Ground Beef Casserole Recipe Review

One night, I was looking for an easy recipe for ground beef when I stumbled upon this one. It sounded good. Here's the recipe, my review of it is after.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound ground beef
1 onion, chopped
3/4 cup chopped celery
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/4 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed, diced tomatoes
1 (12 ounce) package uncooked egg noodles
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place noodles in a pot of lightly salted boiling water. Cook until al dente, about 8 minutes. Drain and set aside. Cook ground beef, onion, celery and garlic in a skillet over medium heat until meat is evenly browned. Drain off excess grease. Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish. Place half of the cooked noodles in the bottom of the dish. Cover them with half of the meat mixture, then half of the tomatoes. Spoon half of the cream of chicken soup over the tomatoes, then sprinkle half of the shredded cheese. Repeat layers, ending with cheese on the top. Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until cheese is browned and bubbly. Let stand for 10 minutes to set before serving.

Now, I have to admit, this recipe is very easy to make. I am always looking for easy recipes for my family, because the less effort out of me, the better for my family! After I made this recipe and put it all together, I thought that it didn't look very appealing to the eye. I also thought that maybe it might look better after it was cooked...it didn't. It looked exactly the same.

We dug into the casserole and at first taste, it was bland and the tomatoes were overpowering. I am not a tomato eater, but I thought maybe it would create a type of "sauce". I was wrong. I mixed my casserole up a bit and added some pepper, and that helped out a little. As I was eating, I was thinking of how I could change this recipe to make it taste better. That isn't a good sign for a recipe, and from someone like me who is definitely not a cook, that's not saying a whole lot for it!

Here's how I would change this recipe. Instead of the stewed tomatoes, I would use a tomato sauce, or instead of one can of cream of chicken soup, I would use two. The layering of ingredients was totally unnecessary, in my opinion. It would have been easier to just mix everything together and put it in the baking dish, and it probably would have tasted better, too. I also would increase the amount of shredded cheese to a cup instead of a quarter cup. I also recommend adding pepper to the ground beef or something. There just wasn't enough flavor for me.

I'm excited to have the opportunity to make this dish again with the changes I believe it needs. I give this dish 2 out of 5 Tiaras on the Amy Gayle Scale. It was not terrible tasting, but it gets kudos for it's simplicity.