My friend, Shelly, first made this casserole for a group of us and I thought it was wonderful. I love it more and more each time I make it. I always increase the amount of zucchini and tomato I put in it so that I have more veggies, but either way, it's going to be good. I usually make sure that I have a total of 4 cups of zucchini and tomatoes. The day I made this one, I only had one tomato, but had loads of fresh zucchini. I had 3 cups of zucchini and 1 cup of tomato.
If you don't like sausage, feel free to substitute beef or ground turkey (or leave it out altogether), but make sure you season it well, because the sausage usually does some of the job when it comes to flavor. Also, I tend to mix the entire amount of cheese into the casserole instead of putting some on top. That way, I have guaranteed cheese in every bite. There is nothing worse than spooning out a serving of a casserole and much of the topping falls to the side.
Caruso Casserole
1 pound mild Italian sausage
1 cup onions
2 garlic cloves
4 Tbs. butter
4 Tbs. flour
1 tsp. Italian seasoning
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
2 cups milk
3 cups mozzarella cheese, divided
4 cups (½ of 12oz bag) noodles,
cooked
1 cup zucchini slices halved
1 cup tomatoes, chopped
Cook egg noodles (if you haven't already).
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cook sausage, onion and garlic
in skillet until sausage is brown and crumbly. Drain and set aside.
Melt butter, stir in flour and
seasons until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in milk. Bring to a boil over
medium heat, stirring constantly for 1 minute. Reduce heat to low and stir in 2
cups of cheese.
Stir in cooked sausage mixture
noodles, zucchini and tomatoes. Turn into buttered 9 x 13 casserole dish and
bake for 25 minutes.
Remove from oven and sprinkle
with 1 cup cheese. Return to oven to
melt cheese.
As you can see, instead of the cheese topping, I just mixed it into the rest of the casserole. I really hope you enjoy this. Make sure you comment and share with friends.
See a full index of The Orange Skillet Recipes here.
See a full index of The Orange Skillet Recipes here.
Hey Ross! I'm a software dev and home cook, and I've been building an app to catalog all the family recipes my relatives have come to love. Today, I was entering our decades-old recipe for Caruso Casserole into the database. I went looking for an image to use, and I stumbled across your blog.
ReplyDeleteMy mother has been making this for roughly 40 years, and doesn't know here it originally came from. I was "shocked" to find someone else had heard of it, and also how close your recipe is to the index card I have on the desk in front of me. Yours is doubled, and has more veggies than this one (which I like), but they're otherwise almost identical>
Anyhoo, I wanted to give you a thumbs-up for this. I think I'm going to make it for supper tonight, too. Thanks!