I made up a recipe – shocking, I know!!! My family loves it – and I can prove it: Kat, my seven-year-old picky eater, just looked over my shoulder to see what I was blogging about and said, “That stuff? Make it again!!!”
We often have leftover cooked chicken (ya know, from those barbecued chickens at the grocery store) and I was looking for a new way to use it up. I wanted some sort of rice recipe that I could toss everything in a pot and let the oven work its magic. So I started searching online for recipes, but all I could find were recipes where the rice was precooked – and I didn’t want that. So I kind of copied some ingredients from a few different recipes, and then got inventing.
Chicken, Rice and Broccoli Casserole2 cups rice
2 cups water
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup milk
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
Combine all this in your casserole dish and mix it up well. You can adjust your rice/water amount as desired – just use equal portions of both.
For this version, I tossed in:
1 bundle of broccoli
1 onion
Cubed cooked chicken.
(I know I don’t need to mention that everything should be chopped up, and no precooking is required – except the chicken!)
Mix everything up together. Cook it covered at 350 for 45-60 minutes. Check the rice after about 45 minutes to see if it’s cooked. If your rice is done and the mixture is too runny, cook it for a bit longer without the lid. Sprinkle cheese on at the end if you desire and cook until it’s melted.
In my clean-out-the-fridge version, I threw in leftover cooked vegetables, raw cauliflower, and even leftover smoked pork picnic instead of chicken – that was good! Can’t wait til I have zucchini around to throw in, just to annoy my family!I’ve made it a few times now and it’s always good. The first time I put it on the table, it got more than a few skeptical, curious, turned-up-noses looks from my youngest kids. So I was pleasantly surprised to hear Kat exclaim in a shocked voice, “This doesn’t taste bad at all!”
