Casserole....redux

Eric

has posted the recipe for his Mama's Quick and Easy Chicken Casserole. It sounds awesome...but for me, quite un-doable.

All the sodium woulda likely kilt me. Or at the very least, made me puff up like a poisoned pup.

See, I've been tryin to eat like a caveman...er...cavewoman. Meat, fresh (or frozen) veggies and only whole grains in the form of pasta, but no bread. No sugar. The absolute minimum of sodium, preservatives or other "additives". It's a bit of a challenge, but I do pretty well at it...there's a lotta products out there now that make it a little easier.

I've gotta admit, though...I do miss my casseroles. So I occasionally cheat. Oh, I don't do it very often. But...ya know?...a girl's just gotta have a casserole once in a while.

And Eric's Mama's casserole sounded good enough to make me wanna cheat. Here's her version for those of you who don't need watch the sodium intake:

1 can of cream of celery soup
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1 can of chicken broth
1 tablespoon of black pepper
2 large chicken breasts
1 box of Stove Top stuffing

.... basically you boil the chicken breasts until they are cooked through-and-through... once they've cooled, you pull them apart with your fingers so that they're nice and stringy and will get stuck between your teeth with an unearthly ease....

... once that's done, combine all of the soups, broth, and black pepper together in a casserole dish and stir up nicely.... once they're mixed well, spoon in your shredded chicken and stir again.... prepare your stuffing as per the little box, and spoon it over the soup/chicken mixture..... bake at 350 until heated through.... usually about 20-25 minutes....

Now, here's my version...which is in the oven as we speak:

1 can low-sodium cream of mushroom soup
1 can low-sodium cream of chicken soup
1.5 C homemade chicken broth (see below)
3 boneless-skinless chicken breasts (because the package I had had 3 in it), boiled & chopped
2 medium-sized portobello mushrooms, chopped (because I had 'em and they needed to be used)
2 boxes (I used 2 because I used more chicken...and we love leftovers) of Low-Sodium Stove-Top Stuffing Mix, prepared per package directions

I skipped the cream of celery soup because I'm not a big fan, plus I couldn't find low-sodium.

I boiled the chicken breasts. While they simmered, I added a couple teaspoons of poultry seasoning (the kind with no salt), a couple tablespoons of dried, chopped onion and a couple tablespoons of dried celery flakes, maybe a teaspoon of sea salt (it has less sodium than table salt) and some freshly ground black pepper. Voila! Home-made chicken broth...with virtually no sodium.

Follow the rest of Mama de Eric's recipe.

But Pammy, you might ask...usin all that low-sodium crap, does it still taste as good?

Well, lemme tell ya...I just this minute yanked it from the oven. It looks simply lovely...all nicely brown on top with the soup mixture bubblin up through it here and there.



Though I've obviously never tasted Mama de Eric's casserole, which I'm sure is delicimous, mine is....well....it's damn good, if I do say so myself.

And, it's hot. And I have the blister on the roof of my mouth to prove it.