What is pineapple cheese casserole?
Is it a dessert? Is it a side dish for a regular meal? What exactly is pineapple cheese casserole as it fits into your courses? And for that matter, is it like green bean casserole and should only be seen at Thanksgiving?
The answer to all of the above is — pineapple cheese casserole is whatever you want it to be (or when). But unlike at Thanksgiving, I doubt you need a 9x13 pan of it to share with a dozen people, so today we are sizing it way down. This dish is fairly flexible, so if you don't have exactly two 5x5 casserole dishes, you can do a little math (or eyeballing, let's be honest here) to make sure your dishes don't overrunneth, or look flat and sad either.
Individual portions
And more vagueness here — depending on how much you want to eat, you can split each casserole dish with a dining companion and have many other sides, or you can each enjoy a whole one if you're hungry or if this is one of few sides. These also re-heat very well, so saving one for later is easy. These are excellent 5" round baking ramekins.
The sweetness of this dish plays well off of other saltier sides or mains, so it's a good way to get variety of flavor into your dinner. Plus the combination of pineapple and sharp cheddar, while odd-sounding, is really really good.
Pineapple Cheese Casserole
Equipment
- two 5x5 casserole dishes or equivalent
Ingredients
- 1 20 ounce can of pineapple tidbits *or crushed pineapple if you prefer that texture
- ⅓ cup white sugar (reduce if you want a less sweet dish)
- 2.5 tablespoons all purpose flour
- ⅓ cup sharp cheddar grated
- 20 Ritz crackers, crushed into crumbs
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Divide the drained pineapple between the two casserole dishes, covering the bottom surface area of each dish as much as possible.
- Mix the sugar and flour together, then spoon evenly over the pineapples.
- Evenly spread the cheese over the floured pineapples.
- Then, distribute the crackers between the casserole dishes.
- Pour half of the butter over one dish, then the other.
- Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool slightly before serving.
Notes
It's vintage
The flavor combo may seem weird at first, but think about it — pineapple on pizza is totally a thing (even if you don't like it, it's real!). According to Discover South Carolina, pineapple cheese casserole, sometimes just called pineapple casserole, is thought to have originated when casseroles were a Big Thing and people were throwing everything in a casserole dish to see how it worked out. This is likely how we have so many casseroles we know and love today, like green bean casserole, for one.
Hilariously, many old cookbooks don't really know how to categorize it either. In fact, my spiral bound church cookbook from my great aunt has it under "soups, salads, and vegetables," which is a total mis-categorization all around. Other cookbooks have it as a dessert, but many have it in the sides section, which makes the most sense to me. No matter what you think of it, it's definitely not a main dish.
Looking for other vintage Southern dishes?
