By guest blogger Melissa Tucker, a kitchen whiz who is not afraid to experiment.

Like most ideas that enter into my head, when barbecue casserole first appeared, it seemed brilliant.
Here’s why: When most people eat barbecue, they usually mix the beans, meat, bread and coleslaw all together and let the flavors meld in their mouths. Why not do that in the oven? They could pre-meld before they meld!
Then we could slather the coleslaw on top. It’s genius.
Why hasn’t anyone thought of this?
Wait… maybe they have.
A look at the first two or three pages of a Google search confirms that I probably am the first to try this new culinary experiment.
However, while in the midst of planning this dish, I realize that it’s inane.
I mean, the whole point of a casserole is to be quick and use cheap ingredients.
Barbecue casserole meets neither of those requirements. Everything inside: Beans, meat and even the slaw takes loads of time to prepare properly. Tasks like chopping cabbage, boiling and seasoning beans and don’t even get started on the religious fervor that goes into the meat.
But nevertheless, I decided to proceed with this plan because just maybe something great could come from it.
And I had no other plans for dinner last Tuesday.

Because I don’t have the three days it would take to make this barbecue casserole from scratch, I decided to purchase all of the ingredients. (That makes this about a $20 casserole. Easy, but not cheap.)

The materials:
–2 lbs of pork (I purchased extra so I could have dinner even if it tasted terrible.)
–2 pints of coleslaw
–1 pint of baked beans
–2 pints of barbecue sauce (they came with the pork)
–One loaf of French bread. (I wanted regular bread but the Harvest Foods near my house is going out of business and the entire bread aisle was empty. This was all I could get.)

The sauce, bread, pork and beans.

My method:
Step 1: Pour barbecue sauce on the bottom of the pan.
Step 2: Add the slices of bread. I figured it would soak up the sauce and taste yummy.
Step 3: Add a layer of meat followed by a layer of beans. At this point, I ran out of beans. The whole pint went on this layer. I was surprised.
Step 4: Add another layer of bread, meat and top it all with sauce.
Step 5: Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.
Step 6: Remove from oven. Layer with coleslaw.
Step 7: Eat.

The result:
Overall, not a bad taste. It was like barbecue, but warmer. The bread was a mistake. I thought every casserole needed some sort of starch, but I think the beans probably filled that role. The French bread just got soggy and chewy and not in a good way.

Next time:
It might be worth another go using regular sliced bread or something thin like tortillas or corn chips.
Or keep the sliced bread next to a layer of something drier than sauce, like between the meat and the beans.
But there probably won’t be a next time.
I still like the idea of this casserole, but I really don’t think it’s worth the effort.
If you have warm barbecue sitting on the counter, you should just put it in your belly. Don’t put it in your oven.

This is the casserole after emerging from the oven. Looks pretty much like it did before the oven. Except maybe darker.

This is ready for consumption. But I really don’t recommend it.