I Love You Pinterest

I love you Pinterest. I would be such a boring cook without you. When planning my weekly menu the first step is almost always to go peruse my Pinterest boards and pick out things that sound yummy and are fairly healthy. Since we're finally home, settled from vacation, and it is really finally October we're committing ourselves to making one soup dish per week. My Soups On! board has 42 different soup recipes. 10 more and I could make soup once a week for the entire year! Any suggestions?

Sorry, but I didn't take any pictures of the soup I made this week. It was Black Bean and Red Pepper Stew. I made it more soup-like than stew-like, and it was spicy and delicious. One serving is about a cup and a half and I calculated out to be 4 WW points. You can find the recipe for it here.

What I did make and take pictures of was this Cheesy Chicken & Wild Rice Casserole. What attracted me to this recipe was the fact that it used only fresh ingredients, no canned and processed soups (aka Cream of Chicken, Celery, etc).

I've been crunched for time this week, so I used meat from a rotisserie chicken I bought at Costco. Use whatever kind of chicken you have on hand.

A 6oz box of wild rice was going to cost me about $4. However, I bought my wild rice in the bulk section of my grocery store. It is $3.99/lb. So 16oz of bulk wild rice cost me the same amount but I more than doubled the amount of rice it got! See if your store has a bulk foods section. If not, Whole Foods has a great selection of bulk grains.

This recipe calls for 1cup of white rice and 16oz of wild rice. I didn't know how much rice that would be cooked. When I googled it later I was shocked to see that each cup of rice will yield 3-4 cups cooked! There's no way that this recipe needed that much rice. So I completely cut out the white rice that's listed in the original and cooked a cup and half of the wild rice. It yielded about 4 cups total.

To cook the rice, I boiled 3 1/2 cups water, added my 1 1/2 cups of rice and let it simmer for 45 minutes. When the kernels seem to pop or elongate they're done. Another way to tell that the rice is done is when the kernels are soft and chewy, not brittle, you know it's done.

Don't let the picture fool you. The scale is off. This bowl is huge! That is really 4 cups of rice.

While my rice was cooking, I started slicing up my veggies. I don't use fresh carrots that often, nor am I very good at chopping them into uniform pieces. I bought baby carrots, cut them in half, then diced the halves for a uniform size. It was easy peasy, and I will use the leftover carrots to make roasted baby carrots. Win-win. I'm also not a very big fan of crunchy celery. I wanted to make sure that the celery was totally cooked through before I put the casserole into the oven. It took about 15 minutes for the celery and carrots to get soft. The texture of the onions kind of disappeared, but their flavor was still there, so I wasn't that concerned. If you were, you could add the onions when the celery and carrots are about halfway cooked.

The cheese sauce is super simple to make and is really yummy. Melt your butter. Whisk in the flour, broth, and your salt and pepper. Continue to whisk until the mixture comes to a boil. Add 2 cups of your shredded cheddar and continue to stir until everything is all combined and your cheese is melted into gooey awesomeness. 

Next step is to mix the veggies, rice, and chicken together. The original recipe calls for pouring the cheese sauce on top of the rest of the ingredients. I thought it might not permeate the rice adequately, and the bottom wouldn't be cheesy enough. So I mixed everything together in my big ass bowl, then poured it into my casserole dish.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30-35 minutes, covered in foil. Remove your foil, top with your leftover 2 cups of cheddar cheese. Put the dish back in the oven, with the heat off, until your cheesy top melts. If you find your cheese isn't melting fast enough, you can turn your broiler on low and melt it that way. Just be careful not to burn it!

All that's left is to enjoy your dinner! It's hard to not go back for thirds and fourths, it is literally that good! This recipe is 10 servings, and each serving I calculated out to be 10 WW points.

Cheesy Chicken & Wild Rice Casserole
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large white onion, diced
3 celery stalks, diced
1 1/2 cup baby carrots, diced
2 Tbsp garlic, minced
2 cups rotisserie chicken, shredded
1 1/2 cup wild rice, cooked
3 Tbsp butter
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup vegetable or chicken broth
4 cups cheddar cheese, shredded
1 tsp garlic salt
Salt and Pepper to taste