Home › Forums › Cooking — (other than baking) › In Praise of the Tuna Noodle Casserole
BakerAunt.Deb Perelman posted this link in her weekly email. I chuckled as I read, but warning--there are more four letter words than strictly necessary.
https://heated.medium.com/tuna-noodle-casserole-it-only-sounds-disgusting-d82f7c262f9d
I saw nothing in that post to convince me the author knows more about food than I do.
Clearly it is written for people new to the kitchen. If it sends more of them into the kitchen to do some cooking, that's great.
Some recipes are introductory recipes, they lure the novice in with a good story and a detailed explanation and a promise of making something comforting and familiar. I don't really like tuna-noodle casserole, but my mother used to make a tuna-rice casserole that was very good. Nothing that she would make for guests but soothing and tasty.
We haven't made tuna noodle casserole in years, mostly because it tends to be high carb and high sodium. I haven't made chicken and rice casserole in a while for pretty much the same reason.
I used to make a tuna fish, minute rice and mushroom soup dish when our younger son was still living at home, my wife would eat something else, she doesn't eat much rice because it causes her blood sugar to skyrocket, even with a stir-fry she'll just take a tiny bit of rice.
Tuna noodle casserole is one of those dishes that the cooking competitions often select as an 'outdated' dish in need of updating. I've yet to see one of these updatings that solves the carb/sodium issues while still sounding edible.
I really enjoyed reading the article she linked to about the grocery stores stocking foods connected to the history of the region they are located in, and not putting ethnic foods into aisles marked "ethnic" but shelving them among foods from similar categories. As for tuna noodle casserole -- if I'm going to make that, I'm not going to bother to saute mushrooms or anything else, just throw in a can of mushroom soup and be done with it! Actually, I preferred cream of celery over cream of mushroom!
I made a version a few years ago with spinach noodles, and I used low-fat evaporated milk. I chose gouda cheese (a favorite). Sigh. I don't think that I could eat it now, but there are times when its simplicity and comforting quality appeal to me.
