Kitchen Chicken Casserole

A quote from my three year old “mommy can we eat this every night cause I LOVE IT” and she normally doesn’t LOVE anything that isn’t yoghurt!

This is not the prettiest dish but oh my sweet heavens it is so yummy.

I call this kitchen chicken casserole because it’s an easy throw together recipe that can use pretty much whatever you have in your kitchen. Use fresh chicken or leftover chicken. I am even willing to bet that if you used leftover chicken and skipped cooking up the veggies, just threw it in the pan with all of the other ingredients and popped it in the oven you’d end up with a masterpiece. I have never done it that way (I will next time) but if you do…let me know how it goes!

The Grocery List (it seems like a lot of ingredients but you can add or omit based on what you have in your house, I am positive there is no way to mess this up)

Chicken (I used leftover chicken that I cut in chunks but you could use 2 chicken breasts)
1 medium carrot
1 medium onion
Half a green bell pepper
Half a red bell pepper
Garlic
1 large leek
Some Spice: 1 1/2 tbsp curry powder, 2 tsp paprika powder, few shakes of Salt and Pepper

1 cup uncooked rice (I use brown rice)
2 cans of cream soup – I’m confident any cream soup will work but if you want to be just like me you’d use 1 can cream of mushroom soup and 1 can golden mushroom soup
2 1/3 cups chicken broth
2 tsp Lawry’s seasoned salt
1/8 tsp hot chili pepper
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
Olive oil
Pinch of fresh or dried parsley.
Aluminum foil

Cooking It All Up:

Preheat your oven to F350 (175C)

Chop all your veggies making sure they are all about the same size.

*if you are using leftover already cooked chicken, cut it into chunks and throw it into a big bowl and tell it to hang out until you are ready to add the other goods. (note: there is nothing wrong with talking to your food)*

If you are using chicken breasts cut them up and season with salt, pepper, curry powder and paprika powder. Sautée them until they’re just about done, make sure not to overcook them. Remove them from the skillet and transfer to a big bowl.

Add a little more oil to your pan and sautée the veggies, start with the hard veggies like the carrots and move your way to the softer ones. *if you are using the leftover chicken just add the spices to the veggies while they sautée…trust me it’ll all work out in the end* Once the veggies are softened a bit (not too much because they will cook in the oven and you don’t want them mushy, yuck) add them to the bowl with the chicken.

Now the party starts. To the chicken/veggie bowl add all of the other ingredients. Mix Mix, Mix.

Dump it all to an oven dish and cover tightly with aluminum foil.

Put it in a preheated oven for an hour. Pull it out, remove the foil, stir it up, and put it back in the oven uncovered for about 20 minutes (use your judgment, you just want to make sure the rice is sufficiently cooked, no one likes crunchy rice). Turn the oven to broil for the last 5 minutes to make it brown and pretty on top.

Serve it up, sprinkle with parsley if you are fancy, and enjoy!