I got me a 13-year-old turned 14 this month and that boy loves this recipe, “What we havin’ for dinner?”
This is a casserole and the one thing that can hold up a meal is waiting on a doggone casserole to “dry up.” This is one of my “dry” recipes; it’s just so freaking delicious that I couldn’t just not include on this website.
Sure, there’s some way that I could “force” beer into the recipe; and I do when I include chopped chicken (brine the chicken before cooking the chicken). And there will be other recipes that I’ll post that are some of my favorite “dry” recipes or within are some ingredients you just have to try. Beer makes all the recipes taste awesome. But we know that as long as it’s cooked up in Cast Iron, you’ll be hearing, “Ohhh, it sure ‘nuf smells good in here!” Truth! My wife just walked in the room and said just that!
There is some preemptive planning to get this recipe ready. There’s the first cook and then the final cook. But don’t hang up quite yet, this is one that could be prepped the day before and ready to cook up when you are good and ready.
The squash needs to be precooked. And so does the onions and any raw meat you are adding to this recipe. You can pre-boil your squash in either a cast iron Dutch oven or, if you have one, a stainless pot. Wash your squash, slice it in ½ inch to 1 inch slices, and place the sliced squash in the pot. The next thing is to add salt…lots of salt. We’ll discard the water when we are done but we want the squash to be nicely salted.
Don’t boil the squash to mush. You just boil it long enough to soften the squash. When you put this casserole together and cook it, raw squash will not cook to fully done. By the time the casserole is “dried out” and “ready” as we’d expect a casserole to be, the squash will still have a bit of a “crunch” to it. Boil your squash, sauté the onions, and cook any raw meat you’d like to add to this recipe.
It’s gonna be good!
Your optimum cast iron pan of choice will be either the 12” or the 14” skillet. You could use your 9” x 13” cast iron casserole pan or even your 15” skillet if you wanted to (or if you added more ingredients to your casserole. That 10.25” will be pushing it. You’re likely to have a mess unless you cut the recipe back a bit.
Beer-less Summer Squash Casserole
Equipment
- 12", 14", or 15" Cast Iron Skillet or a 9"x13" Cast Iron Casserole Pan
- Cutting Board
- Knife
- Strainer
- Bowl to Catch Tomato's Juices
- Bowl to Mix it all in
- Rubber Spatula to move from the bowl to the skillet
- Spatula (wooden or metal) to "work" the sauté process
Ingredients
- 4 Pounds Yellow Squash 4 pounds give or take a pound or take two and slice in ½ thick (or thicker) slices
- 1 Tablespoon Salt Use 1-3 tablespoons here and keep this measurement sseparated from the 1-2 tsp below
- 1 Pound Hamburger
- ¼ Pound Sausage 1/4-1/2 Pounds; Optional (but what a treat!)
- 1 Onion Chopped
- 3 Cloves Garlic 3-6 Cloves of Garlic; Chopped
- 1 Tomato 1-2 Tomatoes Diced and Left to Drain
- 1 Bell pepper Chopped
- ½ Cup Flour
- 4 Eggs I sometimes will use 6 eggs.
- 1 Teaspoon Smoked paprika 1-2 Teaspoons
- 1 Teaspoon Salt 1-2 Teaspoons per y’all’s taste
- 1 Teaspoon pepper 1-2 Teaspoons per y’all’s taste
- 2 Ounce Shredded cheese Two Ounces or more of the cheese of your choice. The amount is depending on the dedication to your current diet.
- Dried Parsley or other “dried leaf herbs” like oregano or italian seasoning
- 1 Tablespoon Butter A Tablespoon...more or less. Butter for sautéing. You could use another oil but it doesn't taste as phenomenal and is awesome and as delicious and…we use bacon grease often (photo)
- Separated 1+ tablespoons of salt for the squash boil (do not put this in the final recipe)
Instructions
- Slice the squash in about ½ inch slices.
- Prepare a pot of water to (initially) boil the squash in. We need to soften it up a bit before we put it in the casserole. The casserole will cook a bit faster than the squash would if you put it in raw...especially some of your larger summer squash that "got a way from you" in the garden.
- Add salt to the water. The water needs to be salty to give the squash a nice salty flavor. Use 1-3 (or more) tablespoons of salt per your preference. We'll pour out the water after the boil and most of the salt along with the water.
- Put all your sliced squash in a pot and toss in one-three (plus) tablespoons of salt. Add enough water to cover the squash and then let it (SLOW) boil until the squash is just soft. Don't push it to the mushy, overcooked point. Just enough to where it's soft.
While the Squash is Boiling
- Butter or any other oil will work perfect as your oil-of-choice. We use bacon sometimes to "grease" our pan.
- Get 1-2 tomatoes ready. We'll cut tomatoes first to give them time to drain.
- Get the onions and the garlic ready to sauté. We'll sauté the onions. But the bell peppers will go in raw.
- Sauté the onions and the garlic. If you rendered fat from the bacon, use the same pan (pouring out the excessive oil if needed). You can use the pan you will cook the casserole in to cook this whole recipe (stovetop part and the oven part). The pan will have time to cool down before you prep your casserole.
- Brown your meat in the skillet and right on top of the onions. Once the meat is browned and all mixed in with the onions. Set aside in a bowl to let drain. I use a bowl with a thick layer of paper towels to "soak up" the grease and liquids.
- Fine chop the bell peppers and the sausage. Make sure your sausage is "cooked and ready to eat." If not, brown you sausage first.
- Strain all the water out of the squash and let it drip and cool for a bit along with letting the meat in the sautéed onion - bell pepper - garlic mix cool for a bit.
Ready for the Oven
- You want all of this to cool down just a bit. That boiled squash is wicked hot! If you put the eggs in with the ingredients too hot, the eggs will start to cook and...well...that’s not gonna turn out well. We want them to cook but in the oven. This oven part is easy.
- Heat oven to 350°F / 177°C
- Once everything is still warm but cooled down a bit, toss everything into the pot you boiled the squash in, and...Do The Hokey Pokey...mix it all about including the eggs and the flour and everything in the ingredients list that was cut up and that was boiled or sautéed.
- Do not put your cheese in yet. If you've already added the cheese and are just now reading this, it's perfectly okay to get more cheese. No one's ever said I've added too much cheese. Just like no one's ever said I've got too much air to breathe.
- Once you've mixed everything up, transfer everything to your skillet or pan and then smooth it flat so nothing is sticking up that would cook faster in the hot oven than the rest of the casserole. There's always a piece sticking up somewhere so do a "whack-a-mole" on it and smooth it out.
- Let it get up to at least 160°F / 72°C (but you may need to get it up to about 190°F / 88°C or higher). The only raw ingredient you need to fully cook are the eggs. At 160 degrees, it’ll be at the safe temperature. But, the casserole may still be a bit “wet.” Let it keep cooking.
- To check the temp you could just check it with a temperature probe once in a while when it starts to look done. Or you could use a wireless meat thermometer. The goal here is not to overcook or get too hot but to make sure that it's “dried out.” Not dried out like a crusty-stick-to-the-pan kinda dried out. You’re looking for all the egg to have cooked and everything is bound together but it’s not wet. Kind of like cooking sweet potato pie. You don't want this soupy, and you don't want It's so dry that you have to scrape it off the bottom of the pan. You want it like a casserole.
The Final Touches
- Pull it out of the oven and crank the oven up to broil where the top oven burner is fired up.
- Sprinkle some of the cheese on top. The amount of cheese depends on the dedication you have to your current diet. Now sprinkle a little bit of that dried parsley on top for the finishing touch.
- PUT IT BACK IN THE OVEN BUT KEEP A CLOSE EYE ON IT. Once it's all toasted up, get ready to eat it up!
Notes
