Does your family have a “favorite hot dish”? My family did when I was growing up. I have no idea why it is called “Favorite Hot Dish” (I’m the youngest, I probably didn’t get to vote… LOL) nor, as an adult, do I think this is a even a example of my mom’s cooking. Rather, I now think of it as a shining example of how my mom knew how to stretch the grocery budget well.
Our family “Favorite Hot Dish” (aka casserole) is simple:
1 can condensed Cream of Mushroom soup
1 can (use the soup can) milk
1 can tuna (packed in spring water)
and practially 1 whole bag of crunchy chow mein noodles.
Bake until golden brown on top (350? 30 minutes?) and smother in butter.
Ahhhhhh… the 70s and early 80s were good, huh?
When my love and I first started living together, I made “Favorite Hot Dish” for him. I told him I needed chow mein noodles from the store. Let’s just say, American-style chow mein noodles are NOT what a Chinese-American looks for when you ask for “chow mein” noodles from the store. But, we did get them. I did bake it. I smothered our servings in butter. He looked at it with dubious eyes and then dug in. (He had to… it was the only thing I made for dinner.) And the next night, he ate more. Love that man.
I haven’t had “Favorite Hot Dish” since. Not that I have been walking around craving it. (I’ve had other cravings… easy to find cheesy pizza (I can make my own.. but on some lazy nights! OH, what I wouldn’t give!), buttermilk biscuits (mmmm), etc. However, this past week. It hit me. The desire for something homey. Something… omg.. I wanted “Favorite Hot Dish”. However, no GF crunchy chow mein noodles = no GF Favorite Hot Dish.
And then I saw this post.. and started craving ravioli. So, I started making pasta. Then, I realized that I could make some homemade chow mein noodles (American style) and make my own Favorite Hot Dish!
Wahoo! It worked.
Here’s the pasta recipe I used. Don’t get me wrong. Making pasta is easy. Making it into spaghetti strands… bah… takes a little bit of time and a lot of patience. 🙂
Home-made Pasta
Ingredients:
2 cups GF Flour Mix
2 large eggs + 1 large egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup + water
Directions:
- Mix together all ingredients in a food processor until a dough forms.
- Add water until the dough is soft, but not sticky.
- Roll dough out with pasta press and then put through the spaghetti cutter (all KitchenAid Mixer options) OR roll out until your desired thickness (the thinner the better) and slice into “home-style” pasta. (This second one is our family favorite for turkey noodle soup after Thanksgiving!)
Either:
1. Cook right away (3-4 minutes in boiling water)
or
2. Dry
To dry the pasta:
- Put pasta strands/noodles into a bowl and sprinkle with sweet rice flour.
- Gently use your hands to toss the noodles with the sweet rice flour to coat the noodles lightly.
- Lay on wax paper in small piles and leave out overnight. In the morning, gently rotate the piles to expose the bottom to air to dry during the day.
To make chow mein noodles:
- Fry the dried pasta in an inch of oil in batches until slightly browned and crunchy.
- Use fried noodles in salads, on top of soup, etc. (or in Favorite Hot Dish!)
😉
Happy eating all –
Kate
Gluten Free Gobsmacked 
Just in time for National Pasta Day! We had a similar dish growing up – “tuna noodle casarole.” Egg noodles, cream of mushroom soup, tuna, corn, maybe other veggies like peas.
I made fettuccine last night – I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.
Your pasta recipe is my inspiration, Karen! You make it look so easy! I’m gonna have to keep trying this. The pasta I made tastes GREAT but phew! It took a while. 😉 -Kate
oh – and about rolling dough out by hand – I found that I had to use A LOT of corn starch to keep it from sticking. And it did take a while (the pasta machine does make it easier). If you want to try a different recipe, there is a second, non-bean flour recipe in The Gluten-Free Gourmet (revised). Both GF recipes have only egg and oil as the wet ingredients. I wonder if that helps with the texture and holds it together better than with the water.
Thanks for the tip about the recipe, Karen. I’m going to work with what my GG (great grandma) and what you started. Oil in my pasta? I want to try to avoid that. All of the store-bought pastas I enjoy list just rice flour and water. There’s got to be a way! We can do it! 🙂 – Kate
That is impressive. I want to know how “Favorite Hot Dish” turns out!
Now you see why I was asking about the Cream of Mushroom soup! I was at a loss with the ingredients in my house to make the soup, even though we have dried mushrooms/shitakes. Instead of mushroom soup, I modified the recipe and made a mini-batch (after all… I didn’t know how it would turn out) and I used an onion soup mix. Sadly, I used the WHOLE stinkin’ package of soup mix with only a TEENY bit of tuna and noodles! Bah! Can we say SUPER salty? That’s why I wished I had seen your soup post before this! lol 🙂 -Kate
you two are so brave! I’ve never attempted homemade pasta! And my mom in law doesn’t have a pasta machine to borrow! 😉 That looks delicious though! Kate, I grew up eating casseroles like that!! That was the life wasn’t it!
Try it! You’ll like it! Homemade pasta is DELICIOUS! 🙂
And the family casserole/hot dish… it’s the way to go! LOL
– Kate
Kate – not a lot of oil in the pasta! lol! I just used a tablespoon of olive oil for the whole recipe (which made a lot of pasta). But I think the egg is more important than the oil, as egg has a lot of those proteins that hold it all together. The Italians haven been making pasta forever just using flour and egg. But then again, the Asians just use the rice and water, and that seems to work for them. I think it’s just my Italian heritage coming out in me that makes me lean in that direction. 🙂
Awesome, Karen!
I keep having fantasies of writing to Mario Batali and asking him to come to my house and we make gluten-free noodles together. Ahh.. Italian food…. MMMMM! -Kate
I wonder if you could fry thin rice noodles (like these) … there are some suggestions for how to fry these on Thai Kitchen’s website or on the boxes. Good luck!
Thanks for this tip. I’ve fried these rice noodles for many Chinese dishes, but our family “Favorite” needed the thicker “chow mein” style noodles. That’s why I ventured into the noodle frying business! 🙂 – Kate
Thankyou for sharing your recipes. Just found this site and can’t wait to try the pasta recipe. I too have a Kitchen Aid and looking into buying the pasta attachment. Which one do you have? I see they offer a couple different ones. The one that caught my eye is the one for sphatetti, roller and cutter. Again thanks!
When you say “GF flour” do you mean a particular mix or whatever you prefer? I have tried several mixes but I’m not overly impressed with any of them. My favorite GF pasta is Tinkyada brown rice but it is costing me $5-6 for a small bag and I have a family of 8 that are GF. Yikes! We are egg-free, too. I wonder if egg replacer will do the trick? Any thoughts? Thanks so much!
Hi Tracy,
I use a blend of flours usually that I make. While it can sometimes be a little bit of a pain to mix them (only about once a month or so anyway), it has worked out to be cheaper for me to just mix my own. I have a blend that I use most frequently on my site here.
And if you’d like, you can try the other pasta recipe that doesn’t call for a blend of flours but lists the flours individually. I haven’t tried to omit the egg, but I don’t think it would be difficult to use an egg replacer. I used this pasta recipe to make egg rolls, potstickers and ravioli. You can find this one here (ravioli) or here (potsitckers) – just cut the dough into noodles or put it through a noodle extruder on your pasta maker.
Hope this helps!
-Kate
I have a suggestion for at least the crunchy chow mein noodles–I use a potato ricer (always wondered what those things were good for)- put the dough in and, just like in the days of play dough, squeeze it over the hot oil and cut it off in the length I like. Works like a charm.
Mary
Oh! GENIUS! That’s a GREAT idea, Mary! Thank you for sharing it!
Awesome post. After years of battling illness, fatigue and chronic pain, I’ve decided to reduce the amount of wheat, gluten and some other food items in attempts to feel better. Yesterday, I just created my first successful batch of gluten free, egg free, salt free pasta. It IS possible, and it’s a work in progress. We’re pretty pleased, although I will continue tweaking it. Thanks to your post I felt encouraged to try again after failure, and succeeded.
where did you find mushroom soup with out gluten? Campbell’s soups add wheat flour. This recipe sounds yummy!
Progresso makes a GF creamy mushroom soup…. and I make my own. 🙂