Aunt Betty’s Comfort Kitchen · Chicken

Chicken and Rice

Name: Chicken and Rice
Total time: 1 h 20 min
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients: 40 g onion; 30 g celery; 15 ml oil; 1 can cream of chicken soup; 1 can cream of mushroom soup; 1 whole chicken, cut into pieces; 240 ml water; 185 g long-grain white rice

The one-dish supper that practically makes itself — chicken baked over rice in two cans of cream soup until everything's tender and the top browns. Pure midcentury comfort, with almost nothing to wash up.

~1 hr 20 min total 15 min prep 55–75 min bake

Spoon cost

Time ●●●●○ Some Doing

Servingsmakes one casserole — double it whole (see note)

Units

Ingredients

Use regular long-grain rice — not instant — and keep it covered the whole first bake. The rice cooks in the soup and chicken juices; instant rice turns to mush, and lifting the lid lets the steam escape before the rice is done. Uncover only at the end to brown the top, and check that the chicken reads 165°F / 74°C.

Method

Cook's notes

One batch fills the dish. These amounts make a single casserole (about 6 servings). To make more, multiply everything by a whole number — two cans of each soup, two chickens, two cups of rice — rather than scaling to an in-between size; canned recipes come out best in whole batches.

This is the classic dump-and-bake cream-soup casserole — the soups are the sauce, the seasoning, and the binder all at once. Campbell's is what Betty used; any condensed cream soup works.

Don't peek under the cover early. The rice needs the trapped steam; lifting the lid lets it escape and the rice cooks unevenly.

Boneless, skinless pieces work and cook faster — check at 30 minutes — but bone-in, skin-on gives more flavor and a browned top.

Betty's brushes the chicken with margarine; unsalted butter works just as well.

Easier, if you like

Skip the sauté — stir the raw chopped onion and celery straight into the soup. They soften as it bakes; you lose a little sweetness but save a pan.
Pre-chopped onion and celery (produce case or frozen) cut the only knife work in the recipe.

Make it gluten-free

Gluten-free: use gluten-free condensed cream soups (Pacific Foods makes them) and confirm your rice is gluten-free — most is. The dish is otherwise naturally gluten-free.

See Betty’s original page

Betty’s original typed “Chicken” page — Chicken and Rice sits in the left column, alongside Best Fried Chicken, Oven Fried Chicken, and more.