Sunday, December 13, 2009

Super Easy Rice Casseroles!

Rice Casseroles!

These dishes are SUPER quick! One dish required for baking (you may need a few things to prep, like a cutting board or a bowl for tossing ingredients). Make sure you spray your dish with EVOO for easy clean up. For all of these recipes use brown rice (organic!) if you can. Stay away from “perfumed” rice such as basmati and jasmine. In these dishes the delicate flavors will be lost.

Spicy Rice and Chicken Casserole

Notes: If you are a vegetarian feel free to leave out the chicken. If you don’t like super spicy food cut down on the chilies or leave them out entirely.

Ingredients:
4 whole chicken breasts (boneless and skinless)
16oz canned and diced tomatoes
1c uncooked white rice
1 green pepper, diced
1 or 2 jalapenos or other spicy pepper, minced (see notes below)
½ pack of your favorite taco seasoning
1T butter
3T all purpose flour
3/4c low sodium chicken broth
½ c milk (low fat or fat free)
Salt and pepper to taste

In large oven safe rectangle casserole dish lay out cleaned chicken breasts (see notes below on cleaning chicken breasts)
In a separate bowl beat butter, flour, broth, taco seasoning, and milk
Add in tomatoes, peppers and rice
Add salt and pepper
Pour mixture over chicken
Cook in a 350 degree oven, covered, for 45min or until rice is tender.

Sausage Casserole
This is an updated version of sausage casserole that my mother used to serve to us when we were children. My mother’s version was a cream of mushroom soup, veggies, sausage and rice. This one is a little different and healthier.

Ingredients
1lb sausage (I prefer a mild Italian turkey or chicken sausage in this but feel free to use any savory sausage including a bratwurst or your favorite sausage in or out of casing. Make sure your sausage is cooked and the fat is drained.
1 chopped medium onion
3 stalks celery, chopped
2c broccoli florets chopped
½ c mushrooms, diced (optional)
1/2c uncooked rice
2c chicken or beef stock, low sodium
Salt and pepper to taste


Directions
Dump it all in a casserole dish, mix and cook (covered) at 350 for 90min.

Vegetarian Rice Casserole
Feel free to change around which veggies you use but keep the same total amount of veggies in the dish.

Ingredients
1c rice (uncooked)
1 ¼ cup finely chopped vegetables (choose any! mushrooms, peas, greenbeans, broccoli, carrots, bell pepper, zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes)
1/4c chopped onion
2 1/2c veggie stock (low sodium)
1/4t of each dried thyme, rosemary, dill, and paprika
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix in a 9/13 baking dish, cover, bake for 30 min or until rice is cooked through



Cleaning chicken breasts: No matter what brand of chicken breast you buy it will probably have fat, tendons, or even bones attached to it. When cleaning a chicken breast lay out on your favorite RAW MEAT cutting board (should be a separate cutting board from the cooked/veggie board). Pull up the fat, tendons, bone piece with your fingers and slice away as close as you can with a sharp knife. Make sure you cut away from yourself. Throw fat in trash (do not put down the disposal). After cutting off as much junk as you can wash the breast and pat dry with a paper towel. Make sure you wash everything, including your hands, thoroughly.
Hot pepper tips: The only way you are going to know what your heat level is on peppers is to try some. The link below is a good started guide though. When preparing hot peppers cut the top entirely off. Cut the pepper down the middle and remove all of the seeds and white part with a sharp, small, knife. Throw those parts away. Make sure you wash your hands before touching your eyes, nose, uh….other body parts or children!

Pepper hotness link! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale

1 comment:

Ann said...

Yum! Will definitely try this one!