Feb 20, 2008
I found this recipe looking for some real comfort food for dinner tonight with ingredient that I had. I'd like to start off by saying that I am not a calorie-counter-- never, ever actually, but happened to see the calorie count in the nutrition info and was shocked at the calories and fat in this dish! 852 calories and 64.8 gms of fat in one serving! Holey Moley! I made some substitutions for taste and to lower the cal/fat. I parboiled my potatoes, but I won't bother next time. An hour in the oven will be fine as long as you slice them relatively thin (1/8 inch). I added a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce and some chopped banana peppers (with the extra juice squeezed out) to the ground beef. For the sauce I substituted 1.5 cups of 2% milk and 1.5 cups of light chicken stock for the 3 cups of milk. Instead of a cup of heavy cream I used 1/2 cup of sour cream that I had on hand. I was going to add a full cup but the sauce was rich enough with only 1/2 cup . These substitutions cut the fat and calories by half! I also added an additional 1 tbl. of flour to the roux because some other reviewers complained of runniness. I browned-up the roux to make the sauce a little more robust. Be sure to keep the flame low and keep stirring.
I used 2 cups of cheese instead of 4, which seemed like overkill: I used 1 cup of a jack, cheddar, asadero blend and 1 cup of shredded mozz.
I cooked it for an hour in a large cast-iron skillet and it was perfectly done: crisp and bro
—Boomer
