Chicken and Rice: Joy of Cooking Chicken and Rice Casserole

I've found another chicken and rice recipe.  I have to confess, I haven't made this one as the calories are high for hubby's diet, but it's been on my desk for two weeks now and I wanted to share it. This one is from my Joy of Cooking calendar.  It uses leftover chicken, cooked rice, mushrooms and nuts, which I'd never think to do.

Joy of Cooking Chicken and Rice Casserole

6 tablespoons butter
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced (3 cups)
1/2 cup flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups milk or half-and-half
4 cups chopped cooked chicken
3 cups cooked rice
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, almonds or pecans
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon melted butter

Preheat oven to 400°.  Grease a 13 x 9 inch baking dish.

Melt 6Tbs butter in a large saucepan.  Stir in mushrooms and cook until softened (about 5 minutes).  Stir in flour until well blended.  Slowly add chicken broth and milk (or half-and-half).  Bring it to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook until the sauce is thickened and smooth (about 5 minutes).  Mix in the chicken, rice, and nuts.

Pour the mixture into the prepared dish.  Mix together the bread crumbs, Parmesan, and 1 Tbsp melted butter and sprinkle on top.

Bake until the sauce is bubbling and the topping is golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes.

I'm hoping to make this over the weekend, as we're going snowshoeing and will burn some serious calories to make up for all that yummy sauce and rice!  I'm considering topping it with some French's Cheddar French Fried Onions I have in the pantry (I love those things!).

Snowshoeing at Creamer's Field

Chicken and Rice: Chicken Mozzarella

Finally we get to Nizdaar's chicken idea, which I keep not getting to.  This is the same oven-fried chicken recipe we keep playing with, with an Italian twist that's really easy.

Chicken Mozzarella

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
2 eggs
Spaghetti or other Italian-style sauce
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350°.

Pat the chicken dry.  Pound the chicken breasts thin:  place them one at a time between sheets of plastic wrap or waxed paper and use a meat mallet or rolling pin until they're the desired thickness.  I trimmed them to 4 ounces each and breaded the smaller bits for the kids.  Put the breadcrumbs on a flat plate.  Scramble the eggs in a separate flat bowl.  Bread the chicken by first pressing it in the crumbs (both sides), then the egg, then the crumbs again.  Repeat until it's all breaded, adding more crumbs or egg if needed.

Put the chicken on a cookie sheet and bake uncovered at 350° for about 40 minutes. 

Remove the chicken from the oven.  Spoon a little spaghetti sauce on each piece and top with shredded cheese.  Return to the oven until the cheese is melted.

Serve with rice.

Okay, I served ours with pasta.  I had a coupon deal for Ronzoni Healthy Harvest pasta, which is one of the nicest whole wheat pastas I've tried, and I really wanted a break from rice.

Chicken and Rice: Cheesy Oven-Fried Chicken

I keep thinking about the oven-fried chicken idea Nizdaar at ZAM gave me: pound the chicken thin, bread it, bake it, and just before it finishes add some sauce and cheese. Yum! My brain insists on making it an Italian-style thing, and every time I go to make it I haven't the right stuff. So Friday I punted and came up with:

Cheesy Oven-Fried Chicken

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
2 eggs
chicken gravy (one packet mix prepared per instructions)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350°.

Pat the chicken dry.  Pound the chicken breasts thin:  place them one at a time between sheets of plastic wrap or waxed paper and use a meat mallet or rolling pin until they're the desired thickness.  I trimmed them to 4 ounces each and breaded the smaller bits for the kids.  Put the breadcrumbs on a flat plate.  Scramble the eggs in a separate flat bowl.  Bread the chicken by first pressing it in the crumbs (both sides), then the egg, then the crumbs again.  Repeat until it's all breaded, adding more crumbs or egg if needed.

Put the chicken on a cookie sheet and bake uncovered at 350° for about 40 minutes.  In the meantime, make the gravy and shred the cheese.

Remove the chicken from the oven.  Spoon a little gravy on each piece and top with shredded cheese.  Return to the oven until the cheese is melted.

Serve with rice.

Chicken and Rice: Chicken a'la King

Chicken a'la King is just about classic American comfort food.  Chicken in a rich creamy sauce, often with vegetables, served over toast, biscuits, noodles, or rice.  There is a lot of variations to the recipes, but the basic format is cooked chopped chicken in white sauce.

White sauce is easy.  It's melted butter with flour stirred in to make a paste, then add milk and whisk the hell out of it until it's smooth and bring it to a boil until it's the desired thickness.  Along the way you season it for whatever you're making.  If you figure out white sauce you can use it almost anywhere you'd use a cream soup for sauce. 

Here's my Chicken a'la King recipe.  I love it over biscuits or toast, but since our theme is Chicken and Rice we'll go with that.  I also recommend you Google the recipe for variations, and don't be afraid to play with it!

Chicken a'la King

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 8 oz total)
1/4 c chopped onion
1/4 c chopped celery
2 fresh mushrooms, chopped
1/4 c butter
1/4 c flour
2 c milk
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp chicken bouillon granules
1 c frozen peas and carrots, thawed and drained

Cook the chicken breasts.  I like to just toss it in my frying pan, brown it on both sides, put a lid on it and let it cook until done.  Take the chicken breasts out and let them cool.

Put the butter in the same pan at medium-high heat stirring all that good chicken flavor into it while it melts.  Add the onion, celery and mushroom and sautee them until they are soft.

Remove the pan from the heat and rapidly stir in the flour with a whisk.  Return to the heat and add the milk, chicken bouillon and seasonings.  Stir extremely well, getting all the flour-and-butter paste (called roux) mixed into the milk, then whisk it until it comes to a boil.  Once it boils whisk the heck out of it, stirring very well, until it's the desired thickness.

Turn the heat down as soon as it's thick.  Add the peas and carrots.  Cut the chicken breasts into small pieces and add them to the pan.  Stir well.

If it's too thick, add some milk; too thin, bring it back up to a boil briefly.  Be really careful not to burn it. Remove from heat.  Serve over toast, egg noodles, biscuits or rice.

I've cooked the chicken special for my recipe, but this is an ideal use for leftovers.  I would go for about two cups of chopped cooked chicken and increase the bouillon by another teaspoon for flavor.  You could have almost any "creamed meat" with the same basic formula.  And if you really want a fast version, use cream of chicken soup instead of making white sauce!

Junior's not too sure of any meat in sauce,
but it was his turn to be in the blog.

Chicken and Rice: Chicken Stir Fry

What's stir fry?  It's actually a cooking technique.  Well, two cooking techniques.  You're cooking meat and vegetables very fast at very high heat so the food retains its nutrients and textures.  You can make a huge variety of dishes by changing the sauces or the food combinations.  In my house it's "something we can make cheap and eat with chop sticks".  Crystal and her fans from Adventures in Bento Making may chuckle at me when they see this, because I cheat so much on stir fry!  I did learn to do proper stir fry in cooking classes a couple decades ago, really I did! 

I find stir fry great for using up any kind of leftover meat.  If you are using raw meat cook it first, stir frying it and removing it from the pan before you cook your vegetables. 


If I'm using frozen vegetables I always thaw the vegetables first, no matter what the package says. I find it takes the dense vegetables much longer to cook than the others and what you end up with is mushy, soggy vegetables.  So in the winter when it's cheaper to buy a frozen stir-fry mix I always let them thaw first.  If you're using raw veggies start with the most dense ones and end with the delicate ones (like mushrooms).

I also use bottled sauce.  My two favorites are Kikkoman Stir Fry Sauce and La Choy Orange Ginger.

Chicken Stir Fry
2 tbsp oil
2 cups cooked chicken, cut bite-sized
2 14-oz or 1 28-oz bags of Bird's Eye Ultimate Stir Fry Vegetables, thawed
1/4 - 1/2 cup Stir Fry sauce

In a hot skillet or wok, heat the oil. Stir fry the vegetables until almost hot.  Add chicken.  Add sauce to taste.  Stir fry two minutes to coat everything in sauce and remove from heat.  Serve over rice.

Kiddo is still working on the chop sticks.

Chicken and Rice: Breaded Chicken with Tomatoes

Kiddo loving chicken & rice.

As I set off on my mission to not be bored to tears by a diet of chicken and rice, I of course asked my co-workers for ideas.  Nizdaar, who used to work in the meat industry and has a wealth of good cooking ideas, immediately suggested pounding it flat, breading it and baking it.  Pikko, who has not one but two food-related blogs, suggested I use her Tonkatsu recipe on the chicken.

The interesting bit is not an hour before I found this recipe over on Betty Crocker's site, which also calls for pounding and breading the chicken.  So one option for chicken (and pork!) is to pound it thin, bread it, and either bake or fry it.

Breaded Chicken with Tomatoes

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (1 lb)
1 cup Progresso® panko crispy bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
3 large tomatoes, chopped (3 cups)
2 medium green onions, chopped (2 tablespoons)
1tsp garlic powder

1 tablespoon dried oregano

Between pieces of plastic wrap or waxed paper, place each chicken breast smooth side down; gently pound with flat side of meat mallet or rolling pin until about 1/4 inch thick.

In shallow medium bowl or pie plate, mix bread crumbs, cheese, salt and pepper. Coat chicken with crumb mixture, pressing to coat well on both sides.

You want a deep skillet for frying.

In 12-inch nonstick skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium-high heat. Cook chicken in oil 6 to 10 minutes, turning once, until golden brown on outside and no longer pink in center. Remove chicken from skillet; cover to keep warm.

To skillet, add remaining 1 tablespoon oil, 2 cups of the tomatoes, the onions and garlic; cook and stir 2 minutes. Stir in vinegar; cook 30 seconds longer. Remove from heat; stir in remaining 1 cup tomatoes and the oregano. Serve tomatoes over chicken, with rice on the side.

For the kids I cut one flattened chicken breast into "nuggets" before breading and frying, which went over well with Kiddo, but not so hot with Junior who claims to hate chicken and any meat that is not hot dogs or bologna.  I can see a lot of possibilities for this kind of breaded chicken, but I'm saving them for future Chicken and Rice blogs!

Chicken and Rice: One Dish Chicken and Rice Bake

Lately, due to specials and power shopping, we've been eating a lot of chicken and rice.  A lot.  Really, quite a bit.  Needless, I am about sick of chicken and rice.

But you eat what you have, and be thankful you have it.  I naturally turned to the internet for chicken and rice ideas.  I thought I'd do a series of blogs on the chicken and rice recipes that made it into my Big Green Ugly Binder.

Today's recipe is a classic:  Chicken and Rice (surprise!).  This variety is made with cream of mushroom soup, and I've seen baked and stovetop versions using both boneless and bone-in chicken of a variety of cuts.  I like the baked variety and I got the original from the Campbell's Kitchen.

One Dish Chicken and Rice Bake

1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 1/3 cup water
3/4 cup uncooked regular long-grain white rice
salt and pepper to taste
4 boneless chicken breast halves

2 qt (9 x 13) baking dish

Stir the soup, water and rice, in a 2-quart shallow  (that's the 9 x 13 one) baking dish. Top with the chicken. Season with pepper and black pepper. Cover the baking dish.

Bake at 375°F. for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the rice is tender.  Serves 4.

You can also stir vegetables into the rice mixture, but you might want to reduce the water by 1/3 cup if you do.  I wish I had a better picture to share, but it didn't stay on anyone's plate long enough!