Mama's Chicken Casserole

Chicken & Dressing Casserole

3-lb. chicken, cut up (or rotisserie chicken)*

(onion, salt, and poultry seasoning)**

1 can cream of mushroom soup***

1 cup mayonnaise

1 or 2 cans of sliced water chestnuts, drained

2-3 cups dry herb stuffing mix (like Pepperidge Farm, not like Stove Top Stuffing)

Boil the chicken along with one small sliced onion, salt, and a fistful of poultry seasoning. Skim off any scum that forms. Boil gently for one hour. Remove from heat; remove the chicken from the stock and set aside to cool. Set aside a cup or so of the liquid from the chicken; make sure you get some of the fat in there. Strain the liquid and save it as stock, if you wish, for other uses. Discard the solids that you strained off.

When the chicken is cool, remove the flesh from the bones and skin, and pull it apart into bite-sized pieces. Set aside. Discard the bones and skin.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a 9x13" casserole dish, combine the canned soup, mayo, water chestnuts, and a little of the stock, maybe three tablespoons or up to a quarter cup of stock. Add the chicken and stir to combine.

In a separate container -- preferably a 4-cup measuring cup, but you might need to use a bowl -- combine the herb stuffing with some of the stock and as much of the rendered chicken fat as you can rescue. You want at least a half cup of the fatty stock to mix with 3 cups of dry stuffing. Toss to combine. Pour the now-greasy stuffing over the casserole and press it into the mixture with your hands.

Cook the casserole on the middle rack in your 350-degree oven until it becomes bubbly -- the casserole, not the oven, if your oven gets bubbly, please be concerned -- which should be 35-45 minutes. If the top gets too brown, cover it loosely with aluminum foil. If it doesn't get brown enough for your taste (hey, man, some people like their food to be crunchy), crank up the heat to 400 for a few minutes.

Serve with french-style green beans and yeast rolls. Very churchy, very homey, very crunchy and good.

*If you don't want to boil chicken, or if you're running short on time, grab a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store deli nearest you. Make sure you reserve the drippings in the bottom of the pan -- or bag -- from the deli; you will use those drippings instead of the stock that would result if you boiled the chicken. If you can't muster a half cup of drippings, augment them with some melted butter. You want to grease up those dry stuffing crumbs as much as you can.

**The onion, salt, and poultry seasoning are only needed if you boil chicken. If you're using rotisserie chicken, you do not need onion, salt, and poultry seasoning.

***Some people keel over in a swoon at the very suggestion of cream of mushroom soup. If you do not want to use a canned mushroom soup concentrate, make yourself some béchamel (or white sauce) and add sautéed mushrooms. And -- well, I won't say you shouldn't be such a snob. But dang. Lots of people don't have the tools necessary to whisk up béchamel in a saucepan, and lots of other people can't afford stainless steel saucepans, and even a bunch of other people don't like mushrooms enough to sautée them, myself included. I do not like mushrooms. They're almost invisible in cream of mushroom soup. And I do not have enough countertop space to deal with all those moving parts! Open a can of soup and let's move on to making a casserole, dang!

I dearly love this recipe; I've been making it since I was a newlywed in 1987, and I liked it long before that when my mother made it. She made it the way the recipe said (with slivered almonds) and she never greased up the stuffing crumbs with stock or chicken drippings.

I'm so happy I've passed on my fondness for this dish to my children. I always use two cans of water chestnuts -- I love those things. My husband says they have no flavor, but he appreciates the crunch factor, anyway. Me? I love the flavor and the crunch. My husband adds hot sauce to all his food, so I think his tastebuds are blown out. 

Let me know if you try this one -- and send me a picture if you think of it. I usually forget to take a pic because I'm dying to eat the stuff. 

--Bay