Chicken Casserole Rice, Sort of

My daughter just had 3 teeth pulled. I made something soft, nutritious and tasty food that is least irritating to her gum.

So this is what I came up with – sort of a chicken casserole rice dish, whipped up on the whim.

Ingredients:

3 chicken thighs, skin on, bone-in, that’s what I got, so don’t judge me. Feel free to use boneless skinless breast or thigh, all good.

1 medium onion, diced

1 carrot, diced

1 small head of broccoli, cut up into small pieces

1 chicken bouillon cube

1 can of cream of chicken

salt to taste

1 tsp dried parsley

2 cups of rice

Method:

Fill a medium pot with water, boil chicken on high and turn heat to medium after boiling. Don’t worry if you had a lot of water, you will use this broth to make rice.

Prep all veggies, clean, peel, dice up.

In a large pot, add 2 tbsp oil, put on high heat. Add onions and stir till onions are softened. Then add broccoli and carrot. Sprinkle some salt to help veggies soften.

Add 2 cups of rice, stir for a minute or two to taste rice. Fish out chicken and put on a cutting board to cool. Dump all broth into rice pot. Add chicken bouillon cube, stir, cover and lower heat to medium. Boil rice for about 15 minutes. Make sure there is enough liquid, if not, add water to at least cover rice by 1 inch.

While the chicken is cooling, I was digging around in the pantry to see what I had on hand to thicken the rice a bit in the end, something that will make it a bit creamy. Since I didn’t want to add too much cheese into it – I know, I am Asian, didn’t grow up on cheese, sorry. I found a can of cream of chicken.

After I chopped up chicken, roughly 15 minutes into cooking rice, I added the cream of chicken into rice, and filled up the can with water twice, and dumped water into the pot too. Mix the cream of chicken into rice.

Add all chicken, I actually threw the bones and skin back into the rice for flavor. In the end I will fish these out and discard. Mix well, add dried parsley. Taste for salt and doneness of rice. I added about 1 more tsp of salt.

My rice was cooked through, but still got a bit of a bite to it. I want the rice to be quite soft so it is really easy for kids to eat, especially my daughter at the moment, until she feels better. So I killed the heat, put the lid on the pot and let the residual heat to keep cooking the rice and the rice will soak up more juices.