starting a new layer, so they will cover the meat sauce. Continue until you've used all of the sauce with sauce as the top layer. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes. Makes six to eight servings. 

Acapulco Casserole 

Acapulco Casserole 

Acapulco Casserole

Week 33 - Baked Beans

 Baked Beans

Week 33 of 52

Side Dish #5

    When I thought about finding a recipe for Week 33 (before I looked up which category it was), I had decided I wanted to try a recipe in my late mother's recipe box (photo below). The very, first recipe I pulled out, was this one. It was a folded piece of lined paper, with no author name or date or anything, besides the recipe. I shared the picture below with my sister, my cousin (maternal) and two of my aunts (one maternal and one paternal) and nobody recognizes the handwriting. I thought it reminded me of my maternal grandmother (whose recipe for Crazy Cake {it wasn't crazy}, was the second recipe I made for this blog). I guess it the name of the author will have to remain a mystery. Neither my sister nor my cousin ever remembered having beans this way and although I thought I'd maybe heard of beans like this, I don't think I'd ever had them. I really liked this recipe. It made a good sized amount. Perfect for toting to a picnic or pot-luck.  Note: I'm going to write it out exactly how it is written, because it is kind of charming, with it's spelling mistakes; I'll use italics to write the correct word/spelling and to add direction.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb hamburg (ground hamburger)

1/2 lb bacon (chopped before cooking)

1/2 of a large onion (diced)

1/2 cup catsup (ketchup)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon prepared mustard

1 teaspoon vinigar (vinegar)

1 large can or 3 small cans pork & beans (Drain two of the cans if using small or half if using the large can)

1 small can kidney beans

1 small can butter beans (I substituted Great Northern Beans)

Directions:

Combine bacon and hamburger in a large pot (I used a cast iron dutch oven), and begin browning. Add onion after just a few minutes and continue cooking until hamburger and bacon are thoroughly cooked/browned. You do not want any pink showing. Drain grease and return meat & onion mixture to pan. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook on low-medium heat, until hot. 

Tip: I drained one of the cans of pork & beans, the kidney beans and the great northern beans, because I didn't want the finished product to be "soupy", so do the same thing if you don't want "soupy" baked beans. 

Baked Beans

My Late Mother's Recipe Box (One of my treasures)

The Original Hand-Written Recipe

Grandma Marlin's Norwegian Best Bean Hotdish

 Grandma Marlin's Norwegian Best Bean Hotdish

    This recipe is adapted from The Centennial Harvest - A Collection of Recipes from The First Unitarian Church of Dallas. My church. We are Unitarian Universalists.  It was founded in 1899; the 100 year anniversary was celebrated in 1999 and the cookbook was published in 2000.  I joined the church in about 2009/2010. The original recipe was submitted by a member and due to this cookbook only being 10 years old, I'm not going to name her, for privacy reasons.  A friend in the Twitterverse, said she has a cookbook with a very, similar recipe. It goes by the name "4 Bean Bake" in her book and that recipe is popular with her family. 

    Yeah, so this recipe wasn't complicated, but I felt like I used a lot of bowls in making it. I did the washing up, while it was in the oven. When it was finished, there was more liquid than I'd thought there would be, but I liked it. I served my Best Bean Hotdish over some brown rice and had two little pieces of buttered and toasted sourdough bread (to sop up the juices).

Ingredients:

1 Big Can of Baked Beans (I used a large can of Bush's Original Baked Beans)

2 Cans Kidney Beans

2 Cans Great Northern Beans (The original recipe calls for butter beans)

1 lb Bacon, cut into 1 inch strips

3 Large Yellow Onions; Sliced and then sliced in half (The original recipe calls for 4 large Bermuda onions, sliced)

1 Cup Brown Sugar

1 Tsp Garlic Powder

1/2 Tsp Dry Mustard

1/2 Cup Vinegar

    Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.  Drain the beans, saving the liquid and mixing the beans together in a large bowl.  The original recipe also says to cut your bacon into 1 inch strips, but you can certainly cut into smaller pieces if you like. Whatever size you choose, you'll fry it gently, not letting it get crispy, and remove from your pan. Put your onion in the skillet and fry for several minutes (about five minutes at least), stirring to coat with the bacon grease.  Whisk together the last four ingredients and stir into the onions. Simmer for 20 minutes. If the liquid evaporates, add in a little of the reserved bean juice, so it doesn't stick, because you don't want the onions to get dry. Mix the onion mixture into the beans, add the pieces of bacon which you had set aside and combine all ingredients. Pour the mixture into a large casserole dish.  The original recipe says a covered casserole dish. I had to use the largest casserole dish that I own, which does not have a lid. Since my dish did not have a lid, I used foil and it worked fine. Bake for 50 minutes at 350 degrees. I really don't know how this could ever fit in a regular sized casserole dish, because it made a huge amount. 

    Serve as a side dish or over rice.  The side of sourdough bread went really well with this dish, because again, "hello!!" there was juices to soak up. I have no idea how many servings to say this made, so let's just say "a lot", because it was a lot. 

    The verdict? I really, liked this recipe and would definitely make this again. 

Great Norther, Kidney and Baked Beans

Onions

The bean, onion and bacon mixture.

Yass!!! It looks yummy, just out of the oven.

I wasn't going to include two pictures of the finished dish, but you can see my UU (Unitarian Universalist) Flaming Chalice (our church symbol) tattoo, so I'm including this photo, because my church means a lot to me. 

A close-up of yumminess.