An ode to hot dish, with Food Network star Molly Yeh

Hot dish? Or hotdish? If you’re not from the Midwest, you may be unfamiliar with the region’s signature meal.

Molly Yeh — hot dish expert and host of the Food Network’s “Girl Meet Farm” — says that a hot dish is a subset of a casserole. All hot dishes are casseroles, she explains, but not all casseroles are hot dishes.

A hot dish must constitute a full meal, featuring a protein, veggie, starch and sauce, Yeh says. The best casseroles are tied together by fun toppings like tater tots.

“I think that's where a lot of people in the Midwest get very defensive about the term,” Yeh says, “because, for example, you could have a green bean casserole, but is that a full meal? Does it have all the food groups in it? No.”

Is tuna casserole a hot dish?

“Tuna noodle casserole is absolutely a hot dish.

“The essence of a hot dish is that you could just throw everything in there and feed the whole family, not worry about a side dish, appetizer, salad or whatever. It was just all in there, and it could stay in the oven until everybody was ready to eat, until the farmers came in from the field, and it is everything that you ever want when it is 40 degrees below zero.”

What do you like to put in a hot dish?

“I love the classic tater tot hot dish, which is typically ground beef and some sort of green, kind of soggy vegetable that is really just there to tick the box. And that tater tot hot dish is held together by creamed soup.

“Traditionally, you open up a can of condensed soup. I like to make mine from scratch. And you've got to use homemade stock because a hot dish to me is about like the simple comfort, but if you do it really well and if you take the care to use a homemade stock and to make a homemade cream sauce with that stock and then to really season the meat well and get it really nice and brown, it's about like the little things for me.

“What I love about hot dish is that there are so many things that you can do with the format. I mean, if you just kind of look at it as an equation, you can add different spices. I've added Ras el Hanout and baharat to my hot dishes.

“I've done Chinese hot dishes. I'm half Chinese, so I have one that's almost sort of like my grandma's sticky rice stuffing. There's lap cheong in it. There's sticky rice in it. It gets topped with those crispy lo mein noodles.

“The world is like your hot dish oyster. I've done vegan ones — I have like a braised chickpea one with harissa and feta, and that one is completely vegetarian and still really, really hearty. And so I think if you just kind of look at it as, okay, what kind of different combinations can I do with the meats and the spices and, and the different veggies? And then of course the toppings [are] where you can really get weird and let your creativity flow.”

What hot dish tips can you share?

“There are a couple of things that I feel bring a hot dish to the next level, and that is incorporating a little bit of acidity in the mixture to kind of cut through what is traditionally a very rich dish. So whether you're adding a little bit of salt, beer or wine or even lemon juice or lemon zest to your cream mixture. Or even, even just serving it with ketchup, I find, adds like that little cut that you need to balance out the richness.

“Also in order to get the topping really crispy, you want to bake your hot dishes in the upper part of your oven where it gets extra hot, and that way those tots don't get soggy. They get extra crispy.”

How do you ensure everything is cooked through?

“I'll typically brown the meat first, sometimes with an onion. And you do want to season the meat, even though the sauce that you're making is going to have a lot of seasoning. You want the salt to make contact with the meat so that it can get that nice browning and develop that great flavor. And then I'll use a slotted spoon to get that out of the skillet and kind of drain it off so that the whole thing isn't overly heavy.

“Then I either cook the vegetables, or if it's a smaller, tender vegetable, like frozen peas, you don't need to cook them separately. And then you can use kind of the brown bits that are stuck at the bottom of the skillet from browning the meat to use that same skillet to make your sauce. And all of those brown bits from browning the meat will add a lot of flavor to the sauce.”

How can you make a hot dish with Thanksgiving leftovers? 

“If you have leftover turkey, mix it with some wild rice, your sauce, and then if you have any leftover stuffing, scatter it on top and bake it.”

Gabrielle Healy produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Micaela Rodriguez. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.