Today's Recipe: Green Bean Casserole: Variations on a Theme.

 

It always amazes me how two people can follow the same recipe and come up with completely different final dishes.

When I was in Jr High, I competed in the county fair baking category. The recipe for chocolate chip cookies was printed in the newspaper. To enter your cookies you had to follow the recipe exactly.

Baking is one area of cooking where following the recipe is pretty important. The chemistry that allows flour and sugar to become tasty cake and cookies requires a certain amount of precision and some elements shouldn't be compromised with a good understanding of the purpose they serve in the mix.

A few days before the fair started you had to turn in six of your best cookies on a white paper plate. They had to stand on their own without any of the frills or decorations allowed in some of the other competitions. The judges would sample one or two and the rest would go on display in the glass cases in the homemakers building for the duration of the fair.

It was always kind of strange to look at all the cookies lined up on their identical paper plates. You knew, that in theory at least, they all used the identical ingredients and proportions. And yet the final cookies were so very different. Some were round balls that didn't spread out at all. Some were thin sprawling cookies with lumps where the chocolate chips were. Some were perfectly sized and perfectly smooth, making you wonder if they contained any chips at all. And then there were the ones of even size with just enough chocolate chip peeking through the top. You just knew that they had the perfect mix of chewy center and crunchy, crumbly exterior. Same recipe, different outcomes.

I practiced and practiced that cookie recipe until I am quite certain my entire family was sick of chocolate chip cookies. I definitely have it memorized and made it scale-able. Once I found myself with free range of the commercial kitchen at field camp. I spent at least one evening every week making dozens and dozens of cookies using the floor stand Hobart mixer. My pretty kitchen aid is wonderful but I loved that giant Hobie! (Remind me to tell you the story of the great cookie war and the turtle walk some day.)

Following recipes can be important. We may think we follow them carefully but the more you make something the less likely it is that you actually do what the recipe says.

My mom had a recipe for a soup called Hearty Hodgepodge You can find it in old seventies cookbooks. It is loaded with sausage, beef, ham, potatoes and garbanzo beans. It is the soup I crave on blustery winter days. She readily shared the recipe. It is even in the family cook book. If I haven't made it for a while, I will glance at it to make sure I am headed in the right direction.

One time I was at a potluck where some one else brought the hodgepodge. It was watery and almost inedible. My mom re-read the recipe and started laughing. She said, she hadn't actually made it that way in years! So much of the recipe is subjective. Particularly with something like soup, you have to taste along the way. You really can't just dump it all together and hope to get a perfect result. The recipe provides a guideline and in some cases there are rules but you always have to trust your judgement on the final product.

Which brings me to green bean casserole. I really like green bean casserole. My father-in-law always asked for it. The spuds like it particularly when it is the middle layer in tater tot casserole. There are literally dozens of recipes for green bean casserole. Some are pretentious. Some are basic. At their core, they have green beans, mushroom soup and french fried onion rings.

None of them should ever involve adding milk! Ever. Similar potluck story. Same cook claimed the green bean casserole. It was swimming in watery milk. I politely (yes, truly I was very polite in my questioning) asked for the recipe. It was a national brand that called for adding milk. Ugh.

So the basics....

Three cans of green beans (Drained. For the love of all that is good drain the beans!!!)

One can of cream of mushroom soup (this is the not pretentious, easy to make on a week night version)

A good handful of french fried onion rings

Another good handful or two of shredded cheddar cheese.

(If you must have a definition... a good handful of onions is probably a half a cup and good handful of shredded cheddar is probably about 3/4 of a cup. But don't take my word for it. Use your judgment.)

No salt

No pepper

Nothing else.

And absolutely NO MILK.

Mix. Gently. No bean mash here. Put it in a casserole dish. Top with more onions and bake until bubbly and delicious.

One thing that makes this double delicious (and pretentious) is making your own mushroom soup. I am going to be making some this weekend in preparation for Thanksgiving. I will try to document it so I can share. The key to the rich flavor is using dried wild mushrooms. (OK. Fair call. It does use heavy cream. Heavy cream is milk. So I put milk in my green bean casserole. But..... It isn't the same and it isn't watery.)

The fresh mushroom soup lends a strong mushroom flavor to the casserole. If you don't like mushrooms stick to the prepared versions. You can find some lovely gluten free versions in the specialty aisle. You can probably substitute cream of chicken soup. But never cream of celery soup. Cream of celery soup is an abomination and the bane of every unregulated pot of stone soup at camp everywhere.

So.... follow the recipe. But taste and use your judgement. Unless it is burned to a crisp or the broccoli is full of worms there are ways to fix it. Ask me if you need some help. And enjoy it. Enjoy making your food. Enjoy sharing your food. Enjoy Eating your food.

--- Oh, and that county fair thing. Yeah. I won the blue ribbon.