Recipe Box, Chicken & Wild Rice Comfort Casserole
I recently discovered two life changing things. Chicken thighs and cooking chicken thighs in the crockpot. I know, it doesn’t take much to impress me if you can rock my world with chicken, but this is so good I couldn’t wait to try it again~
I decided to go retro, and make an old fashioned chicken and rice casserole. I got the inspiration for this from the Food Network Magazine, October issue, and just simplified it a little~
You can use any kind of rice you want. I just happened to have these 2 boxes in my pantry. I like to mix wild rice with white or brown rice just to tone it down a bit and the Parmesan & Romano cheese rice mix makes a creamy rice which would work well.
I put the chicken in the slow cooker first thing in the morning and cooked it for 4 hours on high. You don’t even have to cut it, it just falls into beautiful little pieces with a few pulls of a fork.
I cooked 4 pieces of bacon until crisp and used 1 T of the drippings to saute the veggies. If you want to skip the bacon, just saute the veggies in a little butter and olive oil.
I cooked both boxes of rice according to package directions and put them straight into a cooking oil sprayed casserole dish.
Then I added the shredded chicken, veggies and bacon
Now here’s where you can get creative. You need some sauce to keep everything moist and happy. You can add Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Celery, Cream of Chicken soup, thinned with 1/2-1/cup milk. You can make your own white or Bechamel sauce, or you can use some leftover homemade creamed soup. I happened to have some Beer Cheese Soup and so I used that.
Gently mix everything together, right in the casserole dish. At this point you can refrigerate [for up to 24 hours] before baking. I love to get things set for dinner early in the day if I can, so all I have to do is pop it in the oven later.
This is ultimate comfort food to me, just an old fashioned casserole, that you can put your touch and taste buds on.
All you need is a crispy green salad and a glass of something!
This casserole is a creation, use your own judgement to adjust the consistency of the sauce and rice mixture, adding more or less cream/milk as needed until it looks right to you~
Here’s the recipe:
CHICKEN AND WILD RICE COMFORT CASSEROLE
Ingredients
- 3 cups cooked rice or combo of white and wild rice
- 4-6 boneless chicken thighs
- 1-1/2 cups chicken broth
- 1/2 red pepper chopped
- 1/2 onion chopped
- 2-3 stalks celery chopped
- 4 pieces of bacon [optional]
- 1 can Cream of Mushroom Celery or Chicken Soup* thinned with
- 1/2-1 cup milk or cream
- *or 1/12 cups leftover cream soup such as Beer Cheese, Cream of Spinach, Cream of Asparagus
- freshly grated Parmesan
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Cook chicken for 4 hours on high or 6-7 hours on low in a slow cooker, with enough chicken broth to cover. This can be done a day or two ahead of time.
- Prepare rice according to package directions.
- Saute bacon until crisp and drain.
- Remove all but 1 T drippings from the skillet and use this to saute the chopped veggies.
- Placed cooked rice, chicken, veggies and bacon in a large bowl or casserole dish and top with soup, which has been thinned with milk or cream. Gently stir to combine.
- Mix in some freshy grated Parmesan and season. Toss again.
- Refrigerate or bake at 350 for about 45-60 minutes until hot and starting to brown. Serves 4-6
Sometimes the old favorites are fun to go back to!
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Sounds good! I like casseroles, it’s nice to have things ready to pop in the oven at dinner time:@)
Yum! I am a rice eater and this variety is fabulous. Thanks!…Christine
Love this recipe! I want to make it. Yum. xo
Sounds so good Jenna! I love having something ready to pop in the oven when it’s dinnertime! It’s been so long since I’ve had a chicken and rice casserole, it was on my MIL’s dinner rotation years ago. I’ve been meaning to try the chicken thighs in the crock pot, I’m going to add them to my list when I run out this morning. Love your idea of mixing wild rice with the Parm & Romano blend!
Yum! Easy Comfort Food! Love it 🙂
http://www.prettybitchescancooktoo.com
Jenna, your chicken and wild rice looks delish – I love comfort food! Thank you for sharing on the Blog Hop Blitz!
Terri Henkels – Easy Life
This Casserole would be very comforting, looks great! Hope you are having a great weekend and thank you so much for sharing with Full Plate Thursday.
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Miz Helen