Monday, February 14, 2011

A little Minnesota love: Wild Rice Hotdish

Oh hotdish, the comfort food of my childhood. If you grew up in Minnesota you too are no doubt very familiar with it and all of it's warm yummy goodness.

Lately I have had serious cravings for the foods I grew up on. Things my mom and grandmas made for my siblings and I back in the day. The kind of dishes that even smelled like love.


One problem, both dairy and meat are usually the main ingredients in my mother's and grandmother's dishes. But as always, I love a challenge and would not let my new found vegetarianism stand between me and a plate of good old-fashioned wild rice hotdish.

My Grandma's original recipe is simple enough. It calls for onion, celery, hamburger, cooked rice, cream of chicken and wild rice and cream of mushroom soup. But this is where I ran into my first issue, none of the grocery stores (that I checked) in this area sold a vegan cream of wild rice or cream of mushroom soup. But again, I was determined. So I went searching for recipes so I could make the soups myself. You can find those recipes in the previous post.

Second would be the hamburger (ground beef), luckily that wasn't too difficult, as I had a package of Gimme Lean in the fridge. The final problem. I realized when I was on my way home to begin cooking I was out of vegetable broth and being the base for both soup recipes I would also need to make some of that too.

The result was 4 hours and an 1 amazing smelling apartment later, I finally had my hot dish and it tasted sooo much better than I had remembered!


Wild Rice Hotdish (serves 6-8)
  • 1 small onion, diced
  • 1 celery stalk, diced
  • 1 green pepper, diced
  • 1/2c cooked brown rice
  • 1/2c cooked wild rice
  • 1 package Gimme Lean Sausage (or 1lb ground beef or turkey for you meat eaters out there)
  • 10 oz cream of mushroom soup
  • 10 oz cream of wild rice soup
Mix ingredients together in a casserole dish and bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

 
P.S. I will be reworking this recipe again in the near future so that it doesn't include a packaged meat substitute. I feel that while they're okay to eat every once in a while, it's best to try and stick to eating as many whole foods as possible.

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