February 15, 2013 | 2 Comments

Creamy Scalloped Chicken and Vegetables

This heart-warming casserole is an excellent choice for cold winter nights. It’s filled with chicken, noodles, and veggies in a tasty creamy sauce and topped with bread crumbs making it very hardy, filling, nourishing, and a family favorite. I made this casserole a week ago for a funeral where I was trying to provide food for 20 people. I’ll share my original recipe and the one with all my additions here so you can have both in case you don’t need to feed 20 people at the moment!

The nice thing about the big batch is you can make it and break it down into two or three casseroles and freeze one or two of them for later (depending on how full you want each dish). You can easily change out the ingredients in this recipe by using whatever noodles you have on hand and different assortments of mixed vegetables as you desire. This is also a great recipe where you can clean out your leftovers or use up garden produce in amounts you need to get rid of.

This Creamy Scalloped Chicken and Vegetables recipe was given to me years ago my a very good friend and mentor, Bonnie Rodriguez. Bonnie gave me so many recipes when I was first starting out as new wife–all of which I’ve made a lot over the years. She was never afraid to try new recipes and she gave me the courage to try things I’d never eaten before. I loved everything she made and was so grateful she had John and me over for dinner frequently those first few years of marriage when I didn’t know how to cook a lick. Bonnie never hoarded recipes either. She shared them very freely with me and others who were just learning how to cook in those days. I am deeply obliged to her!

If you’re looking for great comfort food and a way to stretch your dollars, this economical, tasty, and substantial main dish casserole may be the ticket. It can also be used with leftover rotisserie chicken, spiral cut ham, or pot roast. As I said earlier, it’s a great way to use up leftovers. We love this great family recipe and think you will too once you make it.

Here’s a look at this hearty main dish casserole.

This is a wonderful one-dish meal. Meat, veggies, and noodles in a creamy sauce with a bread crumb topping. Yummy!

This is an easy casserole to use up leftovers, extra garden produce, any kind of noodle or pasta. You could even use this recipe with leftover steak or beef, pork/ham, or turkey.

Here’s what I did.

I cooked a chicken in the crockpot on low overnight so this was ready the next morning when I was ready to make it. Debone the chicken and set meat aside. Reserve chicken broth.

Save the chicken broth and cook the pasta in it.

For 20 servings I used a whole box of garden rotini and about half a box of whole wheat rotini.

One whole chicken yields about 4 cups of meat.

Cook pasta according to directions. Drain. Save broth for another use if desired.

Place pasta in large mixing bowl with chicken pieces.

Add diced onion.

Add diced red pepper. This is the best color option as none of the vegetables will have duplicate colors and hide the beauty of the red.

Add mixed vegetables. This one had corn, peas, lima beans, carrots, and green beans.

Place cream of chicken soup in a bowl.

Add milk.

Add milk and whisk with soup.

Here the chicken soup is mixed with milk.

Pour soup mixture into bowl with chicken, noodles, and veggies.

Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, thyme, and marjoram.

Here I’ve added the seasonings. Increase the amounts if you prefer more or better – use fresh!

Stir all the ingredients together.

Spray cooking dishes with cooking spray. I made up a small casserole for John on the left, and the big foil pan is what I put the remaining Creamy Scalloped Chicken and Vegetables in for the family I was taking the meal to. Otherwise, spray 2 or 3 9×13″ pans (1 or 2 foil pans) with cooking spray and divvy up the ingredients among the 2 or 3 containers (depending on how much you want to put in each pan).

Here I’ve placed the ingredients into the large roaster pan.

Here’s John’s serving.

Sprinkle bread crumbs over top of the casseroles.

Bake at 350 until warm and bubbly. A normal size casserole will be about 45 minutes to an hour. The large one took a little over two hours to cook.

Baked and ready to be delivered.

This is a wonderful casserole for company, too. I love the fact that you can improvise so easily with this recipe.

Creamy Scalloped Chicken and Vegetables is a nice and creamy main dish but also very satisfying and filling.

You can make up the large version of this and freeze some for later, or just make the smaller version (see below).

Here’s the recipe.

CREAMY SCALLOPED CHICKEN AND VEGETABLES

(Recipe adapted from Bonnie Rodriguez, when we attended First Baptist Church Indian Rocks, Largo, FL)

SMALL BATCH:

½ cup chopped onion

¼ cup chopped pimiento (or substitute 1/2 of a red pepper, diced)

8-oz. wide egg noodles

2 cups cooked chopped chicken

1 can cream of chicken soup

10-oz. pkg. frozen mixed vegetables, thawed and drained

½ cup bread crumbs

1/8 tsp. garlic powder (I would increase to 1/2 tsp.)

Pinch of marjoram (I would increase to 1/2 tsp.)

¾ cup milk

Pinch of thyme (I would increase to 1/2 tsp.)

½ tsp. pepper

1 tsp. salt

Cook noodles in boiling water until tender, yet firm, 3-4 minutes. Drain, blend together soup and milk in saucepan; heat thoroughly. Combine chicken, mixed vegetables, onion, pimiento, salt, pepper and spices in a large mixing bowl. Stir in noodles and soup mixture. Turn into greased 9×13” baking dish. Sprinkle bread crumbs evenly over mixture. Bake in preheated 425° oven 20-25 minutes. Serves 4-6.

CREAMY SCALLOPED CHICKEN AND VEGGIES

(Recipe adapted from Bonnie Rodriguez, when we attended First Baptist Church of Indian Rocks, Largo, FL)

LARGE BATCH

1 whole chicken, deboned, meat cut in bite-size pieces

16-oz. garden rotini pasta

6-oz. whole wheat rotini pasta

1 onion, diced

1 red pepper, diced

Broth from cooking chicken to boil pasta plus whatever water needed

20-oz. frozen mixed vegetables

2 cans cream of chicken soup

1 ½ cups milk

1 tsp. marjoram

1 tsp. thyme

1 tsp. garlic powder

2 tsp. kosher salt

1 scant tsp. pepper

1 cup Italian-style bread crumbs

Place chicken, cooked, drained pasta, onion, pepper, mixed veggies, marjoram, thyme, garlic powder, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl and combine. Combine chicken soup and milk in another bowl. Whisk together and stir into meat and veggie mixture. Spray 2 or 3 9×13” baking pans with cooking spray (depending on how full you want to fill them). Divvy chicken and vegetable mixture between the two or three pans. Sprinkle bread crumbs over top of each dish. Wrap 1 or 2 of the casseroles with freezer wrap or foil and freeze until ready to use. Cover remaining casserole dish with foil and bake about an hour at 350° or until bubbly. Remove foil to brown crumbs for maybe 5-10 minutes, if necessary. Remove from oven and serve. Each casserole serves about 6-7.

Doesn’t this look wonderful? Are you ready for a taste?

This is great comfort food on cold winter nights. The great thing about this recipe is you can freeze some and pull it out when you don’t have time to do a lot of food prep.