Potato Pepperoni Hot Dish

I made this last week. It was in my plan to make this anyway, and then when I was asked to make a meal for Helping Hands, I decided to make it in two 8x8 pans rather than one 9x13. Read on to see how THAT turned out. Anyway this is from North Dakota...

Potato Pepperoni Hot Dish
1 1/2 to 2 lbs hamburger (oddly enough, I used 1.75 that I had in the freezer)
1 small onion, diced
1 10 3/4 oz can cheddar cheese soup
1 10 3/4 oz can tomato soup
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp sugar
6-8 potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 pkg pepperoni slices
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 cup mozzarella cheese

Brown hamburger and onion. Mix the soups, milk, and seasonings (apparently they are counting sugar as a seasoning here). Mix together the hamburger, potatoes, and soup mixture (in like a huge bowl). Place in a 9x13 inch pan and bake @ 350 for one hour, or until potatoes are tender. Top w/ pepperoni slices & bake for 5 more minutes. Top w/ cheeses and bake until cheese melts.

Okay. So I thought (wrongly, apparently) that having it in two dishes would cook the potatoes faster (increased surface area, ya know?), so I thought 45 minutes would probably be enough. But I was wrong. It took over an hour even in a divided dish. And I don't like how they don't say to cook covered or uncovered. I was afraid it would dry out too much if I left it uncovered, because it wasn't very saucy to begin with. So I covered the casserole dish with it's glass cover and the foil 8x8 pan with...foil. After it seemed to be taking forever to cook, I did uncover them. Finally I had to take them out of the oven or be very late for church and risk the other family not getting their meal before they had to leave for church. If they were even going. Which they didn't, but I didn't know that at the time. So the potatoes still weren't done. They had that still-slightly-raw crunch to them. So that's the cooking fiasco. And then, it wasn't even that good. I don't know why I didn't notice this when I was looking at the recipe, but it's like this dish can't decide what it wants to be. Do you want to be pizza-y? Hamburger Helper-y? I don't know, but the combination of all these things was a little much. Maybe in North Dakota they do this often, and that's why it's called a "hot dish" instead of "something casserole." (Steve often calls me a hot dish, too.) So don't make this one, unless you like underdone potatoes and mixed up taste buds.