Meat and Cheese Rolls

It’s Super Bowl Sunday – a day filled with friends, good food and stuffed bellies. When I was trying to figure out what to make, a childhood memory came flooding back to me. My Mom’s BFF made “Meat and Cheese Rolls” for our Lake Tahoe family trips to the snow. She also sometimes had them frozen in bags in her freezer for occasional quick dinners and snacking. I have not made them in probably 10 years, but as I was thumbing through my recipe box… yes, I still have an old-fashioned box – I came across a scribbled note with the ingredients and cooking instructions.

I downloaded a tent template from my new “Celebrate” magazine, and my Super Bowl snack started to take shape. What? It’s my inner Martha, I can’t help it… and yes, I laid on my patio to get a photo of my tent card on the grass. Hig wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Note: I’ve since changed the name to “Meat and Cheese Rolls” so veggie readers/friends like Dave2 and Julie won’t be disappointed when they click on the post to find that it does indeed include meat.

Ingredients:
1 lb. Ground Beef
1 Medium Yellow Onion
1 Small Can Chopped Olives
10 oz. Package of Cheddar Cheese
1 Small Can Tomato Sauce
1 Package of Rolls
Salt and Pepper to Taste

I love that the ingredients are so simple, yet so delicious when baked together. My ground beef was 10%, because it’s what I already had. You could probably go leaner, since you are adding fat with the cheese. I went with a medium cheddar for the cheese and my rolls where from the deli. I’ve also used packaged rolls from the bread aisle before. I really like the fresh baked deli rolls, because they get flaky like a croissant.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Brown ground beef and onions in a pan. Add salt and pepper to the mixture while it is cooking. Once ground beef mixture has been cooked through; drain the meat and transfer to a bowl for cooling. You don’t want the mixture to be hot, when adding the shredded cheese.
3. While ground beef is cooling, slice the tops off the rolls and hollow the bread out using a spoon. Make sure you save the top lid of the bread.
4. Shred your cheddar cheese.
5. Once ground beef is cooled, add tomato sauce, olives and shredded cheddar cheese and mix ingredients together.
6. Fill rolls with mixture and place bread lid on end and wrap in foil.
7. Place in oven at 350 degrees F. for 30 minutes.
8. Unwrap and Enjoy!

My ground beef and onions cooked on medium/high heat while I got busy shredding cheese.

I shredded the entire brick of cheese. The brick was just shy of 10 ounces, it didn’t make a difference in the final recipe.

Once the ground beef was done cooking, I drained off the extra grease, then put the ground beef into a bowl for cooling. I then got to work on my bread domes. I remember calling them bread garages as a kid. I loved helping with this part as a kid.

I hollowed out a dozen rolls and ended up having mixture left over. I think depending on roll size, you could easily fill 16 rolls.

Add your tomato sauce, olives and cheese to the cooled ground beef mixture and stir everything together.

Grab your first roll and add the ground beef/cheese mixture using a spoon.

Once you have filled the roll, find the bread lid, close it up, and wrap in foil.

Place your foil wrapped cheese rolls into the oven at 350 degrees F. for 30 minutes. I put mine on a baking sheet, but it’s not necessary, they could go straight onto the rack.

Meaty/cheesy goodness right on a plate. So simple and so delicious!

Bring on the football/commercials! The Super Bowl was a big thing for me back in the day. Ace worked as a grocery store manager and the weeks prior to the Super Bowl were filled with late nights, huge store displays and one tired husband. I usually ended up going to parties with my brother and friends because he had to work, but we always watched it together once he got home. He was a HUGE Budweiser/Anheuser Busch fan… the reason I used some of his collectible cans and things in my photos… and the Budweiser commercials were his favorite part of the Super Bowl. Great memories for sure.

I hope there are some good ones today! I tried to stay away from the commercial spoilers all over the Internet, but managed to still see a few. The Canadian Hockey Budweiser commercial is awesome! I’m also looking forward to Madonna at half time. How about you? What are/were your Super Bowl plans?

Have fun today!