September 06, 2026

Broccoli Casserole

I have to say this is one of the ones that I had very low expectations for going into it. We were doing some ribs for dinner so I thought that Broccoli Casserole might be a good side dish to serve along with them.

I started by cutting up and blanching the broccoli.

The recipe calls fpr “6 cups”, and since I really dislike volume measure for anything but liquid ingredients, I made sure to weigh it after measuring. Turns out that 6 cups of broccoli florets (I didn’t use the stems) is just about exactly one pound. After they were done steaming and were in the ice bath, I used the same sauce pan to saute 12oz of mushrooms.

When they were done I gathered up the rest of the ingredients.

One recurring theme I noticed in the Food Network recipe comments for this one was that people often substituted ranch dressing for the the blue cheese. This made sense to me, especially since my family really only likes blue cheese in the context of buffalo wings. Ranch seemed like the natural choice here. I mixed up the wet ingredients, including the ramen seasoning packet. I used a pack of gluten free ramen, and crushed the noodles then added them to the bowl with the vegetables.

After I mixed them together I moved everything into an 8x8 baking dish, making sure to pack everything tightly in there, like he did on the episode. I baked it covered in foil at 350 for 45 minutes, then took the foil off and gave it another 15.

I served this along with the ribs and like I mentioned, was NOT expecting much at all. Turns out though, that the casserole was actually pretty good! It was good enough for each of us to at least have seconds. However, now and then you’d get a “crunchy” in there, which was a gluten free noodle. I should have remembered, gluten free ramen cooks very differently. If I ever do make this again, I’ll pre-cook the noodles before adding them into the casserole.

Broccoli Casserole

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used one pound of broccoli florets
• Substituted ranch for blue cheese
• Used gluten free ramen – next time need to cook the noodles first