This is a totally retro, 1960’s recipe. Tuna and rice bake, complete with crushed up potato chips sprinkled on the top! And everyone in our family loves it!
Like any other good ‘bake’ recipe, this Tuna and rice bake is the perfect make-ahead meal for nights when things are crazy. Nights when you have to take multiple, children to multiple places, and then attempt to pick them all up on time. Nights when you feel like all you do is drive places and wait for your kids!
Please tell me I am not the only one who has nights like this?!?!
On those crazy nights I try to make dinner at lunch time (otherwise we’ll be having cereal for dinner). And I always pat myself on the back when I come home to find this crazy, retro, tuna bake waiting in the oven.
This recipe is very forgiving, add a little more of a little less of each main ingredients, depending on what you like, or what you have in the fridge.
Add grated or pureed veggies to the tomato sauce to up the nutrient value, or serve it with a big salad and leave out the veggies all together. Use a tin of cream of mushroom soup to stay true to the retro roots, or make your own (we sometimes use this recipe, minus the onions, and parsley and using all button mushrooms). Add extra to the rice layer if you have lots of ‘starving’ children to feed, or make the rice layer thinner to get a higher rice to toppings ratio.
And I know it sounds weird to put crushed up potato chips on top of a bake, but trust me, it’s awesome.
Tuna and Rice Bake
This retro dinner will become a family favourite!
Ingredients
- 1 small onion finely diced
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 2 400gm tins of crushed tomatoes
- 1 carrot and/or zucchini grated
- Approx 4 cups of cooked rice (or as much as you need to cover the base of your dish)
- 2 425gm tins of tuna, drained and flaked
- 1 420 gm tin of cream of mushroom soup (and milk/water as per the instructions on the tin)
- OR 3 cups of home made cream of mushroom soup.
- 1 cup of grated mozzarella cheese
- Plain potato chips, crushed.
Instructions
Chop the onion finely and fry them in a little oil till soft. Add the tomatoes and grated veggies and cook for ten minutes or until veggies are cooked through.
Grease a large oven proof dish (we use a lasagna dish) and add a layer of cooked rice in the bottom of the dish.
Pour the tomato and veggie mix evenly over the rice.
Drain two tins of tuna, and break up the chunks. Spread the tuna evenly over the layer of tomato.
Follow the directions on the can and heat the mushroom soup until it just begins to boil. Stir through the grated cheese until it is all melted.
Pour the cheesey mushroom sauce over the the layer of tuna.
Top the lot with a layer of crushed potato chips.
Put the tuna and rice bake into a moderate oven and bake for 30 minutes or until the edges start to brown and bubble.
Please note: this recipe uses Australian measurements and temperatures, if you need to convert measurements or temperatures you can find our printable cooking conversion chart here.
Do you have a crazy night when you are rushing around with after school activities?
What do you make for dinner on those nights?
Surely I am not the only one who has these crazy nights when dinner needs to be made in advance?
If you are in the same boat, here are a few more make-ahead dinners that might help make things a little less crazy!
Ooh this looks tasty and my little man loves tuna so will be trying this one out soon! Thanks Kate :-)
Monday nights are tricky for us too, I run a Girl Guide unit and am out across dinner time (5.45-8.15) so I hae been using my big slow cooker. I love it – put it on in the morning and the boys can dish themselves up whenever they are ready to eat. Tonight was a yummy beef stroganoff, I love the way the meat falls apart after 8 hours in the cooker.
This looks great. Whenever we’re really busy which at the moment is also a Monday I bust out a rissotto which is relatively quick to make or if it needs to be pre-prepared I have several variety of cottage pie that my kids wolf down
I thought the top was filo pastry! When we were younger my brother and I loved one of Mum’s cookbooks because it showed chips served with sloppy joes. We always insisted that we had to get chips because it was in the picture!
I’m trying to collect all of my simple, easy, freezable meals that I can cook up in these last couple of weeks before baby number 2 arrives. Pulling something out of the freezer for an easy meal is heaven!
I make dinner every weekday while DS (2yrs) sleeps. That way, come dinnertime, it’s merely a matter of re-heating and eating. It has made our lives SO much easier! Bakes, curries, nacho mix – these are my top three for sure. And everyone loves them too.
I made a completely different variation of this the other night and it went down a treat too. Mine’s a tuna mornay with pasta. They’re a great winter dish.
Just cooked this great recipe. Didn’t have mushroom soup so used cream of chicken and it went down a treat. Even my master fussy 3 year old loved it!