Cheese And Macaroni Casserole

Hi, this is Stephanie Manley with CopyKat.com. Today, I'm going to show you how to make cheese hamburger casserole. This is my favorite casserole ever. This was my favorite growing up, and it still remains a favorite of mine. My grandmother actually came up with the recipe, so here's a tribute to my grandmother. There are lots of things in here, but you know what? It's going to taste great. So, if you like hamburger helper, this is far better. You want to check out this, and give this one a try. We're simply going to cook up some noodles. I'm choosing elbow macaroni. Any noodle that you have is fine. Don't worry about it. You're going to need to cook up about a half a pound to three quarters of a pound of noodles. I'm going to brown one pound of hamburger with half of an onion, and we're going to season that with a little bit of oregano, some garlic powder or granulated garlic in my case. We're going to use some black pepper and some salt. And then we're going to also add some bacon to this. This gives it some great flavor. And then we're also going to add some mushrooms, some canned mushrooms, some tomato sauce, and two types of cheese. I'm adding a shredded cheddar cheese and provolone in the slices here, just because this is always the way I had it, growing up. So, why don't I go ahead and show you how to get started on this fabulous hamburger casserole. We're going to go ahead and put the hamburger in the pan, and go ahead and get it started browning. All right, so after you've put your hamburger in there, take time to go ahead and wash your hands, dry them, and come back. And go ahead and season the meat. Put some salt and some pepper. I'm going to go ahead and add in my garlic powder, just a little bit. I'm going to go ahead and add in my oregano as well. And while the hamburger is cooking, go ahead and start your pasta. Okay, so while your hamburger is starting to brown, go ahead and chop up half of an onion into fairly small pieces. And then just add that into your hamburger. Now that my hamburger is nice and brown, I'm going to go ahead and just pour this over the macaroni that's already cooked. Since I use 90 percent lean beef, I'm not going to drain it. I'm just going to pour it in here. The next thing I'm going to do is, I'm going to go ahead and cook up the bacon to where it's done, but not crispy. All right, so we'll go ahead and start to assemble this casserole. So, now we've got the hamburger done, the macaroni's done, I'm going to go ahead and add my mostly cooked bacon. This is going to cook in the oven for about 25 minutes. So, be assured that that bacon will cook fully. Now, the next thing we need to do is, we need to go ahead and add our tomato sauce in. This helps bind everything together. So, the recipe calls for a four ounce jar, but I'm going to go ahead and add six ounces, because I really like the mushrooms. We're going to go ahead and stir everything, to blend it in, and then we're going to put into our casserole dish. Okay, before putting all the noodles and mixture in here, we're going to go ahead and spray our casserole dish with a little bit of non-stick spray. And the first thing we're going to do is, we're going to stick half of this in here. What makes this casserole so good is, it actually has two different cheese layers in here. So, I think this makes this casserole simply heaven. All right? So, the first thing I'm going to do is, I'm just going to take my provolone slices and I'm just going to lay them out across here. Provolone cheese also makes this casserole really tasty. Then I'm going to add half of my shredded cheddar cheese. Then I'm going to add the remainder part of my macaroni mixture on top, and the remainder of provolone and cheddar cheese. Then we're going to go ahead and bake this in a 350 degree oven for about 25 to 30 minutes. And then, we will be done. So, I'll come back and I'll show you the finished casserole in just a few minutes. So, if you've enjoyed this video here on YouTube, please give this video a big thumbs up. And drop me a comment in the box down below, so you can leave me a request for what recipe you'd like to see next.