With spicy sausage, tender noodles, and a melty cheese topping, this Lasagna Soup recipe has all your favorite Italian ingredients simmered together in one pot.

A steaming hot bowl of Lasagna Soup makes everybody happy at dinnertime.

Soup season is in full swing and I couldn’t be more excited. Since we moved to Ohio, I’ve been looking forward to meals full of all my favorite Soups and Stews as the temperatures drop.

I already have a feeling we’ll be eating many more bowls of this tasty soup on cold nights all winter long!

Easy Lasagna Soup

Lasagna soup is everything you love about a classic Italian lasagna simmered in soup form. My family loves lasagna with lots of meat in it, so I used both hot sausage and ground beef in this soup.

After browning the meat, I added onions, garlic, and tomatoes along with Italian Seasoning. After simmering everything in chicken broth and adding curly mafalda noodles, the soup finishes with the best ingredient of all: lots of cheese.

For the cheese topping, I use a blend of three different kinds of Italian cheeses. The mix of Ricotta, Parmesan, and Mozzarella cheese adds rich, creamy flavors to this soup.

A big scoop of the cheese topping on my bowl of soup made me very happy indeed. Every spoonful of soup was full of tangy tomato, hot sausage, perfectly cooked noodles, and gooey cheese.

Everyone in my family loves this Lasagna Soup. Most of us went back for a second bowl!

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Instant Pot Cheesy Ground Beef and Rice Casserole [+Video]

This Ground Beef and Rice Instant Pot Casserole takes only 10 minutes from start to finish! Perfect for busy weeknight dinners! Check out the video tutorial for step-by-step instructions!

Easy Instant Pot Casserole Recipe

Growing up, my mom called this “busy day casserole” because it was quick and easy to put together and throw in the oven to be ready at dinner time. With the Instant Pot, you can make this not only on a busy day, but on an ultra crazy insane day, which it seems like we are having more and more of here. Instant Pot Ground Beef and Rice Casserole for the win!!!!

Our original hamburger and rice casserole gets hundreds of pins every month. We just knew we had to create a recipe for the Instant Pot to make it an even quick and easier weeknight meal for your family.

Just like the original recipe, we have created two versions for this Instant Pot recipe. One is the super quick version, and one is the from scratch version. We like to make everything from scratch as often as possible, but sometimes life is crazy and you just need to open a can and pour it in to get dinner on the table.

I’ve mentioned several times that I was a picky eater growing up — sorry, Mom! Now my pickiness has come full circle and I have picky eaters of my own. Bless them! They love this Instant Pot casserole just like I did growing up. The flavors are kid-friendly and loved by everyone. It is the cure to picky eater syndrome, and it even is getting vegetables in their bodies! Woop woop! I only wish I could find 10 more recipes they all will eat! A girl can dream!

What’s Needed for Instant Pot Ground Beef and Rice Casserole?

As I mentioned above, we created two versions of this Instant Pot hamburger casserole recipe — one version uses some ingredient shortcuts, and one version is totally from scratch. For the quick and easy version, you’ll need:

• Ground Beef
• Onion
• Garlic Salt
• Cream of Mushroom Soup
• Long Grain White Rice
• Water
• Carrots
• Colby Jack or Cheddar Cheese

If making the from scratch version of this Instant Pot casserole recipe with ground beef, you’ll need to swap out the canned cream of mushroom soup for the following:

• Unsalted Butter
• Garlic
• Mushrooms
• All-Purpose Flour
• Chicken Broth
• Heavy Cream
• Salt and Pepper

The measurements for all the ingredients can be found in the recipe card down below so keep scrolling for all the details.

How to Make the Quick Version of This Instant Pot Casserole

I love using the Instant Pot to feed my family quick dinners, and the fact that we can now have this f

Ground Beef Stroganoff puts a new spin on the classic dish. Easy and fast enough for any weeknight, this stroganoff tastes every bit as good as the original–maybe even better! 

This recipe has all the ingredients that we love from classic beef stroganoff combined in a quick and easy weeknight-friendly meal. Use ground beef to make this stroganoff for a fast dinner that still has an abundance of flavor.

Fall is finally on its way here in Ohio and the cooler weather has me craving our favorite comfort foods. We’ve been warming ourselves up with Lasagna Soup and White Chicken Chili and all other kinds of soups and stews. The other day I had a very specific craving for Beef Stroganoff. I wanted those creamy noodles and tender pieces of beef served with savory mushrooms.

Easy Ground Beef Stroganoff

When I checked the freezer, however, I realized I didn’t have the chuck roast that I use in my Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff recipe. Now that I had Stroganoff on the brain I was not about to be deterred, so I looked through the meat drawer to see what else I might be able to substitute.

When I saw the ground beef, I knew I was in business. I’ve seen people making their stroganoff with ground beef before but I’d never tried it myself. Since ground beef cooks quickly, I skipped the slow cooker for this recipe and made it all on the stovetop.

Not only is ground beef stroganoff every bit as tasty as traditional beef stroganoff, it comes together in hardly any time at all! 

With just about 5 minutes of prep time to slice the mushrooms and onions, and 20 minutes on the stove, you can have a delicious homemade stick-to-your-ribs meal in less than 30 minutes.

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Smoky BBQ Rub

Perfect for beef, chicken and especially pork, this Homemade BBQ Rub is what makes grilling so amazingly delicious. Just dig in!

We love this on grilled chicken, smoked brisket or pork ribs! It’s great on everything! Heck, I’d add it to roasted brussel sprouts or broccoli and it would be amazing! Ooh, and I totally need to do a salmon recipe with this rub too!

Why Make You’re Own Rub

In my opinion, rubs are a tastier alternative to marinating meat as they give a fuller flavor. We prefer to dry rub the meat so that it can get all flavorful before any BBQ sauce is even added. In fact, sometimes we enjoy meats dry because they are so good on their own.

Making your own seasoning blend is the best way to go since you can fine tune the ingredients to exactly what your palate is craving. Whether or not if you feel like having a sweet, spicy, or smoky flavor — or a mix of them all! — it is very easy to do when you start with the right base. It is great on meats that are smoked, grilled or roasted.

How to Make a Dry Rub

When creating any bbq dry rub, the base typically starts with your sugars and salts abd then you add spices for flavoring. 

Sugar

There are many different kinds of sugar (brown sugar, dark brown sugar, turbinado, regular refined sugar and so on) that will give you different flavors. Experiment to see what you like best, and keep in mind that it may be a combination of them as well.

Salt

There are a lot of different salts as well (kosher salt, sea salt, table salt…etc). We prefer kosher salt, but if you don’t have it, you can use table salt. See section below for the differences in salt.

Spices

After getting you sugars and salts picked out, move onto choosing how much and what kind of pepper to use, as well as the other spices that are typical among many rubs, like cumin, chili powder and paprika. Then, start adding in combinations of other spices to make it to your very own liking.

The best part about making a barbecue spice blend is that if you start with very small increments then it’s hard to screw up. When I first started playing around with how much to put in, I forgot to write down what I put in and how much, so don’t make that mistake :).

Here is one of our rub recipes that we really enjoy with any meat.

What’s in This Homemade BBQ Rub?

As I mentioned above, there are so many flavor combinations to choose from when creating a bbq dry rub. Here’s what we used in this particular recipe:

• Kosher Salt
• Brown Sugar
• Black Pepper
• Garlic Powder
• Onion Powder
• Chili Powder
• Smoked Paprika
• Thyme
• Grou

Perfect Smoked Beef Brisket Recipe

The bold and juicy flavor of Smoked Brisket is everything! We have the perfect smoked brisket recipe that is flawless every time!

Serve this brisket with a side of macaroni salad or sweet cornbread, and you’ll be in BBQ heaven!

This post is a collaboration with Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner. I received compensation, but all opinions are my own.

Smoked Brisket on a Traeger

Admit it, no other protein does it quite like beef. Beef tastes amazing, and that taste belongs on my table. When you start with such a delicious high-quality protein, the culinary possibilities are endless! You can sear it, grill it, roast it, use it as an ingredient or make it an entrée, the list goes on and on.

Add a wood pellet smoker into the mix and then you have the best beef on the globe. Brisket is a huge cut of beef and can be quite expensive, so we want to make sure you smoke it to perfection. The smoker makes it so easy, and the quality is top shelf!

What is Brisket?

Let’s start with what this meat is that we are smoking. Brisket is a cut of beef from the breast or lower chest of a cow. You might also see them labeled as a whole packer brisket, which means it includes both the point and the flat of the brisket. It is one of the toughest cuts of beef, but when it is smoked, braised, or slow roasted, it renders into juicy, tender and flavorful beef bliss. All you need is time and a few tools and simple tricks.

Note that there is a lean side and a fatty side to brisket, and you need both to make the perfectly smoked brisket that we are after. The lean side of the brisket has a tighter grain and is harder to make tender.

This is where we divide the men from the boys in the smoking world. Making that lean side melt in your mouth is when you know you’ve reached the peak of brisket perfection. We will help you do just that!

How to Smoke a Brisket

Let’s jump right into the best way to smoke a brisket and then we will answer all sorts of questions below.

Step 1: Select Your Brisket

When it comes to purchasing a brisket, there are few tricks we have learned to picking out a good brisket. First, check the grade of the beef. There are three different grades — Prime, Choice, or Select. Prime is going to be your highest quality and best brisket, but it is going to be quite pricey. If you have the money to spend, go with Prime. If you don’t, then Choice is an excellent way to go.

Also, when you pick up the brisket, make sure it has good flexibility. You don’t want a brisket with