Tuna Noodle Casserole

Corn Flakes Top this 1950s Classic

Many home cooks in the 1950s were mad for the new convenience foods — canned this or powdered that.  Although many of these items had become available earlier in the 20th century, they reached their zenith of popularity in the 50s. 

The 1950s were also the decade of casseroles.  “One-pot” recipes of the casserole persuasion have been around since mankind first invented cooking utensils, but people rediscovered them in the 1930s.  And eventually people realized that many of those swell convenience foods — condensed soup in particular — worked well in casserole assembly. 

Tuna Noodle Casserole was the quintessential 50s dish.  It required boxed noodles!  Canned soup!  Canned tuna!  Canned peas!  And a topping of boxed cereal!  How wonderful— you could make it without any fresh ingredients!  Convenient, no?

And amazingly enough, it was also a pretty good dish. 

Frito Pie with Chili

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I Know — But When You Want It, You Want It 

We all crave foods that are bad for us or that we’re embarrassed to admit we like — often both. They’re our guilty pleasures. We visited the concept a few months back in our Cheddar Cheese Chicken Curry post.

You’ve got your own list, I’m sure. It might include Tuna Noodle Casserole (with corn-flake topping!) or fake Mexican “queso” dip (made with Velveeta!) or Jell-O Mold (with marshmallows!).

Me? At this time of year, I hear the siren song of one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Frito Pie.

It’s decadent and delicious — and I can’t resist it. I’ll bet you can’t, either.

Cheddar Cheese Chicken Curry - A Guilty Pleasure

We all have our secret guilty pleasures – something we like even though we know we “shouldn’t.”  When it comes to food, that usually means something that’s unhealthy or too déclassé for words.  Often both.   Dishes like:

• Tuna noodle casserole (bonus points for corn-flake topping)
• Cold leftover pizza for breakfast
• Lipton California dip (the one made with dried onion soup mix and sour cream)
• Mrs. Paul’s fish fillets (or fish sticks!) with cocktail sauce
• Frito pie
• Velveeta & Rotel queso dip 
• Jell-O mold
• Kraft's blue box macaroni and cheese

Yeah, some of those on are my list, and probably yours, too.

But my all-time favorite guilty pleasure is a recipe for leftover chicken curried in cheddar cheese sauce that I first tried over 40 years ago.

It’s not authentic.  It’s not healthy.  It requires a processed food product.  And it’s probably not something you want to tell your friends about.

But sample it once, and as its creator suggests, “you may find yourself having chicken often just so you can have leftover chicken often.  I can’t say that I’d blame you.”