When I was growing up, my mama made tuna casserole every other week or so. It was simple. It was hearty. It was pretty cheap. Tuna, mushroom soup, peas, milk, salt, pepper, rice, and potato chips on top. As I got older, I started to realize that most other people used pasta in place of rice. But we’re from Louisiana – where people use rice more than anything else.
I decided to make tuna casserole for my own family, but I decided to give this classic retro dish a remix. Nothing too radical. I just added a good amount of cheese and used salt and vinegar potato chips instead of plain ones. Oh, and I jacked up the flavor a bit with a couple of healthy dashes of Tabasco!
Retro Remix Tuna Noodle Casserole
- 1 pound of rotini pasta
- 2 12-ounce cans of tuna, drained
- 2 10,5-ounce cans of cream of mushroom soup
- 1 15.25-ounce can of small green sweet peas, drained
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
- 3-4 teaspoons of Tabasco sauce
- 4 cups of shredded cheese, divided
- 1 10-ounce bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, crushed
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cook pasta in well-salted boiling water for 10-12 minutes.
While pasta is boiling, in a large bowl, use a fork to flake the tuna. Add the soup, peas, salt, pepper, and 2 cups of cheese and mix until combined. Add the Tabasco, a little at a time. You can totally taste the mixture to decide if you want to add more. There’s really nothing in it that will hurt you if you taste it uncooked. When pasta is ready, drain and add to the tuna mixture. When everything is mixed, pour the mixture into a sprayed baking dish and top with the other 2 cups of cheese and crushed chips.
Bake for 30 minutes.
Well Duh #1: You can use any variety of tuna that you prefer. I actually ended up with one can of white albacore packed in water and one can of white albacore packed in vegetable oil (I have no idea how I did that. I could’ve sworn I grabbed two identical cans.). It was totally fine. My family just prefers the cleaner flavor of the white albacore.
Well Duh #2: I put the whole bag of chips into a big zippered bag and crushed them when a rolling pin. You could use anything to do this. A flat-bottomed pan, a soda bottle, your hands. When my kids were little, I would put one bag inside of another, throw it on the floor, and let them dance barefoot on it until the chips were crushed. Don’t judge. They were little and they giggled the entire time. Totally worth it!
Well Duh #3: You may call “small, green, sweet peas” English peas. I know I did when I was growing up!
Well Duh #4: I had about a cup of crushed chips left over. I just kept them in the bag, knowing that they would jazz up any reheated leftovers the next day!
Michael is funny about tuna. He likes tuna sandwiches, but any other application of tuna is not his favorite. But even he liked this hearty casserole! The addition of the Tabasco was a game changer for him. And the cheese and salt and vinegar chips made the kids absolutely love it! For me, it tasted enough like Mama’s to remind me of home, but it was different enough to make it my own.
And that’s what a retro remix is all about!
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