Chicken Casserole and the Unintentional Sabbatical

Wow that break went on for longer than I intended.

It's been both a busy and rough past couple of months:  father-in law visited for a week, immediately followed by being sick, followed by our annual Christmas movie marathon, followed by being out of town, followed by Christmas, immediately followed by the flu, which was topped off by my getting bronchitis after the flu.  It's been three weeks since hubby and I both had the flu simultaneously (that sucked!), and I am still doctoring a nasty cough from the subsequent bronchitis.  Ugh.

So, yeah...Merry Belated Christmas and Happy New Year and, uh, everything.

I think I promised to do the recipe for my mom's chicken casserole a few months ago.  Better late than never is my procrastinator's credo.

I absolutely adore this recipe.  It's SO good, and really simple to make.  There are literally only six ingredients:  chicken, stuffing mix, chicken broth, butter or margarine, cream of chicken soup and cream of celery soup.

So we start off with the chicken.  I boiled two large bone-in chicken breasts until cooked through, and reserved the broth I cooked them in and set it aside.  You can use a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken, leftover fried chicken, leftover turkey, or even canned chicken.  Just make sure you pull it all off the bones, remove the skin, and roughly chop it.

You want between 2 or 3 cups of chopped chicken. Divide chicken into 2 equal parts.

Now empty each can of cream soup into a separate dish.  Using the cans from the soup you just emptied, fill each one with broth and then add one can to each bowl of soup.  Stir until well combined.

Put your stuffing mix into a large bowl.  Grab the stick of butter/margarine and melt it.  After it has done so, pour it over the dry stuffing mix and stir it together very well. Divide stuffing mixture into three equal parts.

Now grab a large baking dish.  Put a layer of stuffing into the bottom.  Now take one half of the chicken and sprinkle that over the stuffing.  Pour the cream of chicken soup mixture over top of that.  Top with stuffing, then rest of chicken, then cream of celery mixture. Sprinkle the rest of the stuffing on the very top.

After everything is combined and ready, cover top with a lid or foil and place in preheated 425ºF oven.  Bake for 30 minutes.  The sides should be bubbling, and you should be about ready to climb into your oven with a fork because of the heavenly aroma.

I cannot tell you how many Sunday dinners were spent salivating and gorging ourselves on this dish.  I have no idea where mom came up with this recipe, but I can't make it without a smile on my face and memories in my heart.  I just know you will love it!