Here’s what I have:
chicken breast, cubed into big chunks
cream of mushroom soup
bag of frozen peas and carrots, defrosted
white rice
I plan to mix all in a bowl, salt and pepper, then spread in a baking dish. Cook uncovered at 375 for 1 hour to 1.5 hours.
We have 2 hours until showtime. Anything to substitute to improve? Sparky needs a good dinner.
Add paprika to the top before you bake it. That would make this similar to a Sunday Chicken Dinner recipe I have that is a favorite meal of mine. I would also add a package of Lipton Onion Soup mix if you’ve got it.
A layer of shredded cheese on the top? I’d suggest bread crumbs (with butter) on the top but that might be too much starch with the rice. But maybe not. Never enough starch. Never enough cheese. <—My motto
Some pastry crust to make it into a pot pie?
^ Like maybe some Poppin’ Fresh? Good call.
It’s too late now, but I would’ve suggested a shot of tarragon, preferably fresh, but dried is good too. The pastry crust sounds good to me, too.
I just reheated it for dinner.
What’s missing is something like crackers. I think the pastry crust would have been good.
My core chicken and rice recipe is:
2 cans cream of something soup
1 cup water
1 cup rice (normal rice - not instant, wild or long)
Mix in casserole dish, lay seasoned chicken parts on top, bake uncovered 75 minutes at 375, non-convection.
Usually, I use cream of mushroom, but cream of chicken, cream of broccoli, etc. work well.
Trim off any huge globs of fat and extra skin from the chicken. If it’s not directly exposed to air during baking, extra skin will just be flabby ick.
Half a pound or so of frozen veggies can be mixed in.
Use standard bake - convection baking will make the top layer of rice dried out and nearly inedible.
My grandmother would have slapped a layer of buttermilk biscuits on the top and halved the amount of rice. I recall loving that particular casserole as a kid.