Recipe Review: Cowboy Casserole

I get the Daily Dish emails from AllRecipes.com. I don't always save these emails and rarely do I really get to try them out. However, when I saw the recipe for Cowboy Casserole a couple of days ago, I immediately wanted to try it. The author of the recipe uses it while camping. It involves just one pot (gotta love that!). Basically, you cook up some bacon and cut it up; set it aside; drain the grease; cook onions and ground beef; drain; add baked beans, BBQ sauce, and the onions; and cook until boiling. Finally, turn down the heat, put refrigerated biscuit dough on top, cover with a lid, and cook until the biscuits are done. For the full recipe, go to the link above.

The recipe said to use a dutch oven or a skillet. My deep skillet (nonstick) was in the dishwasher, so I had to use my dutch oven. The bacon kinda stuck and left behind particles, but the hamburger and onions absorbed the particles, leaving a smooth surface. I didn't have enough BBQ sauce, unfortunately, but put in what I had. The recipe said that the biscuits would take 10 minutes to cook. They took a LOT longer than that, probably more like 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the meat mixture started burning on the bottom as the biscuits were finishing up. I had to take the pot off the burner, and now I am going to have to use some serious elbow grease to clean that pot.

Overall, it was a good dish, but could have been a lot better had I better executed the dish. Next time, I will use my nonstick deep skillet and I will probably cook the biscuits in the oven. I like the idea of cooking them with the casserole in one dish, but it didn't brown so it wasn't as visually appealing. My husband Robert liked it -- he ate two big helpings of it. He did say that it's not something that he would want all the time, though. I liked it, too, but I feel like it could some kind of spice to give it some more flavor -- maybe chili powder.