If you are a fan of cheesy broccoli soup, then our day 4 culinary adventure is for you. At my house, only one person likes cheesy broccoli soup - my husband. So, going into this meal, I knew getting my kids to rate this highly was going to be a small miracle. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised with the ratings from more than half of my crew and had less leftovers than I had anticipated.
Day 4's meal was (shocker) another recipe from Eating Well - Chicken & Broccoli Casserole - and is linked here. The recipe was pretty much exactly what the title described chicken, broccoli, cheese, plus some brown rice. I really liked how few of ingredients were needed for this one.
For my kids, the biggest hurdle to this recipe was going to be the broccoli. With it's obvious green color, there was absolutely no hiding it. And my kids are adamant that they "hate broccoli". I've tried adding the veggie as a side in meals past, but it's never gone over well. But with all of the veggie's nutrients, I would love to get my kids to start eating it. (In full transparency, I don't like broccoli either but at nearly 40, I should probably start adding more veggies into my diet and would love to be able to enjoy the green stuff.)
I made a few modifications to the recipe in the preparation, which I'll highlight below, but no changes to the ingredients.
Scratch that, in the first step of searing the chicken, I did substitute browning the chicken in a tablespoon of butter rather than the oil listed in the recipe. I just like the way it tastes better and the fridge is closer than my pantry, so it's always easy to grab the butter. The other change I made in searing the chicken was cutting the chicken into pieces before it went into the pan. The recipe instructs you to cut it up after but I feel like the chicken loses it's juices and flavor that way, so I cut mine into chunks before it got tossed in.
After the chicken was browned, out it came from the pan and in went the milk, which is the base of the cheesy sauce. While I patiently waited for it to come to a boil, I did chopped my broccoli. I made the pieces fairly small in hopes they wouldn't be so intimidating to the kids. Chopping was done by the time the milk started to roll (don't mind my use of a too small cutting board...oops), so after adding the rue (milk/flour mixture), in went the broccoli to soften up.
I stuck pretty close to the time recommendations of the recipe for the cooking of the broccoli because I didn't really want green mush in the casserole. Once my 3 minutes of softening was up, I tossed in the rice and gently stirred. Two things here:
I was really wishing I had a bigger oven-safe pan at this point. Everything ended up fitting in my pan, but it was questionable several times throughout the cooking process.
The pre-cooked brown rice from Uncle Ben's was a game changer! It is an amazing product. It saved so much time on this recipe and anytime now that rice needs to go into a dish (probably not when it's a side item because I'll want to add more flavor so the rice can stand alone), I will be grabbing this product!
Once the rice, broccoli, and milk were combined, I tossed in the chicken chunks and the cheese. Carefully, I used my spatula to bring it all together, with shockingly little spillage, and then topped with the crunchy onions. In it went to the oven for 10 minutes to brown up. Since the casserole only needed 10 minutes in the oven, I quickly threw together a "fruit salad" which consisted of cut grapes, bananas, and strawberries. Spoiler Alert - This was my kids favorite part of the meal.
When the timer went off, I pulled out the casserole, let it rest for a few minutes while the kiddos filed into the kitchen, and then served it up. The meal was fairly easy to put together but since it was pretty much all active time, I wouldn't describe this casserole as a traditional casserole cook - you know, one where you dump everything in a baking dish and then cook for 45-minutes to an hour. But, regardless, it was an easy recipe to follow and easy for a weeknight meal since it had so few of ingredients.
As I indicated at the top, I always knew this meal was going to be a favorite of my husband's and I was not wrong. He had a big serving to begin with and was already looking forward to leftovers for lunch. As for the rest of the crew, it was a mixed bag.
For me, I was surprised by how much I did like it. I historically haven't enjoyed brown rice and really do not like broccoli. Because of the rich, creamy sauce, I didn't even notice the rice was brown and the broccoli was cooked perfectly with a lot of non-broccoli flavor.
For the kids, the six-year-old ate the best, which isn't shocking. He didn't really like the broccoli piece but agreed you couldn't really taste it much so he took it down. The nine-year-old couldn't get past his historical detestation of broccoli. He liked the chicken and rice but had to give himself a pep talk to put the broccoli in his mouth. After his required trying of two broccoli pieces, he pulled the rest out of his portion and at the chicken and rice. For Bennett, he did gag when he ate the broccoli but after some parental assistance, he managed to take down the chicken and some of the rice. Ashlynn, for her part, ate some of everything but certainly wasn't as eager when the green stuff was on her fork.
Highs:
I ate broccoli and liked it proving if you put enough cheesy sauce on something healthy, you can take it down.
Joel was very happy that he got to enjoy one of his favorite veggies since normally they don't hit the table.
Bennett did get down two, very small, pieces of broccoli before nearly throwing up.
Lows:
This wasn't a fan favorite and won't be something that gets added to the regular rotation.
Bennett nearly lost his dinner on the table after taking down his third piece of broccoli.
The Scores:
Joel: 4.1
Allison: 3.5
Parker: 2
Lucas: 3.5
Bennett: 1
Ashlynn: 2.5
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