My husband and I grew up in very different families when it comes to food. A lot of what my mom made was based on our Norwegian heritage and my MIL made traditional American food. Both types of food are delicious with a few exceptions on both sides (I can’t do his mom’s tuna club sandwiches and he can’t do my mom’s tuna fish pancakes. Hmmm…. we seem to have a tuna fish problem in this house.)
Funnily enough, even with the very different meals our mothers made growing up, we both grew up on this dish. It is simple and delicious. My husband’s family call it goulash and I guess in some ways it is a simple form of a goulash, we never had a name for it in our family. It was just something my mom made when she was out of ideas and even though it was a last resort for her, we all loved it!
You need:
a package of noodles, cooked to according to direction
1 lb of hamburger, browned and drained.
1 can of tomato soup
Add all of the ingredients and mix well. That is all there is too it. My mom usually made this meal with her homemade spaghetti sauce, the trick to making this meal if you want to use spaghetti sauce and not tomato soup and hamburger is to add slowly. You want the noodles to be barely coated. It should not turn into a soup.
How funny! I ate that often, growing up. I think ours always had chili powder added, and maybe onion and celery, but basically, it's the same. We called it 'hot dish.' 🙂 Noodles are a poor man's way of feeding a family, making a meal stretch for more kids or more meals. What a fun memory that brings back.
My family's version of goulash is just messed up pasta — boil noodles, stir in spaghetti sauce, add vegetables and meat. That's about as authentic Italian as my dad learned to cook during his 2 years in Italy 🙂