Broccoli Cheese Casserole
During my freshman year of college, I spent my first Thanksgiving away from home. I was very lucky to meet a great friend (and future roommate) who invited me to her house in the very, very deep south for the Thanksgiving holiday. It felt other-worldly... banana trees, palm trees, and a warm sunny beach on Thanksgiving day. Her parents were super friendly and caring people. Not only did they manage to feed this vegetarian on a traditionally turkey-heavy holiday, their broccoli cheese casserole has been on my Thanksgiving menu ever since.
I've tweaked the original recipe a tiny bit over the last 16 (gasp!) years, but this year, I made a game-changing tweak: I made the breaded topping instead of using pre-packaged stuffing mix. Wow! Honestly, shell salad and mashed potatoes are usually the highlight for my Thanksgiving feast, but this year's broccoli cheese casserole beat them out for the first time.
Broccoli Cheese Casserole
Ingredients
32 ounces frozen cut broccoli (organic)
1 tablespoon dehydrated minced onion
2 eggs
1 can (10 3/4 ounces) cream of mushroom soup (low-sodium)
1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese (Cabot)
dry stuffing mix (about 10 ounces)
Method
Cook the broccoli according to package instructions. Layer cooked broccoli in the bottom of a 9x13 casserole dish.
In a small bowl, mix the onion, eggs, and cream of mushroom soup. Pour this mix over the broccoli.
Cover with cheese and top with stuffing mix.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Stuffing
The original recipe I followed called for half a bag of a pre-packaged dry stuffing mix. This year, I read the ingredients on that particular dry stuffing mix and... I decided to make my own. It was SO tasty that I regret not paying better attention when I measured ingredients. In general, here's what I did: Place 10 slices of day-old bread (I used Aroostook Wheat from Borealis Bread) on a baking sheet and cook at 200 degrees for about two hours, until bread is dry. Break dried bread into crumbs (I used a food processor). Mix in desired spices -- parsley (about 1/2 teaspoon), thyme (maybe a little less than 1/2 teaspoon), salt (pinch), pepper (several grinds on the pepper grinder), and Bell's Seasoning (about 1/2 teaspoon).
Notes
I haven't been cooking with eggs much in the last several months. But, at least for the holiday season, I'm not ready to be done with them entirely. For now, I don't trust most of the claims on the packages (free range, cage free, etc.), so I drew a line in the sand at eggs from chickens that were treated with antibiotics. Very luckily, Jeremy managed to find a package of eggs in the local grocery store that said "no antibiotics." The original recipe called for an additional one cup of mayo. When I made it myself, that seemed like way too much, so I cut back until eventually, I just left it out. I never miss it.
