Jill Can Cook: Forgotten Chicken

I might be a Stay-At-Home-Mom but that doesn't mean I spend all day at home. Half the week I spend running errands or catching up on house chores. The other half of the week I spend hanging out with my peeps (mostly my mom/dad, but sometimes other family members/friends). Oh, and of course, I spend a lot of time hanging out with my kiddos.

Regardless of if I've spent the day out and about or in and invested in other projects, most of the time I want something easy to make for dinner. I love anything that I can put together in the crockpot and just forget about. I also love casserole type recipes that I can just throw in the oven and forget about. 

So, you can imagine the love that I initially had for this recipe that sells itself as a recipe you can forget about!! I want to cook that! Me! That recipe is for me! And I cooked it and here it is!!

Forgotten Chicken

Adapted from Darling Doodles Design

Ingredients:

• 3-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 2 c. uncooked rice
• 1 pkg. onion soup mix
• can of cream of chicken soup
• can of cream of celery soup
• water
• pepper to taste

Directions: 

1. Mix together “cream of” soups, 1 can of water, and 2 cups of rice (uncooked.)  Pour into a buttered casserole dish.
2. Lay chicken breasts on top of rice mixture and sprinkle onion soup mix on top. Cover with tin foil.
3. Once you have it in the casserole dish you can put it in the oven and forget it!  You can either cook it at around 250 for three hours or you can cook it at 350-375 for one to one and a half hours.  

I'm not usually a fan of cream of stuff soups, but this one seemed all right. Plus, I usually keep most of these ingredients on hand at all times, so I thought this might be a great recipe to add to my repertoire. I love recipes that I don't need to stock specific items for. That way, I can make them in a pinch if needed.

All the cream of soups and water mixed together.

I added in the rice.

Added in the chicken.

Onion soup on top.

At this point, I have high hopes for this dish. I love rice. I love chicken. I love those onion soup packets. This recipe did live up to it's name. I spent a few minutes throwing all the ingredients into the pan and once it went into the oven, I forgot about it.

As the kids and I were playing and waiting for Joe to get home from work, the house began to smell pretty good. I couldn't wait to get this out of the oven and gobble it up!

This is what it looked like when it was all plated up.

This dish definitely had a strong smell. It hit Joe the minute he opened the front door. The coloring of the dish wasn't extremely appealing, but I've eaten and enjoyed ugly looking food before. 

Yeah, it's a little ugly. 

I took a couple bites and was disappointed. This dish is super salty. The only flavor that came through to me was salt. There was salt from the 2 cans of soup, plus the salt from the onion soup packet. It was just too much for me. I love flavor, but I'm not a fan of salt. I only put salt on cucumbers, otherwise, I only use salt in cooking.

I don't know why I keep showing you pictures. They're boring as heck!

My kids also hate this dish. Mostly just because of the way it looked... Well, and the fact that they're picky little eaters! Lol.

Joe actually found no fault in this dish. He didn't think it was pretty, but he wasn't as turned off by the saltiness of it as I was.

I would normally try to give you guys pointers on how I might jazz up a dish that wasn't up to par, but I don't think I'll make this dish again. Also, it would need a lot of jazzing up, to the point that it might become an entirely new dish. Like, I'd add some colorful veggies to it, like peas, or broccoli (well, you can put broccoli in it. I don't like broccoli!). I'd also cut out one of the cans of cream of soup and possibly cut back on the onion soup mix, too. Maybe changing out the white rice for wild rice might add some flavor back. I don't know. It's up to the both of you, my loyal followers, to use your best judgement when attempting this recipe for yourself! Good luck!You'll need it.

I'd like to forget I ever made this chicken!! It gets an F from me! And possibly a C from Joe since he didn't put up a fuss when I said, "Never again!"