Give Ham And Noodle Casserole A Crunchy, Flavorful Topping With Croutons

If mac and cheese is a favorite of yours, there's a good chance you will like this ham and noodle casserole from Mashed recipe developer Carlos Leo, too. After all, you've got your macaroni (aka noodles), and you've got your cheese — two forms of it in fact, as Leo combines condensed cheddar and mushroom soups for the sauce and stirs some shredded cheddar into the mix. There's also ham, as per the name of the dish, plus some chopped broccoli, although you can swap these ingredients out for different proteins and vegetables if you're not a fan of them. What you definitely shouldn't skip, though, is the crushed crouton crust. Not only does this give your casserole some crunch, but it also adds alliteration (an especially delicious literary device).

Leo assembles the casserole first, mixing cooked egg noodles, canned soups, meat, vegetables, and cheese. He then finishes things off with a layer of croutons mixed with still more cheese and bakes the casserole under a foil cover. The cover comes off for the last few minutes, though, so the crouton crumbs can get nice and crispy.

While Carlos Leo doesn't specify the type of croutons he uses, other than to note that they're seasoned, the easiest route would be to go with the store-bought kind if you keep these on hand for your salads. You can also make your own croutons pretty easily, though. While many crouton recipes call for stale bread, this isn't entirely necessary, nor do you need the proverbial day-old bread. (We're going to guess that, unless you just got back from the grocery store, the bread in your kitchen has already passed that mark.) If your bread is so fresh and soft that you can't easily cut it into crouton-sized bits, all you need to do is let it sit at room temperature for a couple of hours until it dries out a bit.

The first step in making homemade croutons (here's a recipe if you need some inspiration) is to dice the bread into cubes. As you'll be crushing the croutons for the casserole recipe, there's no need to be too fussy about size or uniformity. Coat the cubes with a little oil; sprinkle them with your choice of seasonings such as garlic, salt, and pepper; then bake them in the oven or air fryer (here's a recipe for this) until they're toasted and crispy. If you make a large batch, you'll have enough to cover your ham and noodle casserole and make a matching crouton-topped salad.