My baby sister, MathGeekSis, loves this recipe and has requested it more than once. It is adapted from the Betty Crocker cookbook I have had for 15 years or so. I highly recommend having a staple cookbook like this...Betty showed me how to cut up a whole chicken, how to roast a whole chicken, and how to troubleshoot my pie crust issues. It's a handy tool to have around.
2 12 oz bags frozen broccoli, cooked until tender-crisp
1 lb box of orzo pasta, cooked OR rice, cooked (1 1/2 cups when measured dry)
cooked chicken, shredded, sliced, cubed, or just pulled off the bone and put into a pile
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. flour
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
3 c. chicken broth
1/4 c. white wine
1 c. parmesan cheese, plus more for spreading on top
Melt the butter over low heat. I mean it when I say low. If you heat it too quickly, you will have browned butter, like this:
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| Impatient butter melting is never a good thing. I wasted 50 cents here. |
Add flour and nutmeg to melted butter and stir in using a whisk, or if you are very lucky to have one, a Pampered Chef mini-whip (best tool ever invented for the kitchen - gets lumps out of everything. Well, I think everything. So far I have a 100% success rate with it, and I've had it for about...I can't remember....6 or 8 years?). Heat to boiling and bubbly and cook for a minute or two, stirring constantly.
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| You need to boil and cook beyond the boiling point when you add flour. This removes the taste of raw flour from your sauce. |
Turn the heat back on and bring to a boil; Boil and stir the mixture for a couple of minutes and it will thicken up beautifully and grow a little. Ok, maybe it doesn't grow, but it appears to.
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| See? Doesn't it look big? |
Remove from heat. Add the wine and 1 cup of cheese and mix until smooth. If you don't want to use wine, you can use more broth but it really isn't the same that way.
Assemble all the components and a casserole dish. Well, actually, get two dishes.
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| Cheese sauce, cooked orzo, cooked broccoli, leftover chicken, casserole dish |
Layer the ingredients with orzo or rice on the bottom, then broccoli, chicken on top of broccoli, and divide the cheese sauce between the two casserole dishes. Finish by sprinking grated parmesan on top of the sauce.
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| Orzo on the bottom, topped with broccoli |
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| Chicken on top of broccoli |
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| Forgot to take a pic with just the cheese sauce, so this has parmesan sprinkled on top of the cheese sauce already. |
Cool and put in the fridge for later, or cook right away until heated through. Baking at 375 for 20 to 30 minutes should do the trick.
You can also freeze this; I prefer to make it in aluminum pans if I'm freezing it. If your family is small, go ahead and make the recipe this size and freeze half for another day. I'd say up to 3 months in the freezer; just be sure to cool completely before freezing to lessen the chance of freezer burn.
3 comments:
1. Are there any leftovers?
2. Most substances do in fact expand when they are heated and contract when cooled (except water when it freezes which is just an anomoly).
3. I didn't know that was how freezer burn occurred!
Very few leftovers, but yes.
Yay, so I was right about the growing?
I just learned that condensation is what causes freezer burn, so freezing hot meals would make that occur. I don't know who would freeze hot food, but obviously someone would!
Oh yum!!!!
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