How '50s Cooks Used Canned Soup To Turn Basic Rice Into This Creamy Casserole

Many recipes from the 1950s showed remarkable skill at combining simple pantry staples into comforting home-cooked meals that the whole family enjoyed. With the increasingly industrialized food system and homogenized grocery stores of the era, these easy recipes rapidly spread, warming ovens nationwide. One such combination that filled many a vintage kitchen with its savory aromas requires little more than a scoop of plain rice and a can of cream of mushroom soup.

Those two pantry-ready ingredients are the most important components in a mushroom and rice casserole, but recipes from the era often suggest a few other additions. Milk or broth, for example, add flavor and creaminess while also filling out the extra liquid required to cook the rice. Likewise, a few handfuls of grated cheese bring extra richness and tang, and a can of mushrooms from the pantry can supply a bit more texture and umami to the dish. Once assembled, and augmented, all that it needs is a trip to the oven to cook into a creamy, mushroomy side dish.

For decades, casseroles have been in decline, but that trend may be reversing course. As clever cooks find ways to modernize outdated recipes, the comfort food classics are ready for a resurgence — and this creative way to use canned cream of mushroom soup is primed for such a comeback. The core of the recipe is simple as can be, which really opens the door to home cooks employing a bit of culinary craft to make it their own.

There are many ways that a clever cook can elevate this mushroom rice casserole. For starters, instead of using a can of condensed soup, making the dish with the leftovers from a pot of homemade umami-rich cream of mushroom soup would give it a much deeper complexity. Beyond that, though, adding some nicely browned criminis (also called baby bellas) is a simple way to add layers to that favorite fungal flavor and invite all of the other techniques for adding flavor to mushrooms, such as fresh herbs, garlic, or even a splash of wine. Topped, then, with a crisp browned layer of breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese, this becomes a 1950s-inspired recipe with some decidedly modern flair.

As for how to serve this mushroom and rice casserole, well, this is another area where the dish has a degree of flexibility. In its most basic form, it makes an excellent starchy side. Paired with a nice stuffed portobello mushroom, or perhaps something more vintage like a slab from a classic meatloaf recipe, it's a nearly complete meal — all it needs is a vegetable. To make things even simpler, though, the casserole can also be bulked up with extra vegetables and proteins. That could mean simply adding the broccoli and chicken leftover from last night's meal, or it could mean cooking up some ground beef or turkey with onions and garlic to mix in. Either way, all it takes is a few simple additions to turn this simple pantry-staple casserole from a side dish to the main course.