Skip to main content

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


Labels:

Comments

  1. AmyJuly 26, 2020 at 4:21 PM

    Oh, this brings back so many memories! I liked it with the almonds and I remember many a trip to the grocery store to get a bag of Pepperidge Farms stuffing mix. Mama wasn't the fanciest cook, but her casserole recipes were solid!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fabulous Turkey Brine

 Fabulous Turkey Brine 3/4 cup kosher salt 1/3 cup sugar 2 Tbsp whole coriander seeds 1 Tbsp fennel seeds 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes 4 cloves garlic, crushed 3-4 bay leaves 2 carrots, diced 2 celery stalks, diced 1 onion, diced (or half of one onion plus 1-2 shallots, diced) 2 gallons cool water A 12 to 21-pound turkey Combine the vegetables, aromatics, herbs, salt, and sugar with the 2 gallons of water in a large vessel (21-quart pot for a small turkey, 5-gallon bucket for a large one). Stir. Add turkey. Ensure the breast is under water -- employ weights if necessary. (A foil-covered brick has been known to make itself useful in such circumstances in my kitchen.)  Brine for 2 to 3 days. Remove the turkey from the brine the night before Thanksgiving. Pat dry and -- ideally -- chill the turkey in the refrigerator, uncovered, to allow the skin to dry out overnight. Dry turkey skin gets browner during cooking. Follow the directions on the turkey's packaging for the actual co...
1 comment
Read more

A cruddy little kitchen, a lifetime of loving food

I was looking for a recipe. You know, like everyone else every day everywhere in the world, I wanted something tasty for dinner. I had salmon. I had old tried-and-true salmon recipes I've used happily in the past. I just wanted something different. So I Googled "honey bourbon salmon." This is a thing I've seen on menus. Sounds great. I can make that, can't I? I have honey, I have bourbon; I have salmon. I can make this! Then I spent an hour slogging through a half dozen recipe blogs with long stories, beautiful photographs, freestyle poetry singing the praises of farm-raised salmon -- or wild-caught salmon -- or canned salmon -- and all of it took ten to fifteen minutes to load out here in the boonies because all of those popular, beautiful recipe blogs were monetized. Ads flashed. Clickbait beckoned. Video players popped up and disembodied hands cracked eggs into stainless steel bowls. I scrolled down, ever downward, ever onward, trying to get past the homilies a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pork Chops and Gravy

Easy Pork Chops & Gravy recipe 5-6 pork chops 1 can Cream of Mushroom soup ½ envelope dry onion soup mix Worcestershire sauce 1 cup water Salt, pepper, flour Salt, pepper, and flour the pork chops. Turn on your favorite burner to a high medium heat -- 6.5 or 7, in other words. In batches, brown the chops in a couple of tablespoons of oil in a well-greased cast iron skillet. In a bowl, mix together the cream of mushroom soup, the half envelope of onion soup mix, cup of water, and several dashes of Worcestershire sauce. Return pork chops to skillet; pour soup mixture over, raising the chops a bit to allow the mixture to get all around the pork chops. Turn the burner down to medium-low (3), cover, and cook for one hour. Check frequently to ensure even cooking of the pork chops; add water as needed 1 tablespoon at a time; may add a little Worcestershire sauce as needed, too. Serve with mashed potatoes and green beans. My sister called me long distance from Ellicott City, Maryland, to t...
Post a Comment
Read more