No Peek Chicken and Wild Rice

When I was working full time and trying to put dinner on the table every night I was always looking for meals I could put together either before work, or during my lunch hour and then cook them in the oven or in a crock pot while I was working so I could come home to dinner already done. I wish I had this recipe back then.


This is another Pinterest find. It comes from a blog called Thrifty Decorating. I was intrigued by the title, and then reading about it I found it is a recipe that is assembled and then baked without any attention for 2 1/2 hours. Back in my working days I would have prepared it with frozen chicken and put it in the oven and program my oven to bake while I was at work. These days I can put it in the oven and then run errands or work on other projects around the house.


Instead of typing out the official recipe I will direct you to the recipe on the Thrifty Decorating blog because I didn't make any additions or changes to it (although I will tweak it in the future ~ see my taste tester notes), but let me show you how I did it:

I gathered the ingredients; chicken breast tenders, one box of Uncle Ben's Long Grain and Wild Rice Mix ~ original style, one can of cream of chicken soup, and one can of cream of celery soup. I also added two soup cans of water.

I lightly greased a 9x13 glass pan and then mixed the rice, soups and water. I used a whisk so there were no lumps left in the soup.

I arranged the chicken tenders on top of the soup/rice mixture.

And then I tightly covered the baking pan with foil and put it in the oven set to 350 degrees for 2 1/2 hours...

NO PEEKING!

But boy, oh boy...does the house ever smell good!!

When I removed the foil this is what I found. The aroma is so intoxicating...I can't wait to dig in!

This is what it looked like on my plate...at least for a few minutes! It didn't last long.


What was the taste tester's bottom line?
This was very good. The aroma was so wonderful, it was hard to wait until the timer went off. In the future I will probably serve this with cranberry sauce because I thought it could use the color. Also, I will probably put in another 1/2 cup of white rice and one more cup of water because I found it was just a little salty and we were scooping under other pieces of chicken to find more rice  ~ maybe we're just big rice eaters?


The bottom line: I'll keep this in mind for days when I don't have time to fuss with a meal. It would be a great meal to fix for company.