A New Twist on an Old Favorite

I love my husband.  I love him for so many reasons.  One of the reasons I love him so much, though, is because he's easy to please (unlike me...poor Mike). :-)  His favorite meals have always been very simple, (usually) one dish, though they often lack a vegetable.  Oh well, I'll take what I can get.  In his top ten, though, has long been chicken rice bake.  I think Heather may have actually been the one to give me this recipe...maybe at my bridal shower--yes, my shower was a pounding party.  Is anyone really surprised that it was food-related?  I didn't think so.  Unfortunately, since we had to go gluten free, we haven't made it because one of the main ingredients, cream of chicken soup, has wheat products in it.  Well, we didn't make it until I took matters into my own hands...

Here's the original recipe:

Chicken Rice Bake

1 lb. boneless chicken breast, cubed

1/8 tsp pepper

1/4 tsp paprika

Can of cream of chicken soup

3/4 cups rice

1 cup water

Preheat oven to 375.  Mix all ingredients together and sprinkle more paprika on top.  Cover and bake for 45 minutes.

Yup, that's all there is to it.  Yet another reason Mike loves it so much; he can make it himself.  The soup is really the only issue, so I had to come up with an alternate scratch version.  First thing I did was to find a from-scratch green bean casserole recipe.  Why?  Because my green bean casserole recipe also calls for cream-of soup.  I remember that Alton Brown had one, so I used it...and tweaked it.

By "tweaked" I mean "kind of ignored his ingredient quantities and used whatever and how much I had lying around".  What?  I really like garlic.  Plus, I knew it was going to cook for about an hour.  A lot of the garlic flavor would temper and fade.  I also had a goodly handful of shallots that needed to be used, so I used those instead of onions.

I also thought I had poultry seasoning.  I thought wrong, so I did a quick search for a recipe for that too.  I found it here and "tweaked" it too.  Don't ask me what I ended up leaving out or adding or how much of what I used.  I honestly don't remember, but that recipe I just linked to is a great base to work off of.

As far as executing the recipe goes, I just kind of winged it.  The whole point is to cook everything down and let the sauce thicken, which was really easy.  Then, into the oven it went.  Fun fact: the container somehow boiled over up and over and onto the lid.  Neat trick...not so neat to clean.

This dish travels really well too, as we took it over to a friend's house once it was done.

Mike loved it!  I'm so glad I was able to make him one of his favorite meals again.  Even if you make the original recipe, though, it's still amazing.  I promise your family will not be disappointed.

PS: In case you're wondering what that thing next to my chicken rice bake it, it's some awesome roasted cabbage I found a recipe for here.  Lemme tell you how good it is.  My friend Johnathan HATES cabbage and thought it was pretty good.  He ate it all!

PPS: Want a good book to read?  I just released my first!  It's available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords, and it's only 99 cents!  You can also check out my website here.  Enjoy!  :-)