Thursday, February 4, 2010

Dinner Tonight: Hashbrown Casserole

This is another one of my favorite meals, though apparently hubby doesn't agree.  I am not sure what happened - he is the reason I started making it in the first place.  His coworker brought some to work several years ago and he liked it so much he asked for the recipe.  The one that she made was meatless and just a side dish, but I thought I could turn it into a meal by adding some ground turkey.  In my opinion it turned out great!  As far as I know hubby always enjoyed it until recently he started complaining that I used too much onion.  So, the last couple of times I made it I left the onion out of his half and he at least agreed to eat it.  I have always served this meal with toast since I think of it as being kind of breakfast-y, but apparently hubby didn't remember that as he was surprised by it tonight.  He thought there needed to be more interesting bread to make up for a "boring and tasteless" meal.  So, I made him some garlic bread with the leftover Wal-Mart bolillo rolls from the other night.  He ate both the bread and the casserole, and just said that it was "edible" - not exactly winning praise but at least he didn't feel like he had to go out and buy a substitute meal.
I thought it was super yummy.  I love how the top is crunchy and the rest is soft and gooey.  So let's ignore his opinion and pretend it's fabulous and you can't wait to try it!  I can't find the original recipe, so this is a bit of a mixture between what I remember and the modifications I have made (adding garlic of course).  When I googled trying to find a similar recipe, they all involved some sort of cream soup.  Mine doesn't have any soup and I wonder if that was the original intention of hubby's coworker or if she forgot to type it in the email she sent him with the recipe?  We will never know, as she stopped working there years ago and they didn't keep in touch.  Fortunately I don't think it suffers without the soup.

Hashbrown Casserole

1 lb ground turkey
Garlic powder, seasoning salt & pepper to taste
10 oz frozen shredded hash browns
5 oz shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 cup corn flakes, crushed
2 Tbsp melted butter or butter substitute

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Season turkey with garlic, seasoning salt and pepper and brown in skillet.  Drain if desired.  Combine meat, hash browns, cheese, sour cream, onion and seasonings in large bowl, mix well to combine.  Spread into casserole dish (I use 11 x 7 but you could use 13 x 9).  Top with corn flakes and drizzle with melted butter (I use Brummel & Brown since it's my favorite butter substitute and it saves quite a few fat grams - I think the original recipe called for a whole stick of regular butter but I just couldn't bring myself to go there).  Bake for 30 minutes until crispy on top and warmed through.

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Estimated cost of meal:

Hash browns: $.67
Turkey: $1.50
Cheese: $.80
Sour cream: $.30
Onion: $.10
Seasoning: $.10
Corn Flakes: $.25
Butter: $.15
Toast: $.30

Total: $4.17

Former life total: Dinner @ Five Guys: $19

Leaner Life Savings: $14.83 or 78%!!!

1 comment:

Jolon said...

Hey Laura,

Thanks for visiting! I really like the format you do with the "former life $ total" and new frugal total! GREAT model :)

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