Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Homestyle Chicken and Broccoli Casserole

Recipe #85:http://astro.ca/recipes/homestyle_chicken_and_broccoli_casserole/

This recipe was quite delicious as a finished product, but I struggled to get it to that point.

I have my friend Shellery to thank for reminding me that Astro's website has some excellent recipes with which to use up the yogurt in my fridge. This particular recipe calls for 2% plain yogurt and I only had enough of the fat-free on hand. As you'll see later, that might have been part of my problems.

A word of caution about sauteing the chicken breasts. I had our stove on "medium", was using the olive oil AND a non-stick pan, but still managed to burn two breasts and stuck one to the pan. Medium was too high for me. Also, beware of hot oil splattering everywhere. Mine was burning too. Could just be me, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

I found that once I added the chicken stock (or in my case: part chicken, part beef stock after I ran out of chicken) to the flour and butter, it didn't really thicken much and I let it try for a while. I cooked some more butter and flour in a little saucepan (1 tbsp butter: 2 tbsp flour, I think?) and that thickened things up somewhat, but we were back to runny again after I added the yogurt. See my note at the beginning for more yogurt thoughts.

Those were really the only trouble spots I had. Two of my chicken breasts were more like implants compared to the others so I had to kind of squash them into the casserole dish. When you pour in your sauce, make sure all of the chicken is covered before you put it in the oven so that it doesn't dry out. I cooked mine with the lid on although the recipe doesn't say one way or the others. Opinions on this may vary.

When I cooked the jasmine brown rice, I followed the directions EXACTLY. Unfortunately, it was still kind of soupy at the end so I had to cook it longer with the lid canted to get rid of some of that liquid. This isn't really related to the recipe, other than the fact that the recipe is suggested to be served over rice.

The Meatatarian noticed a kind of tangy taste to the sauce which I noted to be from the yogurt. My mum cooked with yogurt in lieu of sour cream when we were growing up so it didn't phase me, but he wasn't completely keen on it so keep that in mind if you are expected a smooth, creamy taste. It might be a little edgy. Regardless, I liked this recipe a lot!