Cheesy Sausage and Rice Bake

[kingrat]

I promised to write about what I cook in an effort to cook more. But I didn’t promise this would be stuff you’d want to eat.

The recipe comes from the Better Homes & Gardens Biggest Book of Casseroles. It turned out pretty tasty, though a little saltier than I was expecting. I should find out if any of the local butchers do a low salt bulk sausage. Doctor told me I was to watch my salt. I don’t like to be rigid about it, but seeing Gramps ingest salt licks when he was supposed to watch his salt too, and end up in the hospital for it, has been illuminating.

Recipe is how I made it, not exactly how it is in the cookbook.

• 1 lb. bulk sausage
• ½ small onion
• 3 cups crisp rice cereal
• ¼ cup rice
• 4 ounces cheddar cheese
• 1 can cream of celery soup
• 3 eggs
• ¼ cup soy milk
• 1½ teaspoons butter

1. Cook rice.
2. Chop the onion.
3. Shred the cheese.
4. Grease a 2 quart casserole dish.
5. Pre-heat the oven to 325°.
6. Cook sausage and onion over medium heat.
7. Combine 2½ cups of the cereal with the rice.
8. Spread the rice mix on the bottom of the casserole dish.
9. Spread sausage and onion over the rice.
10. Spread the cheese over the sausage.
11. Mix the soup, eggs, and soy milk.
12. Pour eggs etc. over everything else.
13. Melt the butter.
14. Mix butter with last ½ cup of cereal.
15. Sprinkle cereal over the top of the casserole.
16. Bake uncovered for 45 minutes.

Cheesy sausage and rice bake

Edited to add: Daniel suggests in the comments on LJ that most of the salt comes from the soup. Not exactly true, though that is biggest single contributor of sodium. I’m pretty good about checking sodium content of the foods I buy and got the cream of celery soup that had the lowest sodium content of any of that kind of soup at Fred Meyer.

Here’s the sodium contributions to this dish, taken from the nutrition labels:

1025 mg	soup
900 mg	sausage
720 mg	cheese
640 mg	cereal
210 mg	eggs
24 mg	soy milk
2 mg	unsalted butter
3521 mg	total sodium
586 mg	sodium per serving

crossposted from King Rat.

Comments

[dporowski.livejournal.com]

Most of the salt there is from the can of soup. That stuff is LETHAL. Yet useful. So problematic.

I'd go low-sodium soup before I messed with the sausage. Sausage wants salt to make the flavor come out and mix right within itself.

[kingrat]

I actually bought the lowest salt version of the soup that was at Fred Meyer. I'm pretty good about checking sodium content of the foods I buy.

Here's the salt contributions of the ingredients that have salt:

1025 mg - soup
900 mg - sausage
720 mg - cheese
640 mg - cereal
210 mg - eggs
24 mg - soy milk
2 mg - unsalted butter

3521 mg total
586 mg/serving

the cook book has salt content at 872 mg per serving, but i don't know what brands they used for their analysis. I know some manufacturers systematically under-report the salt content of their food products, so my ingredients might have a lot more.

[moriae.livejournal.com]

yay food posts! :)

that looks like a tasty dish to try.

[xicanti.livejournal.com]

Sounds tasty to me. I'm a bit of a sausage addict, and I've always been oddly fascinated with cheese soup.