Casseroles are the best thing about fall, IMO. The oven is back on, dinner is one dish and the leftovers are built in. There is one catch for Weight Watchers followers, though. Most classic casserole fillings are built on cream-of soups, full-fat cheese, butter, sour cream and biscuit dough, and almost none of them were written with a WW member in mind.
These 10 buck that trend!
Each is a lightened version of a classic you already know with the same great taste that made them classics in the first place. Enjoy!
1. Paula Deen’s Hash Brown Casserole
If any one dish is the catch, it is this one. Paula Deen’s hash brown casserole runs on regular sour cream, a half pound of shredded cheese and a can of condensed soup, and it is on every potluck table from now until spring.
Our version keeps her method and her baking time and changes what goes in the bowl. Nonfat Greek yogurt and light sour cream share the creamy job, the cheese is reduced-fat and stops at two thirds of a cup, and the soup is 98% fat-free cream of celery. The chips on top stay, just a lighter brand, or swap in cornflakes.
Forty-five minutes in the oven. Nine side-dish servings, 4 Points each, or cut it bigger and call it dinner.
2. Ground Turkey Shepherd’s Pie
Just 4 Points a serving, and the trick is a fork: drag it across the mashed potato top before it goes in the oven and the ridges brown just like the beef-and-butter shepherd’s pie you grew up on. Underneath is 98% lean ground turkey in a quick pan gravy of broth, flour and Worcestershire, and the mash is russets with plain Greek yogurt and a spoon of dry ranch seasoning standing in for the butter and sour cream. There is a sweet potato version in the recipe too, if that is more your fall.
3. Chicken Divan
Have you ever made chicken divan without the butter? The classic is chicken and broccoli under a velvety cheese sauce and a ton of cheese. Here the sauce is milk thickened with cornstarch, no roux at all, with half a cup each of mozzarella and Swiss melted in for four servings, which is how it comes in at 6 Points. Cauliflower can stand in for the broccoli if that is what is in the crisper.
Seared chicken, broccoli steamed just to tender-crisp so it stays green, and 25 minutes until the top is golden and bubbly. It freezes well too.
4. Weight Watchers Lasagna
Cottage cheese. That is the swap that makes this lasagna work: low-fat cottage cheese blended with an egg and parmesan where the whole-milk ricotta would be. The rest follows from there. 93% lean ground turkey instead of beef, part-skim mozzarella instead of a blanket of the full-fat kind, and a tomato sauce made from scratch.
Shredded zucchini cooks down into the meat sauce and a little spinach goes into the cheese layer. Neither one takes over.
It is the biggest project on this list, a 9×13 that cuts into twelve at 7 Points a square, so freeze individual portions for the weeks you are not cooking.
5. Chicken Spinach Artichoke Casserole
Spinach artichoke dip, the party one, is a block of cream cheese plus mayonnaise plus sour cream plus a pile of shredded cheese. This turns it into dinner with light cream cheese, fat-free mayo and fat-free sour cream carrying the creaminess, reduced-fat mozzarella on top and shredded chicken for the protein. Yes, there is biscuit dough in it: one 7.5-ounce can, cut small and folded through for six servings, not a bread base, and it still lands at 6 Points.
Ten minutes to put together if the chicken is already cooked, and the recipe shows how to keep a week of shredded chicken ready from the crockpot.
6. Chicken Noodle Casserole
This one keeps the can of cream of chicken. That can is the flavor people want from a chicken noodle casserole, so everything around it gets lightened instead. No Yolk egg noodles, light sour cream, chicken broth to loosen the sauce, and no buttery cracker top.
A panko and ranch topping is in the recipe for the nights you have Points to spare. Either way it is an 8×8 that you can put together while the oven heats, it bakes in about 25 minutes, and a serving is 6 Points.
7. Doritos Casserole
Crunch on top, not mush inside. The usual Doritos casserole crushes most of a bag into the base as a binder and holds it together with a can of cream of chicken, sour cream and full-fat cheese. Here two chopped corn tortillas do the thickening, so all 24 chips sit on top where you can taste them, and plain Greek yogurt with chunky salsa stands in for the soup and the sour cream. Ground chicken breast, reduced-fat Mexican blend, an 8×8, six servings at 6 Points. Want it to be the whole plate? Cut it into four bigger servings instead.
8. Chicken and Broccoli Casserole
Melt two tablespoons of light butter, whisk in flour, then 1% milk, then a cup of reduced-fat cheese and a little parmesan. That is the sauce, made in the pan in a few minutes, and it replaces the can of cream of mushroom, the mayonnaise and the pile of cheddar the potluck chicken broccoli casserole leans on.
Roasted mini potatoes go in with the chicken and broccoli, so this is the whole dinner in one dish. Six big servings, 7 Points each.
Bake it in a cast iron skillet instead of the 9×13 and the cheese caramelizes up the sides.
9. Stuffed Pepper Casserole
Stuffed peppers without the stuffing, and without the 40-minute wait for whole peppers to soften. The peppers get chopped and cooked into the filling with onion, tomatoes and tomato paste, lean ground beef goes in, brown rice gets stirred through, and the pan heads to the oven for 20 minutes.
At 6 Points a serving, the cheese is where the lightening lands: four slices of low-fat mozzarella laid over the top instead of a bag of shredded. It freezes for up to three weeks, so make two.
10. Healthy Hash Brown Casserole
And one for the morning. The sausage, egg and hash brown casserole in the church cookbook is pork sausage, whole milk and a lot of cheddar. This one seasons fat-free ground turkey with sage and oregano until it tastes like sausage, adds center-cut bacon for the smoke, and pours ten whole eggs whisked with 1% milk over everything, reduced-fat cheese included. A serving comes in at 5 Points.
Meal prep it on Sunday and reheat all week, or make it the night before for a house full of guests. It freezes well too.
