The casserole is a symbol of both Southern cooking and a delicious meal. It's good both right out of the oven and reheated two days later in a microwave at work. Truly, the casserole is a work of art as well as a workhorse of a meal. This buffet vegetable casserole from the 1976 First Lady Cookbook is a great way to get in a ton of vegetables in one meal and use up the last of the vegetables from the fridge. The original called for sliced hardboiled eggs and pimentos but I just couldn't bring myself to put them in. Instead, I topped this whole affair with goat cheese, for a bright taste and a great crust atop the vegetables and white sauce. If you want to try the original vegetable buffet casserole though, here it is:
But if the idea of having hardboiled eggs in your baked vegetable casserole weirds you out too, try my updated version!
Buffet Vegetable Casserole
Ingredients
- 3 medium Yukon gold potatoes
- ½ medium onion
- 2 carrots
- 2 stalks celery
- ¼ red bell pepper
- 3 ounces goat cheese
- 7 tbsp butter divided
- 4 tbsp flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 cups milk
Instructions
- Dice the vegetables into similar size pieces.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Melt 2 tbsp butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, add the vegetables and stir to coat. Cook vegetables for 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, make the white sauce by melting 4 tbsp in another, smaller saucepan over medium heat. Once the butter is melted after about a minute, whisk in the flour and salt.
- Continue whisking while pouring in the milk. Whisk any lumps out.
- Use the last tablespoon of butter to butter a 9x13 casserole dish (you may not use all of the butter here).
- Put half of the cooked vegetables in the bottom of the casserole dish. Add half of the white sauce, then the remainder of the vegetables, then the rest of the white sauce.
- Evenly spread small chunks of goat cheese over the casserole.
- Bake in the heated oven for 30 minutes.
- Turn the broiler on and broil for 2-3 minutes or until bubbly and brown on top.
