Last night I made my second attempt and different variant of “chicken casserole” as an attempt at easy lunch meal prep for the week.
The first time I made it I used a specific recipe as a guideline, with cans of cream of mushroom soup playing prominently.
This time, it was much more of an “ok, I have the idea down, what can I use to make a baked chicken stew with a crunchy top?” The only thing I bought was a rotisserie chicken, everything else was already in the refrigerator/cabinet. The body of the dish was:
- Meat from one whole cooked chicken, chopped into bite-size pieces
- Half a jar of canned peas left over from another recipe
- One onion, diced
- One large broccoli crown, chopped into bite-size pieces
I mixed that, and put it in a 13x9 baking dish, which it filled completely to just below the top. Then, I poured in a mixture of:
- Two cans of tomato soup (best by date: 2024!)
- A little bit of water
- A little bit of milk
- A generous spoon of better than bouillon
- Remains of a small tub of sour cream (~4oz)
- Hot sauce
- Curry powder (generous amount)
- Turmeric
- Black pepper (generous amount)
- Salt
- Corn starch (maybe 1Tbs plus a little more)
I mixed it all in the baking dish just a little, so that everything was well coated. Then topped with:
- The remains of a container of panko bread crumbs tossed with salt, thyme, and 3Tbs of melted butter
Baked for about 35 minutes at 350. I then accelerated the browning of the bread crumbs by putting the broiler on and letting it sit for 3-4 minutes under that flame.
I find it interesting the way flavors can grow and change depending on temperature, whether it’s been cooked or not, and time to ‘bloom’ (for lack of a better word).
I wasn’t using a recipe or even measuring- just going by feel and taste. As I was making the liquid, I kept tasting and feeling like the heat from the black pepper and spice from the curry wasn’t coming through, and so kept adding more. After cooking it definitely had a heat, but the flavor lacked depth or specificity.
I just had some cold for my lunch, and it’s got a black pepper kick, and a good aroma/back notes of curry. It just needed time to grow.
After two different approaches to chicken casserole, I’d say that tomato-based liquid is definitely a more specific flavor than cream of mushroom and can easily mask more subtle flavors. But, it also ended up lighter and less rich, which is nice for something I am going to eat 4-5 times in a week. Canned soup makes for a low-effort and low cost way to get flavor into this dish, but I might even venture toward something like veggie stock in a future iteration (with corn starch to thicken) and see how that turns out.