Sunday, July 25, 2010

Dinner How-To's for Lazy Mommies - Easy Chicken Bake

So I have an awesome recipe for Easy Chicken Bake that I modified from one my Grandma served one night.

You might wonder why I modified the recipe if grandma's was so good.  Well, my grandma is a wonderful hostess and cook, as a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever had a bad meal at her house.  And she always thinks of the whole meal, not just the main course (for example, my grandma thinks of dessert *before* guests arrive) AND everything is served hot, not warm from setting out on the counter for 20 minutes while the buns bake.  Basically, she figures out the big picture and then makes it happen.

I think about dinner while on my way home from work.  I've been getting better and trying to plan ahead, but some days I'm way too tired so we end up with something thrown together.

So I modified grandma's recipe... and cut it down to 4 ingredients.  Chicken breast, a can of Cream of Celery soup, a box of Stovetop, and some water to mush it all together.  (It tastes better than it sounds here.)

If you want to try it...

Cut up the chicken into pieces, however big you want, and dump them into a baking pan/dish.
Dump the Stovetop onto the chicken pieces.
Dump the soup onto the chicken pieces and the Stovetop stuffing.
Now mix it up with a soup can of water.

Bake it in the over till it's cooked through.  I usually worry about germs so ours might go in for an hour at 350 to start, but I'll check it and put it in longer just to be sure.

This is a hit!  Everyone (including John) likes this one.

And it fits my criteria:  I can put it together in about 10 minutes with one kid wrapped around my leg and the other kid interrupting my train of thought with a question a second.

And by luck (or poor planning... whatever) I realized there's an EASIER way to do this meal.

I know.  Shocking, right?

But true.  And all you need is cream of celery soup, a can of chicken, a can of biscuits, and water.

Get the biscuits into the oven to bake first.  Then, mix the can of cream of celery soup and most of the can of chicken (I wasn't sure it was going to work the first time I did it and that was our last can of chicken so I was leaving my options open by setting some aside, the second and third time I made this, I set some aside to add to the finished dish because it improved on the appearance) into a bowl.  Next, add enough water so it's more creamy, less "soupy", and microwave till hot.  To serve, open a biscuit and pour the soup over it.  And if you want to get really fancy, add a slice of jellied cranberries on top.
 
Now, it's not as good as the original Easy Chicken Bake but everyone liked it so it's been added to our emergency meal list.