Pizza Casserole

This recipe isn’t our typical type of meal, but I decided that I didn’t want to be one of those people that had a dozen cookbooks lying around that never got used. So, we picked up a few cookbooks, and grabbed a few recipes out of each. This recipe comes to us from our “Oxford’s Divine Offerings” cookbook, which is from a Church back in the Lexington, VA area. Now, disclaimer up front: This recipe creates a metric ton of food, and while it’s tasty, it’s most likely more suitable towards kids. So, if you’re a parent, and hosting a bunch of kids for a birthday party, sleepover, etc, this would be a good one for you.

Ingredients:

1-lb Hamburger  

1 Large Onion, Chopped

1 Med Green Pepper

1 Cup Fresh Mushrooms (Recipe calls for canned… but… Gross!)

1 24oz Can of Tomato Sauce (For this recipe… get a can. High dollar sauce would honestly be a bit of a waste)

2 Cloves Fresh Minced Garlic.

12oz Pepperoni

1 1/2 Cup Shredded Mozzarella

8oz Macaroni, Cooked and Drained

Cut up your fresh veggies

After everything is cleaned and chopped, the onions and green peppers go into a pan with the ground beef, and all of that gets browned up together.

After everything is browned and happy, drain off the fat and add the mushrooms, sauce, garlic, 6oz of pepperoni, 1 cup of cheese, and the cooked pasta.

Stir everything together, and get it nice and hot and melty. Then, everything in the pot gets dumped into your greased casserole dish, where it will soon go into an oven that’s been preheated to 350.

Above, you see it put into the pan, then layered with pepperoni. You cover it with foil, cook it at 350 for 30 minutes, then remove it from the oven, get rid of the foil, cover the top with remaining cheese (ok, I added a little extra) and then it goes back into the oven for another 10-15 minutes until the cheese on top is melted evenly.

Above is the final result in the pan. Let it sit for about 10 minutes, and then serve it up into some bowls.

Notes:

• As said before, this makes a LOT of food.
• By no means is this gourmet. Serve it to kids.
• Pepperoni will stick together, giving you some rather large chunks of pepperoni on the inside. Perhaps you could chop the pepperoni and dust lightly with cornstarch to keep it from sticking.