Recipe

Tuna Noodle Casserole - Redux

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Tuna Noodle Casserole - Redux

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by Sarah Shatz

Tuna Noodle Casserole - Redux

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by Sagegreen

Tuna Noodle Casserole - Redux

Photo 3 of 5
by emmanation

Tuna Noodle Casserole - Redux

Photo 4 of 5
by Sagegreen

Tuna Noodle Casserole - Redux

Photo 5 of 5
by emmanation

  • This recipe was entered in the contest for Your Best Seafood Pasta
    This recipe was entered in the contest for Your Best Mushrooms
  • Sagegreen's Testing Notes: This is not your mother's tuna noodle casserole from the sixties! With some simple steps, fiveandspice takes this homey classic into a whole new league. It is hard to imagine how good this...

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  • Chef

    fiveandspice's Notes: For some reason last night I had the sudden realization that tuna noodle casserole - that classic piece of Americana and staple of Midwestern church basement potlucks - is technically a seafood...

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Serves 4

  1. Preheat your oven to 350F. In a large sautee pan, heat 1 Tbs. of butter over medium-high until foaming. Stir in mushrooms and cook until mushrooms have given off all of their liquid and cooked through (10 or so minutes). Season lightly with salt and pepper, transfer to a bowl and set aside.

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  2. Add another 1/2 Tbs. butter to the frying pan, then cook onion, shallot and celery together for about 5 minutes, until softened. Stir in the chopped herbs and the sherry and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir the mushrooms into this mixture, then set this aside.

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  3. In a saucepan, heat 3 Tbs. of butter over medium-high until foaming. Stir in the flour to make a roux and cook for about 2 minutes. Then whisk in the milk and chicken stock, bit by bit, to make a smooth sauce. Cook, stirring, until just slightly thickened (another minute or two). Then add the lemon zest and season with salt and pepper to taste.

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  4. Flake the tuna and combine the tuna, the white sauce, the mushroom-onion mixture, and the noodles all together. Grease and 8X8 inch baking pan and transfer the casserole mixture into it.

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  5. In a small pan, melt the last Tbs. of butter. Stir in the minced garlic and the panko breadcrumbs and cook, stirring, until the panko is golden brown. Sprinkle this all over the casserole. Put the casserole in the oven and bake until it is bubbly, about 30 minutes. Serve! (And if you are in a church basement, you might have to throw together a reduxed jello salad as well!)

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39 Comments on Tuna Noodle Casserole - Redux

Reply

I made this last night and finally got a chance to use fresh thyme and rosemary from my windowsill for this fabulous recipe. Lemon zest is freakin' genius! Shamelessly this serving-for-4 almost didn't survive the night between the two of us. My husband love, loves this. Next time only thing I'll do different is double the roux -- cause we're sauce crazy like that .

Sausage2 Reply

No shame in being sauce people. :) Glad you liked it!

Reply

I'm 76, but i love this dish (no muchrooms) my grandmother topped this with leftover mashed potatoes (firm) I like it better than panko

Sausage2 Reply

Thank you! Love the sound of mashed potato topping! It's like tuna casserole meets shepherd's pie. Yum!

Buddhacat Reply

Had this again last night and it is divine. One of the things I love about this recipe is it is also easy to add more vegetables if you want without chaning anything. This is such a great recipe and thanks for sharing it!

Sausage2 Reply

Thank you!! I'm so thrilled to hear that!

Reply

This was so good I blogged about it! Thanks for the recipe!

http://chezsmokey.blogspot.com/2012/01/tuna-noodle-casserole-redux.html#!/2012/01/tuna-noodle-casserole-redux.html

Sausage2 Reply

That's so cool! Thanks for sharing!

Fb Reply

We had this for dinner and all loved it! I doubled the recipe and didn't have sherry, so I substituted a combo of lemon juice and white wine. My husband and sons were delighted to have leftovers the next day, too. I'll be making this again soon!

Sausage2 Reply

Thank you!!! I'm so completely psyched you guys liked it! I'm just itching to have the chance to make your delicious sounding broccoli-apple soup. It will be happening very soon!

Fb Reply

I hope you enjoy the soup! :)

Reply

I made this casserole tonight and it was really tasty! Cooks should now, however, that you might feel like you've used every pot and tool in the kitchen. I only used 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs and it was more than enough.

Sausage2 Reply

I'm happy to hear you liked it! And thanks for letting me know! It's so true, it uses kind of a lot of pots. I'm one of those people who creates a total catastrophe in the kitchen, just grabbing everything I need, rather than trying to streamline. However, a bunch of people had a discussion on a different thread here and figured out great ways to streamline the pan usage, including using a smallish Dutch oven for the sauce, that you then stir the tuna, mushrooms, noodles, etc, into and use for baking. And, using the same pan for the breadcrumbs as you did for the mushrooms and onions. (You could even do all of that in the Dutch oven, if you ordered everything right!).

Reply

This is a fantastic recipe. Tuna casserole is my husband's favorite comfort food so I'm always looking for tasty recipes that don't include cream of mushroom soup. This was really flavorful--the fresh herbs are genius. I added some frozen peas right before baking. I also added some grated cheddar to the white sauce because my husband's platonic idea of tuna casserole includes cheese, but next time, I think I'll skip--the sauce was very good as is. Finally, I didn't have any sherry so i used white wine. It was fine, but next time, I will make the trip to buy some sherry.

Sausage2 Reply

I'm so happy you guys liked it so much! Thank you for letting me know!

Reply

The tuna casserole was beautiful as it came out of the oven. The flavour was a mystery to me. It
had an Asian taste. Can't figure out why. Actually had a" ginger" taste. Any idea what happened?
We enjoyed the dish even with it's surprise taste.

Sausage2 Reply

Hmmm. That's a total mystery to me too!

Reply

Just finished this recipe for dinner tonight. It was a pretty intense preparation. Much more than the canned soup version which I have not prepared for at least 25 years!! Already the results are in- the aroma is great so says my husband who is waiting patiently for the serve moment. I'll let you know our final thoughts later.
Thanks again for bringing back pleasant memories. Maybe I'll work on the jello!

Sausage2 Reply

Thanks Adelucchi! I hope the end results met with approval! And, if you come up with a jello salad redux, please do let us all know!

100_0039 Reply

Made this for dinner last night and it was a hit! I didn't have enough fresh mushrooms on hand, so I used some peas to get to the same volume of vegetables. Love the rosemary in it!

Sausage2 Reply

I'm so glad to hear you liked it VanessaS! And the peas sound like a delicious - and totally classic - addition. Thanks for the feedback! :)

Reply

What size cans of tuna do you use? Chunk light or Albacore?

Sausage2 Reply

5 oz. Cans. I use the kind packed in olive oil. But, really you could use any type you prefer. But isn't chunk light environmentally better?

Reply

This was so delicious. I had it ready for some friends when they got home from a ski trip, and it was perfect - comforting and filling and interesting enough to make me proud to serve it.
I did have to make a couple of substitutions because I apparently wasn't paying attention in the grocery store. I used fresh bread crumbs instead of panko and parsley instead of chives. Still, it was fantastic. I uploaded a couple of pictures - the breadcrumb switch is probably pretty obvious.

Sausage2 Reply

So glad to hear you and your friends enjoyed the casserole! Your substitutions sound tasty! (also I'm totally jealous of the idea of their ski trip.)

Reply

Love this recipe! Going to enjoy it tonight, while watching the Oscars, with a glass of bubbly. Why not?! I used Trader Joe's egg pappardelle pasta and it turned out great! Thank you for the redux!

Sausage2 Reply

Glad you like it! And I hope you had a lovely time with the Oscars :).

Ab_sum Reply

This is a wonderful redux. I had hoped to upload a great photo of the dish I just made...but when I reached to pick it up to take it outside for a photo in the snow, I forgot that it was still ovenhot... it went flying all over the the mudroom entry rug. My photo of some salvaged on a small plate is not very flattering. But it is a brilliant redux!

Sausage2 Reply

Thanks so much Sagegreen! And, I kind of love the photo of the salvaged dish - it captures some of the mushy homey feeling that casserole gives you :)!

Ab_sum Reply

You should ask the editors to upload their wonderful photos of this, since they are so much better than mine! You are able to copy their photo and then upload, but then the credit reads as your photo, which is not really the case...I just tried and removed to avoid confusion!

Sausage2 Reply

That's a great thought Sagegreen. I'll look into it! I do actually really like your photo though :).

Reply

How funny that you've only just discovered that tuna can come packed in oil! For those of us baby boomers, tuna packed in water was a new "healthier" option. The fact that it was also relatively tasteless didn't seem to matter to a lot of our generation. How sad is that?

Sausage2 Reply

Haha, no way! You make me feel like such a greenhorn. :) So funny how food trends come and go...thank goodness we're finally actually starting to get over the myth that fat = evil. Fat = flavor!!!

New_years_kitchen_hlc_only Reply

Yum. Especially the sherry. Actually, that's kind of a retro touch. A lot of seafood recipes back in the 50's and 60's, when tuna casserole was so popular, had a splash of sherry in them. Great recipe! ;o)

Sausage2 Reply

Wow! I love it when I'm retro without even realizing it - then I can pretend I'm hipster, haha!

Mrs Reply

Delicious! Very clever! Brings back memories...

Sausage2 Reply

Good memories I hope! ;)

Shamrock-medal Reply

This sounds so much better than the canned soup version!

Sausage2 Reply

Haha, thanks. I think it is! :)

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