Baked Chicken and Rice

[mrmaxx]

My wife's family has an excellent dish of baked chicken and rice. Originally it was a Pork Chop recipe which got converted awhile back to chicken breasts. My wife further converted it as she does not care for mushrooms or mushroom soup as originally called for in the original recipe. :-)

Ingredients:

~1 lb of boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 can cream of celery soup

1 cup Uncle Bens Converted rice (NOT "Instant" rice or long grain & wild... plain white rice)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees

Cut the chicken breasts into "bite size" pieces and brown in a skillet with a touch of butter/margarine. In a small roasting pan add all ingredients. Add enough water from rinsing out the cans to basically equal approximately 1 1/2 cans of water. Mix well. Add a few pats of butter/margarine for flavor as desired.

Place cover on the roasting pan and bake for 1 hour at 400 degrees. Take out of the oven and raise the temperature to 425. Stir well to re-mix. Butter one side of several slices of bread (3 to 4) and tear into small pieces and place on top of the rice, butter side up. Cover and place in the oven at 425 for 15 minutes. Take out of the oven and let cool for several minutes. Dish up and eat.

Note: It is a fine line between too much water and not enough. Too little and your rice will not be thoroughly cooked. Too much and it'll be soupy. The latter is easily remedied --- leave the lid off and bake for another 5 to 10 minutes before putting on the bread topping. The former, well, you can try adding more water and putting it back in to cook, but unlikely to help, IMHO.

This serves as a great meal for my wife and I. Others may wish to use it as a main dish and add some vegetables or something.