2For66

Dates Cooked: February 16 and April 9, 2024

When I was researching the hamburger chili dish, I saw this Frito Pie recipe from the NY Times [NOTE: the first 10 people can get a copy of this recipe from the NY Times] I also found this recipe in a post and a YouTube by Farideh Sadeghin. She serves it OG style in a Frito bag. My only complaint is she cuts the bag wrong on her post. Ultimately I thought that the NY Times version would be more conducive to serve a large group. I don’t know why they call it a pie; it’s nothing like a pie I’ve eaten.

Please don’t tell me this is a casserole. I’ve staked my claim with many friends that I hate casseroles. My reputation was saved by my take on Minnesota Hot Dish (I didn’t like it). Unencumbered by the thought process (thanks Click and Clack) I consider a casserole as some meat in a sauce, topped with cheese and a crunchy topping then baked in a casserole dish. Uh oh – That describes this dish.

But, wait! Isn’t this really just another take on Pepper Bellies; the dish served at little league games across the country when I was a kid? Slit the side of a small bag of Fritos, add chili and top with cheese and onions. No one would call that a casserole.

Plus, the process of putting this together is very similar to making lasagna with alternating layers of a grain (noodles or Fritos), sauce, and cheese. In order to get out from under the casserole word, I’m declaring this to be a lasagna.

Now that we are clear that this is definitely not a casserole, I can say it is delicious. So delicious that after I cooked it for my family at my birthday party in February I followed up by bringing it to our monthly Happy Hour in April. I can NOT hear you saying that casseroles are staple of group dinners! I CAN NOT HEAR YOU!

Start with a fairly simple set of ingredients. The Zip-Loc containers hold home made pinto beans.

Open the enchilada sauce cans, shred the cheese, dice the onions, drain the beans, measure out the taco seasoning and save a few Fritos to pass at the table and you have this. I’m a huge fan of Penzey’s spices so use their seasoning. You can buy a packet of another brand or look on the internet for a recipe to make it from scratch.

This dish goes together in layers so I lined everything up next to the stove in the order (more-or-less) in which they are added.

First sauté the hamburg and onions.

Then add the taco seasoning and a bit of water.

Now we get serious: add the beans and enchilada sauce and simmer a bit.

Let’s build the casserole um, lasagna. Spray some vegetable oil in a casserole dish then put in half the Fritos.

Add half the shredded cheese.

All the meat and bean sauce is next.

Just like a lasagna let’s do another layer of fritos (instead of pasta)

Finish the construction with the rest of the shredded cheese.

Like a lasagna, pop it in hot – 400° – oven and bake until the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbly.

We’ve got to have some garnishes for people to pick and choose from according to their taste.

Dinner is served (with a healthy salad). Beer is the best drink to accompany this dish.

Rating: ★★★★ 4 Stars. I’d serve this to just about anyone. But if you are on a sodium restricted diet, this is not for you. This is definitely not health food.

A note about the photography. These pictures are a mix from the two times I’ve cooked this dish. My regular readers may know that I’m trying out using my iPhone for all my photography. When I cooked this in February it was my first attempt at taking only iPhone photos for a blog post. It didn’t go great. The first problem is that the colors were way off; that is because getting good images in my kitchen can be a challenge due a multi-colored countertop along with multiple light sources: under the counter we have fluorescent lights, overhead in the kitchen we have LED bulbs, and with all our windows we have various amounts of natural lighting. With my regular camera (Sony A6600) I can use a flash that overwhelms a lot of those problems.

Without a flash the photos can can usually be fixed by setting a white balance. That worked only marginally in this case. And that is because of my second problem: integrating Apple photos with Lightroom. I use Lightroom to process my images – I’ve done lots of online classes on it, it is powerful and it can do what I want. I’ve since discovered that the best way to get my pictures out of Apple Photos and into Lightroom is to take the pictures using the Apple Pro Raw format and export them as raw images instead of JPGs. After importing them into Lightroom, I can apply the ProRaw profile. For the February cook I did almost none of that. For the second shoot, I chickened out and went back to my Sony A6600.

So, I need to work through this as I move forward. Stay tuned.