Oven Baked Chop Suey

January third year. The azaleas are bare and the air is cold but the daycare is warm and the kids came back from holiday break with enough energy stored from two weeks off that Monday was very loud and full of life. I welcomed it. Loud children at work are usually the healthy ones.

Tyler and I spent Sunday at home this week instead of going to Gloria because the roads were icy and I did not want Gloria driving anywhere and I did not want to drive either. We called her. She was fine. Destiny was fine. We talked for twenty minutes on speaker and Destiny told us about a dream she had that involved a horse and a mall simultaneously. Tyler said that sounded like a very efficient dream. She agreed it was efficient.

I made chili from scratch on Sunday, the version I have been perfecting for two years now, two kinds of beans and a specific combination of spices that I have written down for the first time this year because I realized I was varying it without meaning to. Writing it down meant deciding. This is the recipe now. This is the standard. I have been cooking long enough to know what I mean when I cook it. That took years. Some recipes require you to cook them enough times to know what you actually intend and not just what you happen to produce. I know what I intend. I wrote it down.

The chili was the one I wrote down this year, but the urge to finally commit a recipe to paper — to decide what it actually is instead of what it happens to be — carried into the rest of that Sunday. This oven baked chop suey is another one of those dishes I’ve circled back to enough times to know what I mean by it now: something warm and filling that asks almost nothing of you once it’s in the oven, which is exactly what a cold, icy, stay-inside Sunday calls for. If you’ve been making a version of this from memory and it keeps shifting, this is the one worth writing down.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr 5 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs ground beef
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 stalks celery, sliced thin
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can (10.5 oz) cream of mushroom soup
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups uncooked egg noodles
1 cup beef broth
1 can (14 oz) bean sprouts, drained
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese (optional, for topping)

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish and set aside.
Brown the meat. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook ground beef until no longer pink, breaking it apart as it cooks, about 6–8 minutes. Drain excess fat.
Sauté the vegetables. Add onion, celery, and bell pepper to the skillet with the beef. Cook over medium heat until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more.
Build the sauce. Stir in diced tomatoes, cream of mushroom soup, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper. Mix until combined.
Add noodles and broth. Stir in the uncooked egg noodles, beef broth, and drained bean sprouts. Mix everything together thoroughly.
Transfer and bake. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish, spreading it evenly. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 35 minutes.
Finish uncovered. Remove foil, sprinkle with cheddar cheese if using, and bake an additional 10 minutes until the top is lightly set and the noodles are tender.
Rest and serve. Let sit 5 minutes before serving. Serve directly from the dish.

Nutrition (per serving)

Oven Baked Chop Suey — The Recipe I Finally Wrote Down