Chicken Divan

Chicken, chicken, chicken. What's for dinner? Chicken. Blah! Nothing gets blah faster than chicken.

But good news! We're going to do a few posts on making chicken a bit more delicious. Healthy? Not necessarily. But delicious, yes. And even better news...most of these recipes are perfect for using up leftover chicken which makes meal planning so easy! (Please tell me you meal plan. Please tell me you sit and make a list of 3 weeks worth of meals at a time so you can make the most of your grocery list...I will feel quite awkward if I'm the only person that does that.)

So the recipe today is for chicken divan. As far as the meal planning goes, if you have a whole chicken on Sunday (rotisserie or fried), just shred the leftovers to use again 2 days later. If you grill chicken one evening, throw 2 or 3 more pieces on the grill while you're at it, so you'll have extra for this recipe that week. Here's the other reason that approach is the best one: because I hate poaching chicken. It makes me gag. I cannot stand the smell of just throwing some chicken in some water so I can have cooked chicken for a recipe. GA-ross! Here's the ironic thing: I had to do just that for this blog post. Serves me right, I suppose, for not putting rotisserie chicken on my iGoogle "Meal 1" tab of My Listy. Whatever. Here's we go....here's what you need (stuff you already have, I bet!):


About 2 cups of cooked chicken
1 can of cream of chicken
1/2 cup (give or take) of mayonnaise
a good dollop of sour cream (precision is everything with me)
about a half a bag of frozen broccoli, cooked
1 cup of cheddar, shredded
1 cup of cooked rice

**Meal plan tip--Make more rice than that, so that the next day you can throw all your leftover meats and veggies from that week in with the rice to make fried rice!**

This is where this recipe is so easy, it's almost hard to call it a "recipe".


Dump all the above ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Taste it and add salt and pepper to taste.


Then dump all that into a casserole dish, a 9x13 will be just perfect. Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes. You want it to be heated through and bubbly.



Delicious. And the joy of a casserole, if you're obsessive like me, is that all your prep dishes have been rinsed and loaded into the dishwasher while it's cooking. Ahhh...I just love a meal like that!

Oh, and word to the wise...add a bag of wavy potato chips to your grocery list on Chicken Divan week. You will adore having wavy chips with your leftovers for lunch the next day!