Easy Creamy Chicken, Broccoli, Rice Casserole
Easy casserole
For this creamy chicken broccoli rice casserole, I used items I had in my refrigerator. It’s an easy way to use food without making them leftovers. Sure, they are left over from another meal. But, they are combined in such a way that you don’t consider it a leftover meal.
I came up with this chicken broccoli rice casserole because I wanted to use up the food in my refrigerator. We seem to have more leftovers these days than we did when I was cooking for eight. 🙁 Truth be told, Dave never complained about leftovers when we were raising our kids. Now that it’s just the two of us, I know he’s not a fan of repeat left-overs.
This week I whisked pork chops out of the fridge and put them into the freezer. A few weeks from now when I need a quick, easy meal, I’ll pull them out of the freezer. It will be a breeze to make some mashed potatoes and add a vegetable. That’s because the pork chops are already done. You can find the recipe for the pork chops here.
Ingredients for this casserole
My refrigerator held chicken (air-fried), rice, and a broccoli/carrot/cauliflower mix (also air-fried). The veggie mix wasn’t cooked as long as it should have been. So, adding these veggies to the dish was not going to make them soggy.
I mixed up my homemade cream of chicken soup with a can of mushrooms, and added it to the mixture. The recipe for homemade cream of chicken soup is found here. If you use store-bought soups, you’ll want to add a little milk (1/2 a can) so it won’t be so thick. Since all the ingredients are already cooked, the dish just has to be heated until it’s hot all the way through. You can add shredded cheese and other seasonings to give it more zip and zing if you’d like. One thing that’s nice about this casserole is that you can prepare it the day before or the morning of. When you want to fix it, just pop it into the oven at 350 for 30-60 minutes (depending on whether it’s been in the fridge for a while or you just put it together.)
The recipe for creamy chicken broccoli rice casserole
Creamy Chicken Broccoli Rice casserole
Ingredients
- 1-2 cups chopped chicken
- 1 1/2 cups cooked rice
- 1 1/2 cups broccoli, carrots, cauliflower mixture
- 1 can cream of mushroom soup (I use my homemade)
- 1/2 cup shredded cheddar
Instructions
- Combine chicken, rice, and veggies in a bowl
- Add the cream of mushroom soup and mix well
- Add shredded cheese
- Put into a 1 1/2 quart casserole dish
- Bake at 350 for 30+ minutes or until hot through
- You can mix this ahead and put it in the refrigerator. You'll need to increase the baking time if the dish is cold when it goes into the oven
