My Mom's Tuna Casserole That I've Made Even Better

The awesome thing about tuna casserole is that everything is basically measured out for you by the manufacturers, so there's no messing around with measuring cups (unless you're the kind who actually measures the four quarts of water for boiling the noodles)! I was a lousy cook until recent years (you could ask my cousin Kyle about our 4am muffin-baking disaster) but even I could throw together a tuna casserole when the prospect of another meal of coffee and ramen became too much to bear. AND SO CAN YOU.

I was going to take pictures of the steps like all the fancier cooking bloggers do but my friend Alicia stopped in and I forgot. But I did get one of the ingredients:

So here's my recipe. Bear in mind I'm one of those people who adds things until it seems like enough.

Ingredients:

1 bag of egg noodles (you can use whatever kind of noodles you want, but I like the squishiness of egg noodles in tuna casserole and just can't get that with other noodles.)
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 cans chunk light tuna in water
Butter (enough to grease your casserole dish)
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional (but only if you want non-awesome tuna casserole):
1/4 bag of frozen peas (give or take)
1 sleeve of saltine crackers
Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Cook your noodles according to the package (for real, I'm not your mother. I'm not going to tell you how to cook noodles. Just follow the directions, or don't. I don't). Strain them; don't rinse. Put them back in the pan unless you want to wash more dishes, in which case you should put them in a mixing bowl. But that would be ridiculous, so just put them back in the pan. Stir in the mushroom soup and peas. Add some salt and pepper if you want to.

Open the tuna but READ THIS PART CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING BECAUSE IT IS IMPORTANT: drain tuna juice into a container and give the juice and a couple scraps of tuna to your cat. Unless you don't have one. But if you have one and you skip this step, you are the worst kind of human. And I know you're not, so share with your kitty. This is only the second time I've made tuna casserole since I got my cat Avery, and she already knows this crucial step.

Ok, NOW you can stir in the remainder of the tuna.

(Alicia chimed in at this point to say that her mom would put cheddar cheese in the mix. That's probably good, but this is MY recipe, and cheddar cheese has no part in it. But you can use it if you want to.)

Grease a casserole dish (9x12 or something? I don't know. Casserole-sized). Pour in your mixture and spread it out evenly. Next is the saltine step and you have several options: you can crush them in the sleeve or in a baggy before you put them on the casserole if you want a finer crust, or you can just crumble them in your hands as you go if you want cracker chunks in your crust. I like chunks. (For the record, I use nearly a full sleeve-- I usually end up with about 6-8 crackers leftover.) Coat your whole casserole with these, then with some Parmesan cheese. Cover in foil and bake for 30 minutes (I take the foil off partway to let the crust brown a little. You can also broil if you really want to toast the crust).


Now enjoy it because it is awesome.

Reheating: You can toss your leftovers in the microwave for a couple minutes, but they're going to be dry and gross. The best way to re-heat your tuna casserole is on the stove, and you can do it one of two ways--

1. Double-boil it. I don't have an actual double-boiler; I have pans of different sizes. So I put a small pan in a large pan with enough water in the large pan that the smaller one is slightly in the water, but not so much that it will all boil over. Put your tuna casserole in the smaller pan, cover, and heat. Takes about 10-15 minutes if it's not frozen.

2. Steam it in a baggy. It's got to be one of the zipper kind unless you have some ingenious way of sealing plastic baggies that don't have zippers. Get the air out as best you can, seal it, and put it in a pot of boiling water. It's usually hot enough for my liking in under ten minutes. I portion it into bags when I'm done eating so I don't have to find room in the fridge for the dish, and so it's soft enough that I can do this:

If you can't tell (my skills are not in photography), I've got the baggy in a glass so it will stand up while I scoop my leftovers into it.

With both of the above methods, I like to add a touch of butter before I heat my leftovers. I actually sort of think that leftover tuna casserole is better than freshly-made tuna casserole.

Oh, and I mentioned in my last post that I get all the leftovers now, but I promised some to Alicia. She's lucky I like her so much.

And here's photographic proof that my kitchen is super-small:

That's the whole thing. I'm standing in the bedroom to take this picture.