Mama Violet's Own Spinach Casserole

Submitted by Tiomarrano

"This recipe was born of necessity. My mother got a case of canned spinach as a wedding gift. Rather than throw out the canned spinach, which, by itself, she didn't like, she thought of the following recipe to make it palatable. It was a family hit ever since"

 

• Ready In: 30mins
• Ingredients: 7
• Serves: 5

ingredients

• 2 (10 ounce) packages frozen chopped spinach
• 1 medium onion, diced fine
• 5 eggs
• 1 1⁄2 cups milk
• 2 cups cheddar cheese (sharp or medium,not mild, cubed or shredded)
• 12 slices white bread (dried out and cut into small bite sized pieces, can use more or less as needed)
• 3⁄4 cup margarine (more if needed) or 3/4 cup butter (more if needed)

directions

1. Boil frozen spinach and diced onion together in a saucepan with minimal water but enough to prevent burning or boiling dry.
2. When done boiling spinach/onion mixture until onion is soft and spinach is thawed and cooked, drain off ALL the liquid from spinach mixture. If substantial liquid remains, it can destroy the integrity of the casserole and make it so soupy that the bread topping gets ruined.
3. Also, be sure to cool the spinach mixture completely. If it isn't cool, the egg component may coagulate and cook, also ruining the integrity of the casserole.
4. Once spinach and onion mixture is completely drained and cool, in a mixing bowl mix the eggs and milk and combine with spinach/onion mixture.
5. Pour spinach mixture into an already buttered (or greased) baking casserole dish that is the right size for the amount of mixture you have.
6. Distribute the cheddar (best if sharp but medium will work) cheese cubes or shredded, evenly across the whole of the spinach mixture in the baking pan.

7. TOPPING FOR CASSEROLE:

8. Cube the dried slices of bread (can dry in oven to speed up the process), with a knife The pieces don't need to be exact cubes. Just bite sized dried bread.
9. Once you have the bread cubes ready, take a sauce pan and melt the margarine or butter.
10. Distribute the dried bread cubes across the top of the spinach casserole. If you need more bread, use more. If less, make croutons with remaining bread cubes for another use.
11. Once bread is on top of spinach casserole layer, take melted butter or margarine (don't be stingy, use as much as you need to soak into the bread cubes pretty well), and drizzle it as evenly as possible over the dry bread cubes that are on top of the spinach layer.
12. Bake in preheated oven at 325 degrees for 30 minutes or until bread cubes are golden brown.