Squash Casserole

So what I'm fixing to prepare for y'all today is our squash casserole

And we're going to start with just yellow squash. But while I was up in the hills today, I found a zucchini

And I've never used this before. It's called a roly-poly zucchini. So we're going to try these today and see how we turn out

And we're going to start by just slicing our squash up. Really doesn't matter how you cut it because this is going into the stewing pot

So we're just gonna slice it like this and throw this into our pot

And we're gonna do enough so that we come up with like three cups

And I just can't hardly wait to cut into these little things. Oh my goodness, it's very tender

That cut probably more tender than the yellow squash. And it's sticky

I think I'm just gonna have to sample that raw. It's delicious

I think it's going to make a great addition to our casserole today. Now squash has a tendency to have a lot of water in it

And when we get ready to put our casserole together, we're really not going to want a lot of water

So I'm going to start with just a few drops, just enough to get it going

And probably six cups of raw squash will yield us the three cups of cooked squash that we going to need to put our casserole together Now we just going to cover this pot and let it stew down

And in the meantime, I'm going to come over here and saute our onions that go in it

And a lot of people say, well, Paula, why don't you just throw your onions in with your squash

I really don't like to do that because if we do, our squash takes a little bit longer to cook than our onions

And I just love when you dip into that casserole and put a big chunk of onion in your mouth

So it just really seems to give it a lot more flavor if you do it separately and don't overcook it

We're just going to kind of let those saute until they kind of get a little clear on us

I have to tell y'all, I can't help but think of this telephone call that I got one day from a young lady

She said, Paula, I can't get my squash to fit in my measuring cup. And I said, well, honey, what do you mean

And I found out that she, I did not say slice in the recipe

So she didn't slice it, and she's there trying to cram all of her squash into this cup

Well, we laughed, and we laughed, and we laughed, and we laughed. We probably laughed for 10 minutes

And so every time I fix squash casserole, I think about that fun phone call I got that day

And that taught me a lesson. You have to be very explicit. Now in order to get the water that I was talking about earlier in order to get it out I got a colander here and you can use just a clean rag or cheesecloth either one And we gotten all of the water

out of that and look how good and yummy it is. And if you need to at this point, if your

squash is not stewed down enough, you can just simply take a potato masher and mash

it up some, or take your spoon and just kind of do it like that. So we're ready to mix

all of our ingredients together now. I'm just going to put these back into our pot

And we're going to throw our onions in. It just looks and smells delicious. I can't tell

you what the onions do to it. They just really make it. All right, we're going to transfer

our vegetables into our mixing bowl. All right, we've got our squash and our onions mixed

all together nicely, and from here on out it's just so simple. We're gonna moisten our

squash casserole with sour cream, and we're gonna put a little salt, black pepper, and

garlic powder. And we're gonna stir that up, and then we're gonna put just good old sharp

cheddar cheese. Look how delicious that looks. I think I could actually eat this at this stage

now. And speaking of eating it at this stage, I'm gonna taste it to make sure my seasonings

I want to make sure I didn miss the mark on my salt It good All right now we just going to turn this into our buttered casserole dish Just kind of spread it around

evenly in your dish. Now at this point you can kind of do anything you want to with it

You can top it with straight cheese, you could top it with, there's a wonderful little product

out there that are canned onion rings. You can top it with that, only you'd need to wait

until the last two minutes. You'd need to go ahead and actually bake it like this and

then add the onion rings the last two minutes. But one of my favorite toppings is just a

good buttery cracker and that's what we're going to top ours with today. And that's it

It's that simple. We're gonna put it in the oven and cook it for about 30 minutes, and then it's gonna be

ready to eat. The best part about having two ovens is that I can cook two things at once

So my first casserole should be ready. I can't hardly wait to taste those cute little roly polies in the final dish

And I'm gonna make sure I get one in this bite. They're wonderful