Strange Tuna Casserole from The Official Netflix Cookbook (Stranger Things)

Time for dish #7 from The Official Netflix Cookbook! I made its recipe for Strange Tuna Casserole, inspired by Stranger Things. It's the second of five Stranger Things recipes, each one intended to be enjoyed as part of a watch party. Like the meatloaf and mash recipe I made before it, tuna casserole is a likely mainstay of cuisine in Hawkins, and certainly a popular weeknight favorite for a busy family across America. Using a combo of pantry ingredients and some vegetables and cheese, it's a filling, comforting dinner in half an hour. This is an elevated version.

In episode 3 of season 1, Karen Wheeler brings Joyce Byers a casserole as a form of comfort, after the disappearance of her son.

Karen: Hey!

Joyce: Hey, Karen.

Karen: Hi... I brought you a casserole.

Joyce: Oh! Thank you, uh... Uh, you wanna... come in?

They get to talking about their children, with Karen telling Joyce she and her husband Ted are there for her. The timer on the oven dings, and Karen puts it in. We only see it packed in foil, so we don't know what kind of casserole it is, so let's say our headcanon is that it's tuna. Her young daughter Holly, who she brought, goes where she shouldn't and Joyce rushes them out after Holly saw something she shouldn't have.

Joyce: How... how’s Mike dealing with this? Is he, uh, okay?

Karen: Mike? Uh... I don’t know. He skipped school yesterday. He’s never done anything like that before. [timer dings] - Let me throw in that casserole, okay? [she goes to do that] Oh, where’s Holly?

Joyce: Hey! She shouldn’t be here.

Karen: Oh, I’m sorry. She’s quite the explorer these days.

Joyce: Wait, did you see something?

Holly: Yeah.

Joyce: What did... what did you see? Tell me. What did you see? What—

Karen: Joyce... Joyce!

Joyce: Listen... Karen, thank you for the casserole, but I need you to leave. Okay?

As I waited for season 5 to begin its 3-part debut (whyyyyyyy didn't they drop them all at once???), I planned to make these Tuna Casseroles for dinner one night, served with low-effort spinach that I tossed with olive oil and lemon juice. The Tuna Casseroles are made much like a typical one, but these are mini Tuna Casseroles, cooked in a muffin tin like the meat loaves. If you'll recall, I bought a new 12 cup muffin tin to make this and the meat loaves, and other savory recipes that have the potential to wreck it.

Now, controversial opinion here: I hate canned condensed cream of mushroom/celery/chicken/whatever soup. I do! I make no apologies for it. Whenever I say that, people seem to get defensive, and it's usually because they grew up eating it or come at it from a perspective of economics. Sure, I understand it's affordable and convenient, but it's also very salty, I find it lacks flavor, and so any time a casserole or any other recipe calls for condensed soup, I make an equivalent of soup from scratch. That way it feels more elevated.

To my chagrin, this recipe called for a can of condensed mushroom soup. Instead of using that, I made my own batch of Laura Vitale's DIY Cream of Mushroom Soup the day before, and used 3/4 cup of it in the Casserole recipe to start. It ended up being a sufficient amount, as it thickens to roughly the consistency you would get from a can. Canned soup usually has minced mushrooms, but I coarsely chopped mine when I cooked my own soup, and snipped them up with scissors to make sure they weren't so large they'd take up too much room in the muffin tin.

At one point, I wasn't concentrating and I added too much sour cream, 1/2 a cup instead of 1/4. I reached for the wrong measuring cup despite having both in front of me. I elected not to add the same amount called for of milk/cream to make up the difference, since that would run the risk of the casseroles being too wet to hold together. Another of my contingencies, which the recipe doesn't tell you to do, but I like to, is I drain the tuna on paper towels after pouring off the water. That way, any more moisture in them is soaked up. I used slightly less tuna than what it calls for (two 5 gram cans) because I can only get 4.25g or so cans. Close enough.

These turned out lovely! They were even done faster than I thought they'd be, and held their shape quite well. I was very pleased with the result, even if those I was serving it to that night weren't blown away. It is, after all, a more or less standard Tuna Casserole recipe, albeit in muffin-size form. The recipe could probably work the same in a baking dish if you wanted to serve more traditional Tuna Casserole. Otherwise, another winner!

If you want to make this recipe yourself, you can get it in The Official Netflix Cookbook: 70 Recipes from Your TV to Your Table. The recipe for Laura's DIY soup can be found here.