Emma Yoder's Classic Ham & Noodle Casserole

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Ham is popular in Amish homes throughout the year.  Hog butchering is a common winter task on Amish farms.  Why?  Easy:  the temperature. Hog butchering is messy, laborious work.  You don't want to be cleaning out pig intestines on a hot July day. Usually, the whole church pitches in to make quick work of cleaning the hogs, although sometimes just a couple families gather to do it. Either way, many hands do make for a lighter load.

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• 🍲 Amish Ham and Noodle Casserole
• 📋 Instructions
• 🐖 More Amish Ham Recipes
• 📋 Full Recipe

Ham is popular for the big holidays - Christmas and Easter - but the versatile, tasty meat appears at gatherings year round. Most Amish have a plentiful supply of ham from their home-butchering meat, so no sense in relegating ham to the holidays.

I remember the first Amish Cook, Elizabeth Coblentz, writing extensively about butchering day 20 some years or so ago.  Man, I remember when I was marketing the column sending the "butchering day column" to the food editor of the Flint Journal in Flint, Michigan.  At the time, that was a very decent-sized newspaper and I was so excited when the editor decided to run the column.  But only that column. I could never persuade him to subscribe to the Amish Cook column weekly, he only ran it that once. But for a fleeting moment The Amish Cook column was in a big city newspaper that had over 100,000 subscribers.  It was a neat moment.  Now, geez, The Flint Journal still publishes, but that city has been clobbered by recession after recession and the paper only comes out 4 days a week with a circulation of 39,000 and falling, that is an over 60 percent drop from 20 years ago.  SIGH, pretty typical for the newspaper business.

Now, back to the recipe....This is a classic Ham & Noodle Casserole from an Amish woman in Vinton County, Ohio.  Good stuff, classic formulation.

Recipe tester Barbara in Missouri gave this a whirl and had this to say:

"Well Kevin, we had this for supper, it was really good!!  We both enjoyed this casserole.  In the state of this recipe, it was good. I probably would have put in a bit of garlic and onion powder and maybe a teaspoon or two of dry mustard.  Frankly it was good as it was!!!"

So, thank you to Barbara, and keep her advice in mind if you want to add just a hint more flavor to it.  You can "cheat" and use store-bought noodles or do as most Amish cooks would and use homemade.  And, yes, canned soup is a favorite Amish addition almost anything like this.

Ham, noodles, swiss cheese and veggies all make this a colorful, delicious casserole! You could use a cheddar cheese instead of Swiss if you wanted to, I've heard of some people using mozzarella cheese. You could also dump some broccoli in, or add some sliced mushrooms. Just drain mushrooms if you are using canned. There's just a lot you can do with this casserole beyond the base recipe. I'm not a huge fan of chicken and ham combined, but you could ditch the celery soup and use cream of chicken soup instead. Some people have reported a great taste doing that. You can also vary the type of pasta you use. I like egg noodles best, but try some rotini or elbow macaroni if you like. Just prepare according to package directions. This is a great meal to make when you have leftover ham from the holidays or you can just used sliced ham. For more flavor, add a dash of garlic powder.

It is a very colorful casserole, in addition to being hearty and delicious.

Sprinkle bread crumbs on top and bake at 350. You can use a glass baking dish or a ceramic one.

You can adjust the ingredients so that you halve the recipe or double it or triple it, depending on how many you want to feed!

A ham casserole is ultimate comfort food. You can store leftovers in the fridge in an airtight container for a couple of days and it'll still be great, or freeze it.

🍲 Amish Ham and Noodle Casserole

• 2 ½ cups diced ham
• 8 ounces egg noodles (cooked and drained)
• 2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
• ⅓ cup diced green pepper
• 2 tablespoons diced yellow onion
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 can cream of celery soup

📋 Instructions

1. Lightly mix ingredients until they are well-blended.
2. Put in a 2 quart greased casserole dish.
3. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the top, if desired.
4. Bake at 375 degree for 30 minutes.

🐖 More Amish Ham Recipes

  Baked Ham Salad

5 Amish Ham Recipes

Scalloped Potatoes With Ham

📋 Full Recipe