Hamburger Stroganoff – Nance and Robyn make the same recipe

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Hamburger Stroganoff, submitted by reader SC Amy. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.  The original recipe came from The Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was submitted by reader/commenter SC Amy. I love me some stroganoff (beef, mushrooms, noodles? Yes, please!), so I was all for giving this a try!

Your ingredients:

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Ground beef, chopped onion, butter, flour, salt, minced garlic, pepper, mushrooms, condensed cream of mushroom soup (original recipe called for cream of chicken soup, but I always have cream of mushroom on hand, so that’s what I used), and sour cream.

Cook your ground beef and onions in a big skillet over medium heat until the ground beef is browned and the onions are cooked.

Is there anything that smells better than ground beef and onions cooking? I think NOT. You might think there is, but you are wrong.

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Then drain your meat and onions.

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While the grease is draining off that stuff, throw your butter in the pan and let it melt.

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Put your beef and onions back in the pan, then add flour, mushrooms, garlic, spices, and stir like crazy. The recipe says you should stir for 5 minutes, but since you drained off all that grease, it doesn’t take that long to cook. I think I let it cook for about three minutes before I was all “Let’s get this show on the ROAD.”

Stir in your soup, bring it to a boil (“stirring constantly”, says the recipe. I think we all know that constant stirring is an urban myth. I stirred it frequently, but not constantly. Sue me.) Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes (actually, I think I stopped around 8 minutes because I’m a rebel like that.)

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Stir in the sour cream, heat through, and then serve over cooked egg noodles.

I started the water for my egg noodles right before I started the stroganoff itself, and the noodles were ready long before the stroganoff. Luckily, egg noodles are known for their patience.

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HURRY IT UP, BITCH. WE’RE GETTING COLD.

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Okay, before you say it – I KNOW. I know how it looks. There are some things you just can’t take a damn flattering picture of, no matter how you try.

The verdict? SC Amy, I think you are THE BOMB, but we just didn’t care for this stuff. I think it had too much sour cream in it. Fred wouldn’t even eat it a second time, and that’s when you know he REALLY doesn’t like something (he’s… “frugal” is the word he likes to use, and he dislikes seeing food go to waste, so he’ll usually finish off food I refuse to eat.) The chickens got the leftovers, and as usual they thought it was awesome.

I have no kitten picture for you today – I’m coming off a vacation to Myrtle Beach, and I am still scattered. (That’s my excuse, and I’m stickin’ to it.) Here, have this possum picture the gamecam caught in the side yard one night.

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“Motherfucking STROGANOFF?! That shit is AWESOME. Hand it over, lady!”

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Have a recipe you want us to make? Check out this page (there’s also a link to that page up there under the banner) and follow the instructions to submit a recipe!

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Nance’s Take:

Do you ever wonder what people were thinking when they decided to add sour cream to a casserole? I mean, who does that? “Oh, I think I’ll just throw a dollop of this soured milk product into my meat. Or maybe I’ll toss some into this chocolate cake mix and see what happens. The possibilities are endless!”

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People confuse The Beagle.

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I started this recipe out on a good note. I was cooking and stirring my meat. Apparently I stopped reading after that.

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This is me being all health-conscious and draining the fat off of my ground beef. How cool is that strainer thingie? I thought it was cool and had never seen such a thing until this year. I don’t get out much.  And no, I didn’t strain it out on my stove.  I just took it over there to take a picture (so you wouldn’t see what a mess my sink was).

Beef Stroganoff

Following directions is sooooo hard. I fried that ground beef and then added my butter and onions instead of doing them all together like the recipe said. I should probably stop skimming so much. But sometimes there are just too many words (and I’m not wearing my glasses).

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This is where I get to show you the particular brand of Crazy that I deal with on the daily thanks to Shirley (aka: my mom). Please note the size of my thumb in relation to how many noodles are left in the bag. Who does this kind of shit? Seriously? I saw that and was all, “WTF, Shirley! You couldn’t just use all of those noodles?”

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True confession: I had it in my head that this was a casserole so I made it in the morning thinking that I would have it for dinner that night. Guess who had beef stroganoff for breakfast? Yup. I’m a genius.

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No need to adjust your monitors. This does indeed look like something I vomited after the great Happy Meal and Southern Comfort fiasco of 1987. Not pretty. And not a good time in my life. Well, okay. It was a damn good time in my life, but don’t tell my kids because they need to do as I say, not as I do.

Beef Stroganoff

Sour cream. I really wish I knew who started this craze and why? A way to get some calcium? Wondering about something like this could drive me crazy. I’m going to be googling that shit until I get answers.

And now you know why I’m glad Robyn does the step-by-steps. She actually pays attention to the recipe and has the ability to focus for more than 30 seconds.

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This is what it looked like after I stirred the sour cream in. I immediately thought of sausage gravy which I think is the most disgusting and foul food on the planet. Yeah, I said it. Southerners be crazy with liking that shit. lol

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My breakfast (not Polish pottery).  At the end of the recipe it said that you could add parsley from your kitchen garden (as if) or a generous shake of paprika to garnish. I added both and obviously I am a wee bit heavy-handed when it comes to paprika shaking.

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I did end up throwing the rest into a casserole dish and heating it up for dinner.

The verdict.  All four of us ate it and liked it.  It’s going into the recipe file because it’s a quick and easy meal.

Beef Stroganoff

But The Beagle is still confused. So am I, Beagle. So am I.

Hamburger Stroganoff - Nance and Robyn make the same recipe
 
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
: Entree
Cuisine: Um... German?
Serves: 4
Ingredients
  • 1 lb ground beef
  • ½ c. chopped onion
  • ¼ c. butter or margarine
  • 2 T flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 clove minced garlic
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • 1 4-ounce can mushrooms stems and pieces (drained)
  • 1 - 10½-ounce can cream of chicken (or cream of mushroom) soup
  • 1 c. sour cream
  • 8 oz. medium egg noodles, cooked
Instructions
  1. In a large skillet over medium heat, cook ground beef and onions until meat is brown and onion is tender.
  2. Drain meat.
  3. Add butter to pan; once it's melted, add meat and onions back to the pan. Stir in flour, salt, garlic, pepper, and mushrooms; cook 3 - 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
  4. Stir in soup; heat to boiling.
  5. Reduce heat. Simmer uncovered 8 - 10 minutes. Stir in sour cream; heat through.
  6. Serve over cooked egg noodles.

 

Strawberry Jelly Roll – Robyn & Nance try the same recipe

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Family Circle’s Strawberry Jelly Roll found over at Recipe.com. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was Nance’s choice, and when I saw what it was, I was like “Yes, please!” I’ve never made any kind of Jelly Roll, and rolling up a cake seems like a life skill that would come in handy. I won’t deny, I was a bit nervous because I was sure I’d mess it up, but I was willing to give it a try!

Ingredients for the cake:

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Egg whites, cream of tartar, granulated sugar, vegetable oil, vanilla, and cake flour (don’t be jealous of my fancy label. Hey, at least this one’s not written with a Sharpie on masking tape!)

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Dump your egg whites and cream of tartar in a mixing bowl, and beat until foamy. Then add 1/4 cup of sugar (NOT the entire 3/4 cup, which I very nearly did because I can never manage to pay attention to anything I’m doing for more than 10 seconds) and beat until soft peaks form.

Do not be mistaken that this is going to be the quick and easy part of the recipe. I had to keep stopping the mixer to check for soft peaks, then start the mixer again, stop it a few minutes later to check, etc. When I hit the “I’m pretty sure I fucked this up and I am NEVER going to get soft peaks” stage, soft peaks finally formed.

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ABOUT TIME.

Now here’s the part of the recipe that I refused to take pictures of. You’re supposed to use a jelly roll pan (10×15 inches), but I do not have a jelly roll pan, and I wasn’t about to go out and buy one. I whipped out the measuring tape and started measuring pans, and found that we had an old roasting pan the right size. So I used that, only it looks like complete and utter shit, so I’m not EVEN going to let y’all see it.

You have to spray the bottom of your jelly roll pan (or whatever kind of pan you’re using) with cooking spray, then cut waxed paper to the size of your pan, put that on the bottom, and spray THAT “lightly” with cooking spray. Here’s a tip from me to you: spray the hell out of that waxed paper or it’s going to stick to your cake. More on that in a minute.

Cook the cake for 12 minutes, then remove from the oven. Run a knife around the outside of the cake. Sprinkle 3 T of confectioner’s sugar over the cake, cover it with a clean dishtowel, cover THAT with a “slightly larger” pan (I used a cookie sheet) and flip the whole mess over. I managed it and I’m a klutz, so you should have no problems with that.

Then you’re supposed to remove the pan and the waxed paper. Except that my waxed paper stuck to the cake, and it did a good job of looking like it was PART of the cake, so I had a hell of a time getting all the waxed paper off. I think you can imagine how I did not swear at ALL.

I finally decided that since it was just Fred and I eating the cake, I wasn’t going to stress too much over whether I’d removed all the waxed paper. Obviously if I were bringing it to a party or something I would have been more careful, but in the end I think I only left a few shreds behind.

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Once you get the waxed paper off the top (formerly the bottom) of the cake, start at the short end and roll up the cake. I thought for sure this was going to be where I ended up fucking it up, but it rolled up just fine. I left it seam side down on a wire rack, and wandered off to do other things while it cooled.

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When the cake is completely cool, you mix up the filling. Ingredients:

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Strawberry jam (from the pantry, made and canned by me, thus the fancy label), sour cream, room temperature strawberry cream cheese (I took it out of the fridge and left it on the counter once the cake was out of the oven), and chopped strawberries.

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Dump the jam, sour cream, and cream cheese in a bowl, and mix it together well. Stir in the strawberries (which I chopped up in my onion chopper), then spread it on the cake, leaving about a 1/2 inch border on all sides (which I kind of didn’t).

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Roll it back up, put it in the fridge for at least an hour, and then it’s ready to serve (or to stay in the refrigerator).

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The verdict? It was… good. I have a serious sweet tooth, though, so I would have liked the filling to be sweeter. Fred thought it was okay, but thought a filling of whipped cream and chopped strawberries would have been better.

I probably won’t make this exact recipe again, but I can just about guarantee that I’m going to make the cake and mess around with different fillings. Maybe whipped cream, toasted almonds and… some kind of chocolate?

Even though I wasn’t super crazy about the cake, it’s nice to know that I can roll up a cake if I need to. You never know when there’ll be a cake-rolling emergency, and now you know who to call!

 

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Nance’s take:  I have no idea why I picked this recipe.  There were a lot of things about it that annoyed me, but I had no idea because that would have involved me actually reading the recipe before choosing it.  What?  Do you think I actually research this shit?  Hell, no!  Robyn’s a tyrant (not to be confused with Dooce’s butler/assistant/whatever) about getting these recipes on the schedule.  Don’t let that nicey-nice save all the kitty-cats in the world bullshit fool you, man.  Y’all just don’t know.

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The first thing that annoyed me.  I hate depending on this stuff.  I just don’t trust it even if it has been years since I’ve had a non-stick fail.

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And then this annoyed me because I needed 8 egg whites and what the hell am I supposed to do with 8 leftover egg yolks?  I don’t like wasting food and this could send a person like me right over the edge.  What do you guys do with the egg yolks when you have a recipe that calls for only the whites?  I will tell you that I actually stood in my kitchen and scrambled these bitches up for my dogs.  And then I felt guilty.  Not because I was standing there cooking food for my dogs, but because I was giving them yolks and everybody knows that the yolks are the bad part of the eggs and OHMYHELL, I may have just played a part in killing Fifi!

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See that little hole in the cream of tartar jar?  I needed 1/2 teaspoon and my 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon wouldn’t fit in that little hole.  I was so disgusted that I just dumped it out until my 1/2 teaspoon spoon was filled up.  Oh yes, I DID!  And it felt good.  That’s what being an adult is all about.  My mother couldn’t yell at me because I was all, “Shut the hell up, Shirley.  I’m a grown ass woman who can waste all the Cream of Tartar she wants, dammit!”  And that’s exactly what I did…while fretting over egg yolks at the same time.  Just hush.  The crazy train has already left the station.

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I have no idea what soft peaks mean.  Seriously.  It’s all soft to me because what the hell, it’s egg whites.  I just quit when it looks like this.  Y’all can explain the difference to me in the comment section (and don’t forget to include what you do with your leftover egg yolks).

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While my egg whites were soft peaking (or over peaking) I read the rest of the recipe that mentioned the fact that I needed to beat some other stuff together.  I lost count of how many times I’ve been annoyed so far.  Trust me when I say that I was pissed that I had to go find my other mixer (since the KitchenAid was busy with the egg whites).

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I started out by folding my egg whites into the flour mixture as instructed, but then I decided to throw caution to the wind and just tossed this whole mess into the big bowl of egg whites and folded it all together.

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This is me dumping the whole mess into my jelly roll pan (which is really only a big cookie sheet).  No, I am not anal like Robyn.  I do not own a jelly roll pan (that I know of) and I sure as hell didn’t go measuring any pans to see if I had a match.  I decided to play the game called close enough and hoped for the best!

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Please note how I work in a neat and tidy area, putting everything away and cleaning up after myself as I go.  Ahem.

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This is what it looked like when it came out of the oven.

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This is what it looked like when I inverted the whole mess.  Didn’t stick.  Didn’t break.  I called that a win.

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I don’t have a fancy dish towel like Robyn had to wrap mine in.  I just had an old flour sack towel that Shirley hates with a passion because it’s too big for drying dishes and I refused to cut them.  Good thing I put my foot down, huh?

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After it was cooled and un-rolled.  I noticed those cracks on the right and figured it was a disaster.  Then I decided that the filling would cover it and focused my fretting on whether or not the cake part would be stuck to the towel.

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The filling.  I could have just ate that with a spoon and called it a day, but I had an obligation.

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This was what it looked like when it was rolled up.  I didn’t trim the edge like it said to because I didn’t want to waste any of it.  Okay, that’s an outright lie.  I didn’t trim it because I skimmed the recipe (too many words!) and only noticed the trimming when I saw that Robyn trimmed her edges (much nicer picture, huh?) and read the recipe before uploading.

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It was pretty good and everyone here in the house liked it, but I would have preferred more cream cheese to give the filling more creamy thickness (fat fatties unite!).  The cake itself was good and relatively fool-proof (if I can do it, anyone can) so I agree with Robyn that it would probably be a good base to use with just about any type of filling you could imagine.   All in all, I would do this recipe again and that’s saying something considering how annoyed I was with it.  Heh.

Strawberry Jelly Roll - Robyn & Nance try the same recipe
 
Original Source/Author:
: Dessert
Ingredients
  • 8 egg whites
  • ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
  • ¾ cup granulated sugar
  • ¼ cup vegetable oil
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • ¾ cup sifted self-rising cake flour
  • 3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
  • Filling:
  • 1 container (8 ounces) strawberry-flavor cream cheese, at room temperature
  • ¼ cup sour cream
  • ¼ cup strawberry jam
  • 1-1/2 cups chopped strawberries (about 1-pint basket)
  • Garnish:
  • Confectioners' sugar
  • Strawberries, sliced and fanned (optional)
Instructions
  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Coat 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan with nonstick vegetable-oil cooking spray. Line bottom of pan with waxed paper; lightly coat waxed paper with cooking spray.
  2. Cake: Beat egg whites and cream of tartar in large bowl until foamy. Gradually add ¼ cup granulated sugar and beat until soft peaks form.
  3. Beat together oil and remaining granulated sugar in second large bowl until well mixed, about 1 minute. Beat in vanilla.
  4. Stir cake flour into oil mixture. Gently fold in a quarter of the egg whites until completely blended, then gently fold in remaining egg whites. Spread the batter evenly with a spatula in the prepared pan.
  5. Bake in 375 degrees F oven for about 12 minutes or until top is very lightly browned and springs back when lightly touched.
  6. Run knife around edge of cake to loosen. Sprinkle top with 3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar. Cover with clean kitchen towel. Top with slightly larger baking sheet; invert. Remove pan, then waxed paper. Starting at shorter end, roll up cake in towel. Cool completely, seam side down, on wire rack.
  7. Filling: Stir together cream cheese, sour cream and strawberry jam in medium-size bowl. Gently fold in strawberries.
  8. Assemble: Unroll cake. Spread cream cheese mixture over cake, leaving ½-inch border all around edges of cake. Carefully re-roll cake. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
  9. To serve: Place cake, seam side down, on serving platter. Trim ends of cake. To garnish, sprinkle roll evenly with confectioners' sugar. Fan thin strawberry slices down center of cake, if desired.

 

Doritos® Cheesy Chicken Casserole – Robyn & Nance try a new recipe

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Doritos® Cheesy Chicken Casserole found over at Plain Chicken. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Nance’s take:  I picked this recipe because I am a sucker for an all-in-one casserole meal.  And because I was curious to see what a meal that included an entire bag of Doritos® would taste like.  Certain fatties in my family (I’m looking at you, mom and Rick) were all excited to see how this was going to turn out.  Please note that I did not include myself in the whole fatty remark.  Ha!  I am such a pretentious asshole.  I was all up in that shit, too.

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The recipe calls for 3 cups of cooked chicken. You might not be able to tell it here, but these are HUGE chicken breasts.

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It didn’t say anything about salt and pepper, but I cannot even look at unseasoned chicken for some reason. Does anybody remember the fad diet in the late 80’s in which you had to eat nothing but boiled (yes, BOILED) chicken 3 times a day? I can’t remember what it was called, but of course I tried it. And, of course, I did not lose weight. Probably because by the second day I was gagging at the sight of boiled unseasoned chicken. Please note the well placed arrow pointing out where I cut into the thickest part of the chicken to make sure it was done. I am the queen of over-cooking meat (think petrified) so I’m forcing myself to get better at checking it instead of just over-cooking it.

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This was supposed to be an action shot, but I had a helluva time holding the bag of Doritos® while taking a picture at the same time.  My left hand doesn’t work for shit.

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Ugh!  This is going to take all freaking day!

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And then they all came flying out because that is how my life works. Sigh.

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I’ll be honest here. I was very, very unsure as to whether or not this sour cream was okay to use. My general rule is this: Sour cream is okay to use the first day you open it and then the very next day. After that, it should be thrown away. Seriously. That’s what my rule is because I am a freak about spoiled food. Except I am not militant about throwing it away on the third day. I just don’t use it and then I throw it away when I clean out the refrigerator (which is usually at the end of the week when Shirley isn’t looking because she’s a nut bag that thinks we should save everything and just cut and/or scoop out any mold, ahem). This sour cream was opened sometime the week before. I’m sure you can imagine my trepidation.

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I adore Rotel®.

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Full Disclosure: I substituted a second can of Cream of Chicken soup for the mushroom soup as Rick is allergic. I like it when I can throw every single thing in a bowl and be done with it. Even if it does look like vomit. Tomatoey vomit.

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This is what it looked like when I put it in the oven. In fact, the picture was taken directly from the oven because I forgot to take a picture before. Please note the cookie sheet that I placed underneath it. NO WAY was I risking this cheesy shit bubbling over and making a mess of my oven.

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The finished casserole in my dish.

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A close-up of the finished product. Since I am not one to plate my food, I don’t care about what it looks like as long as it tastes good. Rick said it was okay. Trey said he didn’t care for it. I was unimpressed with the whole mess and I feel like I wasted an entire bag of perfectly good bag of Doritos®. Never again.

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Robyn’s take:

This week’s recipe was Nance’s choice, and when I saw that it took a bag of Doritos®, I was definitely on board. Fred read the recipe and said that it sounded like King’s Ranch Chicken, which we’ve had at his parents’ house. There’s definitely a similarity, but I think their version uses tortillas or tortilla chips instead of Doritos®.

Anyway.

Ingredients:

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We tried to get all healthy (HA HA HA) by using the lower fat or baked versions of all the ingredients (except the condensed soups). So we’ve got baked Doritos®, reduced-fat cheese, and light sour cream. I cooked a chicken in the crock pot the night before and pulled all the meat off the bones after it had cooled. It’s possible I had more than three cups of chicken here, but I didn’t even bother to check, because I was using all the meat either way.

(You’ll note that the bag of Doritos® was opened and then clipped shut. Fred decided he needed to do quality control and check to be sure the Doritos® were still good. In other words, he was hungry and they looked good.)

You crush the Doritos® (I left them in the bag and just crushed them with my hands – I’m sure there are a bunch of other ways to do it, but that’s what worked for me), and then dump them in the bottom of a (sprayed with Pam) 9×13 dish.

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Then mix everything else (except for 1 cup of cheese) together in a bowl and dump it over the crushed Doritos§. I didn’t get any pictures of that step, because you know how to mix stuff. Maybe Nance got a picture of that step (she’s already written her part, but I don’t read hers before I write mine because I don’t want to pollute my artistic process)(HA HA HA)(who’s feeling parenthetical today?)

Then you bake it for 20 minutes, top it with your remaining 1 cup of cheese, and bake for another five minutes. I also didn’t get a picture of that. I was a slacker this week. Here, maybe this will make you feel better:

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“I’M STAYIN’ LIKE THIS ‘TIL SOMEONE BRINGS ME SOME DORITOS®=^..^=!”

This is what it looked like fresh out of the oven:

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I didn’t even bother to take a picture of the casserole on my plate, because I am not a food artist, and all the artsy lighting in the world wasn’t going to make that stuff look decent on a plate anyway.

Was it good? It was… okay. I mean, I ate one serving of it and then saved another for lunch the next day. If I never have it again in my entire life, I will somehow live. I am NOT saving this recipe and I’m not going to bother to make it again. I would have rather used the chicken to make a chicken salad sandwich with a side of Doritos®, honestly.

 

Doritos® Cheesy Chicken Casserole - Robyn & Nance try a new recipe
 
Original Source/Author:
: Main
Ingredients
  • 3 cups cooked chicken, chopped (I used a rotisserie chicken)
  • 8 oz sour cream
  • 1 can cream of mushroom soup
  • 1 can cream of chicken soup
  • 1½ cups salsa or 1 can Rotel
  • 1 can of corn, drained
  • 2 cups Mexican cheese, shredded
  • 1 bag of nacho cheese Doritos®
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Lightly spray a 9x13 pan with cooking spray. Crush the entire bag of Doritos® and cover the bottom of the dish. Reserve one cup of cheese. Mix together remaining ingredients in a large bow. Pour chicken mixture over the Doritos®. Bake for 20 min. Top casserole with the remaining cheese and bake 5 additional minutes or until melted.

 

7 Layer Taco Dip – Cooking with Trey Vol. 1

001

This kid in desperate need of a haircut is the baby of my family (He’ll be 18 in March). His name is Trey and he’s agreed to be a part of Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza. If by agreed you mean that he went along with this crazy shit because I am his mother and can make his life a living hell. I did not want him to wear that tack-ass camouflage Dollar Store sweatshirt for the pictures, but he insisted on wearing it because his Grandmother got it for him. That pretty much tells you what kind of a kid he is. He’s also the one bitching about needing a haircut (he’s obviously not a natural blonde, it’s a phase he’s going through and I’m all about waving your freak flag when you’re young and it doesn’t matter). Homeboy does not like his hair getting in his eyes. I find it funny because a lot of kids let their hair grow just to piss off their parents. Mine are ass backwards. Always. Sigh.

I’ve seen recipes all over the place for this taco dip and always wanted to try making it. Now when I say that I have seen recipes that means that I have seen it on sites like allrecipes.com, blogs, food gawker.com, etc. I’m not like that nutcase Robyn. I don’t print out recipes that I might try sometime in the next half dozen years. When I went Internet searching for the recipe I did my standard move – Go to Google, type in what you want to search for and then hit IMAGES. A shit-ton of beautiful pictures of what I want to make comes up and then I spend a good hour clicking on all of them and reading up on how the different sites made it. Then I either print out a recipe if I find one I like or I jot down the ingredients that I know I have and WING IT, always hoping for the best. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. This time it worked.

020

One can of refried beans.  I freaking love refried beans and went through a phase where it was the only food I would eat for a good month about 10 years ago.  And then I couldn’t eat them for a long, long time.  We’re talking about 8 years.  Everything in moderation, people. I had to learn my lesson the hard way.

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I didn’t have a clear glass dish to make it all pretty so I just settled for this Fiestaware platter.  It’s just as well.  My OCD would have went into crisis mode trying to make the layers all even and shit if I would have been using something that you could see through.

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Layer of one cup of cheddar cheese.  I will not tell you how much of this cheese I ate while making this.  And OMG, be thankful I just erased what I had typed here because y’all would have known way too much about me and constipation.  Ha!  Gotcha!

My apologies.  I’ve obviously been hanging out with Trey too much.

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So the next layer is Guacamole.  If this was a real food blog, we would have been all up in here mashing avocados and shit.  Yeah, right.  Maybe you can get Robyn to do it, but I can’t be arsed.

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Gross, huh?

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Smear it around.  This is when I lost interest in it looking pretty.  Seriously.  I just gave up because there was no way this was going to look good.

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Take sour cream and add 1/2 envelope of taco seasoning.

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This is what cooking with Trey is like.  I’m pretty sure I was breaking out in hives right about now.  Sloppy cooking.  Do you see the pieces of cheese laying around amongst all the other clutter?  My last nerve.

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Added because this shit is funny.  Homeboy was seriously going to hold that huge block of cheese to grate it.  This is where we learned about cutting a piece off and then grating it.

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The next layer is the salsa (ignore that pouch of guacamole laying there, it was an extra one that hadn’t been put away yet)

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Lettuce.  I love me some shredded lettuce.  And obviously I love cheese!

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This was Shirley’s pathetic attempt at helping out with the finished product.  NOTE:  this is where you could/would add black olives, chopped green onions and peppers to make it pretty.  I personally think that olives are Satan’s kidney stones so I won’t go near them.  My mother likes green olives so we have them here.  She threw those on top to try to make it look nicer and as you can see, it didn’t help much.  Heh.

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Trey really liked it.  In fact everyone in the house liked it except for Shirley.  Homegirl hates refried beans (weirdo).

The only real bitch I have with this is the fact that it makes so much.  You can’t really tell in that picture, but the platter is big (and reasonably deep).  It would most definitely be a fantastic idea for a party and I think a lot of people make it for football games, tailgating, etc.

7 Layer Taco Dip - Cooking with Trey Vol. 1
 
This recipe can easily be adapted from the ingredients, the amounts you use, and the way you layer it. No matter how you switch it up, it's going to be good!
Original Source/Author:
: Appetizer
Ingredients
  • 1 can re-fried beans
  • 1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese, divided
  • 1 7 oz. pouch of guacamole
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 envelope Taco Mix (or 2 tablespoons)
  • 1 cup salsa
  • 1 cup shredded lettuce
  • Black olives, chopped onions, tomatoes or peppers (optional)
Instructions
  1. Start with re-fried beans and spread them in a bowl of your choice (glass is better).
  2. Lay 1 cup of cheese over the beans.
  3. Spread guacamole over the cheese layer.
  4. Mix sour cream and taco mix in a bowl.
  5. Spread sour cream mixture over the guacamole layer.
  6. Spread salsa over the sour cream layer.
  7. Add lettuce.
  8. Sprinkle the remaining half cup of cheese over lettuce.
  9. Garnish with optional black olives, chopped onions, tomatoes or peppers.
  10. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve with Tortilla chips.