This is a great recipe for twisting to fit whatever you have in stock, so it's absolutely perfect for throwing together with whatever's in the the cupboards during confinement. I found a recipe for Easy Chicken Casserole on the Dinner then Dessert website, and I was intrigued by the idea of using soup as a sauce and Ritz crackers or something similar (I used broccoli crisps from a recent Degustabox !) as a crunchy topping. It was a great hit and the kids asked for seconds - yay ! Feel free to make whatever adaptations you want - you could use canned or frozen veg, gravy instead of soup, even beef or pork instead of chicken, ... Whatever you've got, it'll work !
Crunchy-Creamy Chicken
ingredients :
drizzle of olive oil
1/2 a red pepper
1 onion
6 mushrooms
4 chicken breasts
1 pack bacon pieces/lardons
a tin of chicken soup
a bag of crisps/Ritz crackers, etc
a good handful of cheddar cheese, grated (optional)
Preheat oven to 180°C. Chop and fry in a little oil or butter whichever veggies you are using. I had red pepper, mushrooms and onion, which worked well. This would also be a great way of using up leftover cooked veg, and maybe even potatoes, perhaps after a roast dinner. Once softened, transfer to an ovenproof pie dish.
In the same pan, add another drizzle of oil if necessary, then cook the chopped chicken.
After 5 minutes or so, add some bacon pieces/lardons and continue to cook for a further 5 minutes, stirring frequently. (The bacon wasn't in the original recipe but I thought it would work well.)
Drain off any excess fat, then pour the chicken and bacon in with the veggies. Stir to mix it all up.
Pour over the tin of chicken soup. You might want to add some extra seasoning - some black pepper or chilli powder maybe?
Find something to use as a crunchy topping. The original recipe used 28 Ritz crackers, but I didn't have any, so I used a bag of Cheesy Broccoli Crisps that were lurking in the cupboard.
Crush them and sprinkle them all over the top. If you want to, you can add a sprinkling of cheddar cheese. It's your dish - you can do what you want with it ! (I didn't bother with the cheese, as the crisps were cheese-flavoured.)
Bake for about half an hour until the soup is warmed through and the topping has gone golden brown.
I served ours with pasta, but it would go equally well with rice, mash, baked potatoes, ... even on slices of toast if you're short of everything else ! Enjoy !
This is a classic use-up-whatever-you've-got dish, so I'm adding it to the #KitchenClearout linky. Feel free to come along and add your recipes :)
I remember those crisps, my kids refused to eat them, but luckily my Mum liked them. This is a genius idea of using them.
ReplyDeleteI have an old American bookazine of casseroles (Taste of Home), and it is full of recipes, where they use tinned soup to add to almost every dish, sometimes combining two different flavours of soup.
Hmm this worked well but I don't know about combining different flavours - sounds very strange ! lol. The crisps were put away, of no interest to anyone, which is why I used them here ... then Juliette walked into the kitchen and decided to eat the last bag. I guess the fact that there were no other crisps at all in the house probably helped ! lol :)
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