Chicken and Rice Casserole

The other night I was just feeling a little down in the dumps.  There are a lot of great things in my life that I am extremely grateful for, but I have been feeling a little weird about work for awhile now.  There is a blog post about that in the works, but it isn't quite ready yet...

Anyway, old habits seriously die hard, and the other week I was just craving some good old fashion comfort food.  One of my favorite dishes when I was a kid was baked chicken and rice casserole.  It was so creamy and warm...oh so good.  But, my mom made it usually with drumsticks or thighs (because that was the cheapest) and usually with the skins on.  She also used cream of celery soup, something that I haven't used for awhile.  So, that week, I decided that I was going to make it my mission to figure out how to make a healthier version of an old favorite.  Joe isn't a huge fan of casseroles, but he loves me and he loves chicken so I went ahead and took a chance.  I looked at a bunch of different recipes on www.allrecipes.com and www.cooks.com and came up with something that was simple and easy...and really, really yummy!

Ingredients

4 teaspoons of olive oil

1 cup of rice

1/2 cup of onions, chopped

1 clove of garlic, minced

10 oz of cream of celery soup (I used this homemade version.)

2 cups of water

4 3oz boneless, skinless chicken breasts

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in a pan and add the rice.  Cook the rice until it turns translucent.  

2. Add onions and garlic to the pan and cook a little longer.  The onions will become soft and the rice will begin to brown.  

3. In an oven safe casserole dish, combine the soup and water.  Once combined, stir in the rice, onions, and garlic from the pan.  

4. Lay the pieces of chicken on top, careful not to overlap.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper. (I suppose you could add any spice you wanted to at this point...)

5. Cover the casserole dish and bake in the oven at 375 for about an hour.  Take off the foil the last 15 minutes or so if you want to brown the top a little.  (Doing this will result in there being some crunchy rice at the edge of the pan that I have fond memories of my sister and I fighting over.)

I served this with roasted green beans and it was a complete meal.  A lot of recipes added a vegetable of some kind (asparagus, broccoli, peas, zucchini, etc) but I opted to keep it separate. It was exactly what I wanted it to be...just a little healthier than I remembered.  My lips didn't have that greasy smack that I remember having as a kid, but that is probably for the best!