Squash casserole with sour cream and cream of chicken soup

Easy Squash Casserole is the kind of recipe that demands doubling or even tripling…

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An ‘old school’ and classic casserole that offers a perfect way to enjoy the bountiful yellow squash from your garden or local farmer’s market. Make this casserole in multitude and freeze for an applause-rousing Thanksgiving side dish, or for your Holiday Groaning Board.

This crowd-pleasing side features yellow squash, carrots, stuffing mix, and sour cream baked into a most satisfying savory and hearty casserole.

Easy Squash Casserole makes a delicious side dish to just about any main dish and is perfect for using up all of those zucchini and yellow squash still lingering in many gardens. This recipe gets brownie points for being a fantastic freezer casserole.

I spend an ‘end of the summer’ Sunday doing nothing but processing yellow squash and zucchini for baking, pickling, and cooking into casseroles like this one for the freezer. My family has enjoyed and looked forward to this every Thanksgiving and Christmas on my Mom’s Groaning Board for ever since I can remember.

I usually have enough squash for at least four to six casseroles and at least twice that for half-pan casseroles. These make fantastic take-a-longs for holiday pot lucks and parties where everybody is instructed to bring a dish to share.

Yes, Easy Squash Casserole and I go way back, so far back that I don’t remember the first time my Mom made it.

Now there are about a zillion different ways to put a squash casserole together. Just about every seasoned home cook has a method for “the best” squash casserole recipe. There is a very Southern, very cheesy squash casserole that gets topped with the King of the American kitchen pantry, the Ritz Cracker. And yes, it’s to die for.

Other squash casserole recipes include ingredients like mayonnaise and dairy sour cream. They are rich, and very, very delicious. A healthy squash casserole would likely avoid all of the dairy and “cream of” staples. We aren’t doing a healthy recipe for squash casserole today. We are putting up a squash casserole with stuffing mix. Oh, and a squash casserole with cream of chicken soup. Okay, okay…or a squash casserole with cream of mushroom soup, I am flexible.

But yes, this easy squash casserole is popular in my home during the fall months. Maybe because it eats like a very moist and irresistible stuffing. Seriously, if you are the stuffing person during the Holidays, this easy and satisfying recipe for yellow squash casserole is going to tickle you in foodie gratitude.

Yes, I have been NESTING these past weeks and enjoying much cooler fall temperatures. These cider-scented candles have made the entire house smell AMAZING. Almost as amazing as my Easy Squash Casserole! Available in a variety of sizes, and perfect for those chilly fall evenings. Autumn comfy-house necessaries, click images for pricing.

If you say that the stuffing is the best part of Thanksgiving, you are going to devour this casserole. Seriously!

What is the best squash casserole/

The best squash casserole is a baked squash casserole. When it comes to easy casserole recipes, this yellow squash casserole is one of my all time favorites. Ultimate – comfort – food. It’s super moist with tender slices of summer squash, fresh grated carrot, and sweet chopped yellow onion.

A combination of dairy sour cream and cream of chicken soup (or cream of mushroom, use what is in your pantry) gives it plenty of moisture. I enjoy a good bit of dried herbs from my garden mixed in to punch up the ‘autumn’ in this savory side dish. Especially sage and thyme.

There are likely as many different recipes for summer squash casseroles as there are recipes for fried chicken. Yellow squash and zucchini is plentiful at farmers markets in the south during the summer months. It’s also one of the easiest vegetables to populate in a home garden.

We are still harvesting here in Charleston, and squash will continue to deliver right up and until the first frost. Getting my hands on these at this time of year equals comfort food and fall nesting. To me, there is nothing better than having a few cider-scented candles going and a hearty casserole like this masterpiece in my oven.

Festive autumnal home décor in glass, with absolutely exquisite detailing. Autumn comfy-house necessaries, click images for pricing.

Follow my recipe and video below and make quick and easy squash casserole, ready in about 45 minutes.

This casserole comes together so fast and you could easily prepare it ahead of time and then toss it in the oven just before dinner. And as many of you already know, I love a casserole recipe. I have many featured here on Not Entirely Average, and find they are an easy way to combine everything into one dish and call it a meal.

Frankly, they are a time saver, and not only because I am busy, but also because there are nights that I just don’t want to cook. The great thing about this squash casserole recipe is that while it’s great served with a chicken recipe, it’s also really easy to turn it into a complete meal by adding leftover shredded rotisserie directly into the casserole itself. If I cook it this way and plan to freeze it for later, I just mark it “side” or “main” on the label.

Read through some of my other favorite casserole recipes like

Creamy Chicken Alfredo Casserole

Sour Cream Noodle Bake

Shepherd’s Pie

Shaker Chicken Pudding

There’s no secret to yellow squash casseroles, but I would encourage you to prepare them when squash is in season, then freeze for enjoying during the fall and winter months.

When I first moved out on my own, money was tight. Like, REALLY TIGHT. I began to embrace the recipes my Mom and Grandmother had been making and serving on our table for decades. And I appreciated our family’s home garden in a new way.

I can remember leaving work (I still worked in the town in which I grew up) and heading straight for my parents house before getting on the highway to head home. I would raid my Mom’s garden hauls that she’d plop on the porch table until deciding what to do with them. Tomatoes, peppers, sometimes eggplant, green beans, and potatoes, but always squash and zucchini. She’d grab a trug from the barn and walk with me out along the garden perimeter and tell me to grab what I wanted, or take what she had already harvested up on the porch.

Honestly, the walk up to the back acre was a nice transition between work and my pending commute. That, and it was after all, it was still, and always would be, HOME. I missed my parents. Yep, I was missing HOME. Maybe that’s why preparing the recipes I grew up on was so easy.

Garden trugs and tobacco baskets make gathering vegetables and flowers and fruits from the garden easy and altogether elegant. These also make FABULOUS gifts for the gardener in your life. Kitchen garden necessaries, click images for pricing.

Tobacco baskets or classical gathering baskets are a beautiful way to display goodies from your garden in your kitchen.

A squash is technically a fruit. This is because it contains seeds and comes from the flowering part of a plant.

I remember the day I received my first copy of Southern Living Magazine in the mail to my new address. To simply say that I was excited would have been an understatement. I grabbed a wad of sticky notes from the counter and headed for my porch. Then, I began using the stickies to ‘tab’ the projects and ideas and recipes I would do. I tabbed everything.

I tabbed pages for everything from 101 ways to use cheddar cheese, to flower arrangements made with ornamental grasses. My new digs would be the best by learning from the pros. And soon, after subscribing to every magazine ‘house and garden,’ I would take my sticky notes and tab other publications. I would tab people who were experts at one dish recipes. I would tab Martha Stewart…like everything she ever did. And soon enough, I would make a new tab in my recipe box for recipes familiar to me, like recipes for squash casseroles and other methods for garden vegetables.

And while I loved Southern Living’s recipe for Southern Squash Casserole with Ritz crackers, and found Rhea Drummonds Pioneer Woman Squash Casserole easy with her cayenne pepper and cracker crumbs, I still kept going back to my Mom’s recipe. It was what I knew and loved. And it was time for me to practice hers and get it down pat.

How do you make easy squash casserole?

When the pandemic first began and the world was told it had to quarantine, I began receiving emails. Remember, I am still a baby blogger, so I went from receiving 4 to 6 messages from readers each week to upwards of 20 to 30 messages each week. The crux of it? Cooking from ones pantry.

You see, so many of us got to that point where ready-made meals and take out were the norm. Then, time stopped. School stopped. Work stopped. Everyday chores like the bank, the post office, and grocery shopping stopped. I’ll admit, I was panicking a little, too. But I knew I could help the people reaching out. I knew I could help because I knew the recipes and the methods that I’d been cooking and baking and pickling and freezing for decades before I EVER thought I’d have an email address, let alone a food blog one day.

As long as you have a baking dish, you’re in business to put together this classic side dish that your entire family is sure to enjoy. I have added pictures of casserole and baking dishes here. Click the picture and the link opens the item for purchase in a new window.

Many recipes went up right away, recipes that would guide the rookie home chef through his or her own kitchen pantry despite me not knowing exactly what inventory we were working with. But I had to assume the basics were in there; pasta, rice, condensed soups, canned vegetables and beans, and I hoped for too, stuffing mix.

This easy squash casserole recipe is all about the squash of course. But it’s also about pantry staples that aide the novice cook to stretch the ingredients in order to satisfy empty bellies. And there was NEVER a time that culinary creativity and elbow grease was going to be so in demand.

Yellow squash casserole recipes are just about everywhere. Many call for cheese, eggs, even mayonnaise. I heard from many readers who said had they not been caught off guard, they would have purchased cheese and other dairy items. Eggs were a big deal, as there wasn’t much on grocery shelves.

Can I bake up a squash casserole using what I already have in my pantry?

YES! In this method, MY MOM’s RECIPE, I demonstrate how to make a squash casserole with those condensed soups, dry stuffing, herbs in your cabinet, a couple tablespoons of melted butter, and some salt and pepper. Well, and yellow squash of course.

Zucchini will absolutely work exactly the same way in this recipe. If you do not have an onion, substitute shallot or leek easily. No sour cream? If you have buttermilk or Crème Fraiche, you are all set. And if neither of those, then puree a combination of cottage cheese along with 4 tablespoons of milk and 2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice in the food processor. Et Voila! A prime substitute for sour cream. No carrots? Grab another root vegetable or another winter squash such as butternut. It all gets cooked the same exact way in this method.

All images and text ©Jenny DeRemer for Not Entirely Average, LLC

Easy Squash Casserole is the kind of recipe that demands doubling or even tripling…

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes

Course: Side Dish

Cuisine: American

Keyword: casserole, casserole recipes, classic American recipes, side dishes, Southern, Southern recipes, Southern squash casserole, squash recipes, summer squash, yellow squash, yellow squash recipes, zucchini

Servings: 10 servings

Calories: 227kcal

Cost: $0.36

Want a bigger or smaller serving size? Hover over the serving size and move the bar until you get the number of servings you want. Easy.

• 9 x 13 inch casserole dish

Did you know that it’s super easy to print out a version of a half recipe or even a double recipe on Not Entirely Average? Hover over the serving size (highlighted in blue, it says 24 on this recipe) and then slide the the white line to the left to make less or to the right to make more. This "calculator" allows you to play until you get the number of servings you want. Easy. 

Ingredients for Easy Squash Casserole

• 2 pounds yellow summer squash sliced into 1/2 inch chunks, about 4 or 5 medium squash
• 2 carrots grated or chopped
• 1 onion small, diced
• 6 ounces herb stuffing mix
• 1 10 ounce can cream of chicken soup
• 1 1/4 cups sour cream
• 1 teaspoon dried sage
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried parsley
• 1/2 cup sweet salted butter melted
• salt and pepper to taste

The Method

• Preheat the oven to 350°F.

• Grease a casserole dish with butter or spray with nonstick cooking spray.

• Bring a large stock pot of water to a boil. Add the sliced squash, onion and carrot. Reduce heat and continue to cook over medium for about 10 minutes, or until the squash is tender.

• In a medium size bowl, mix the dry stuffing mix with the dried herbs and the melted butter. Stir well to coat.

• In a large bowl, mix the cream of chicken soup and the sour cream well.

• Drain the vegetables well. Use a potato masher to gently press any additional water from the squash. Add the vegetables to the sour cream mixture and combine. Add the stuffing mixture to the sour cream mixture and combine. Add salt and pepper to taste.

• Turn into the prepared casserole dish and bake for 30 minutes and bubbling.

This casserole keeps for several days in the refrigerator and can be reheated easily.

If making ahead to serve later, bake at 350 degrees F for only 15 minutes. Turn off the oven and open the door. Allow casserole to sit in the oven until it cools slightly. Remove from oven and cover with foil. Reheat at 350 degrees F from fridge to oven for 20 to 30 minutes or until bubbling.

This is a freezer-friendly recipe. Follow the method for make ahead and freeze after casserole has cooled slightly. 

This casserole may be made into a main dish by adding leftover Rotisserie chicken or browned and cooked smoked sausage or kielbasa.

Serving: 1serving | Calories: 227kcal | Carbohydrates: 19g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 16g | Saturated Fat: 9g | Cholesterol: 40mg | Sodium: 355mg | Potassium: 375mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 5g | Vitamin A: 2682IU | Vitamin C: 17mg | Calcium: 73mg | Iron: 1mg

Please note that the nutrition information provided above is approximate and meant as a guideline only.