Kristine Fontenot

What an easy delicious casserole!! I’ve made some changes and it did require a little extra steps/work, but I like to use fresh ingredients wherever I can. Instead of using one can of cream of mushroom I opted for 2 cans of healthy request cream of chicken. The healthy request doesn’t have any MSG in it.Also, I used shredded chicken from a whole chicken that I used from a homemade broth that I made. The chicken from the broth was full of flavor and extremely tender.I’m not a fan of processed cheese like Velveeta, so I opted for a block of sharp cheese that I cut into cubes. And as for the rice, I’m 1/2 Korean so I cooked my rice in a rice cooker and don’t ever use ‘instant’ rice. But for the purpose of this recipe I added olive oil and slightly less water than usual so the rice didn’t end up sticky but separate and fluffy.I chopped up fresh broccoli vs using frozen and instead of an onion I opted for a small shallot and added a couple of cloves of mined garlic. I think next time I’ll sauté the shallots and garlic before adding them. Cooking them directly with the casserole sorta made them over powering instead of ‘enhancing’ the flavors.When you take it out to stir it, you may want to check the flavor and season it with salt and pepper or whatever flavors you want to add. Next time I’m considering adding paprika or maybe ground sage which sets off the flavors of cheese!When the casserole was done I topped it off with some cheese that I shredded myself and broiled it for an additional 5 mins until it was toasty golden and slightly brown.Overall this was a hit and my family enjoyed it! I look forward to continuing on tweaking this and adding it to my cookbook of favorite recipes.