Friday, April 4, 2014

Lemon Chicken With Rice

I finally attempted to make my own version of the (sadly) discontinued Campbell's "Supper Bakes" Lemon Chicken that I loved so much.
 I wrote about this packaged product back in this post.
I'm happy to say that it really did turn out pretty well! No, it wasn't exactly the same, but we liked it.
I had a recipe from years ago that called for rice, whole chicken pieces, and Campbell's cream soups, so I was sort of trying to combine that with what came in the box. Between that, and needing to use only what I had on hand, this is what I came up with:
 2/3 cup fresh lemon juice
hot water
2 packages of Rice-A-Roni (I used chicken and mushroom and chicken and garlic flavors, I think!)
1 seasoning mix packet from one of those packages
2 tsp lemon pepper seasoning
1&1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breast pieces
Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup (you will not use quite both cans of condensed soup)
Campbell's Cream of Chicken & Mushroom Soup
1/3 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
Add enough HOT water to your fresh lemon juice to equal 2 cups of liquid
In a 13X9 inch pan, mix the rice from both boxes (it was approx. 1&1/2 cups of rice) with the hot water/lemon juice combo in the pan.
Stir in one of the seasoning packets from the Rice-A-Roni and the lemon pepper seasoning
Place chicken pieces in the pan. Mix all but about 1/3 of a cup of  the condensed soups together and try to cover the chicken and rice with it, as evenly as possible.
Sprinkle bread crumbs over the chicken in the pan.
Bake at 375 degrees for about 50 minutes.
I would have probably used more lemon juice if I'd had it; we like it very lemony - and if I had thought of it, I would have added  fresh lemon zest, also. Season it to taste - maybe less lemon pepper,  not all of the seasoning packet (definitely do not use two - I would never have put both in) and some salt and pepper instead?
The texture of the rice didn't come out quite right; I suppose "toasting" it a little first may have helped. It was kind of sticky/gloppy. (Sounds worse than it was.)
We liked it despite that. But if I had had some regular long grain rice or brown rice on hand, I would have probably tried that.
There's no way for me to know how that would have worked.
I only had instant rice and Boil-In-Bag rice and I was afraid to try those.
You could add a bit more rice and even more chicken if you need more servings. This makes at least six generous servings.
All in all, it really WAS an experiment, after all - and like I said, we liked it - we ate it all, no problem!
Every night until it was gone.
Luckily, I have a husband who enjoys leftovers.
(Honestly, I've heard that some people don't!? )
Can't even imagine that.

1 comment:

Tina Dawn said...

Sounds really good. I was thinking as I read the recipe that maybe I would first brown the rice in butter as you do when you make rice a roni, just because I really like the flavor you get with that. I think I will try this soon, and I will let you know how it turns out. Love T