Casserole

Tonight is casserole night.
My goal was to make something simple and have enough leftovers for lunch.

I have two recipes in mind.

The first uses cooked ingredients and the second recipe uses raw ingredients.
I was torn between doing what I know would work, the first recipe, and just wanting to throw everything in at once and not worrying about it, but I only had raw ingredients.

Recipe 1: Chicken-Broccoli Divan

Recipe 2:Campbell's® Cheesy Chicken & Rice Casserole

My attempt at a casserole... I know I wanted broccoli and I had chicken so I looked at both recipes and combined techniques.

The Fixins'
1 can of Cream of Chicken Soup
4 chicken Breast, Raw
2 C Rice, uncooked
2 C Broth
2 C Broccoli, par-boiled
Black pepper
Garlic Powder
Grated Cheddar

Mix the soup, broth and add rice.
Add broccoli
Top with chicken breast, a little black pepper and garlic powder.


Bake 375 for about 45 minutes
Top with Cheddar and bake another 10 minutes


The Final Dish


Overall, the dish was not that good in terms of texture, flavor was okay. The rice was almost rice pudding like where the texture was very soft. The chicken was a little dry. The broccoli was actually okay considering the broccoli was cooked over 45 minutes.

My plan was not to spend the time cooking, but I knew I should have cooked everything before forming the casserole. Since I went down the no-cook path, my initial thought was to place the broth and rice on the bottom, cover with a thick layer of broccoli and mix the raw chicken and cream of chicken soup together to form the top layer.

What I did instead, since I forgot my initial plan, was mixed the broth and soup with the rice to form the bottom layer. I didn't have a thick layer of broccoli and the chicken was placed on top bare. That's when I remembered my initial plan. Oh well.

Next time I'll just spend the time cooking everything separately before combining to let the flavors meld in the oven.

In terms of time, it would have worked out the same and I would have had time to do the extra dished while the casserole was baking.