Chicken and Rice Casserole

Let's start today's dish with a disclaimer: we are not casserole people. Neither of our families made casserole dishes frequently (if at all), and it's possible that they are wonderful and we just don't have a taste for them. Bear that in mind as we dig in to this Chicken and Rice Casserole, from Cooking Light's August 2010 issue.

The first thing you should know when considering this recipe is that it takes a lot of (mostly active) time to prepare. The casserole itself bakes for just 20 minutes, but it took a whopping hour and a half, start to finish, to prepare.

You'll notice from our ingredient shot that we chose to make a few substitutions. We had some cooked boil-in-bag brown rice in the fridge from a recipe misfire the previous day. We had also used up all of our chicken broth this weekend for a batch of red beans, so we subbed in some veggie broth that was hanging out in the pantry. (We tell you this in the interest of full disclosure, because it's possible that our substitutions may have impacted the final quality of the dish.)

There are a lot of discrete steps to this dish: sauteeing, then boiling, then shredding, followed by reducing, more sauteeing, even more boiling, some baking, and some broiling. There's a little down time, but you'll probably spend the bulk of it cleaning up after yourself!

The good folks in the Cooking Light comments section have offered some time-saving tips, such as cooking the chicken and rice the night before, or just using rotisserie chicken instead. Some also threw in some additional vegetables, like carrots, to vary the texture.

And it looks like some of the earlier commenters agree with us that the dish lacks seasoning and just isn't special or exciting enough to offset the time it requires to prepare. Overall, it was a little soggy, a little needy, and just not good enough to merit making again.