Today I am sharing this Skillet Chicken & Rice Dinner recipe that has been taped on a page in our family cookbook since 1999, so party on! Did you get that reference? Share a comment if you did. Here’s a hint: I now have a song in my brain and will probably be singing it all day.
We all love a one-pan dinner for many reasons–less clean-up, easy to put on the table, and the blend of flavors in the foods is so yummy.
Common ingredients also make this meal an easy peasy (is that how YOU spell it?) dish to serve to your family. And this should have been easy, but there wasn’t much Minute Rice in the pantry, so I thought I would just run out to my local Food Lion store and pick up another box just in case. This is an item that is always in stock, right? That’s what I thought until I looked on the rice shelf and there was none to be found.
Seriously? It’s rice. Quick rice. What the heck? Oh right! COVID happened and supply chain issues have even affected Minute Rice–or at least at my Food Lion.
Well I was at the store on Tuesday and I wasn’t going to make this meal until Wednesday. So yesterday I ran out to Wal-Mart, and sure enough, they had several boxes. Thank goodness. Funny thing, though. When I was assembling my ingredients, I poured the almost empty box of rice into my 2-cup measure and guess what? I had exactly 1 1/2 cups of rice, which was all I needed. Hmmm. Well at least we have back-up.
I made a change or two to some of the ingredients. Because I didn’t want to cut up frozen broccoli–and I didn’t have fresh–I used freeze-dried. Also, another funny thing, when I bought groceries the other day and was looking to get Cream of Chicken soup, I had accidentally picked up Chicken & Rice Soup. Yeah that wasn’t going to work at all, so I used Julie’s Gimme Thrive Cream of Anything Soup Base. What a lifesaver that has been! I also used that in this recipe. So glad I had a jar of it in the pantry.
Yes, this easy dinner had become anything but. You will do much better than I did.
Also, from the photo you will see I had a lot of chicken–and it’s also a little out of focus (so sorry, it looked good last night when I shot it). I had a pack of chicken breasts in the freezer and had thawed them out in the package. When I took them out, those were some really thick chicken breasts! So I got out my meat mallet and thinned them out a little. To make them fit well on top of the rice mixture, I cut them up into more manageable portions. Next time I think I will just filet them. Another idea would be to cut them up in bite-size chunks before you cook them and just mix them into the rice. I think I will try that next time.
Skillet Chicken & Rice Dinner
- February 4, 2021
- 4-5
- Print this
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
- 1 can Cream of Chicken Soup
- 1 1/2 cups water (add more if needed)
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups uncooked Minute Rice
- 2 cups fresh or frozen broccoli florets
Directions
- Step 1
- Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the chicken and cook until browned. Remove chicken and set aside.
- Step 2
- Add soup, water, paprika, pepper, and salt. Heat to a boil.
- Step 3
- Stir in rice and broccoli. Top with chicken. Sprinkle with more pepper and paprika, and maybe just a little more salt, if desired.
- Step 4
- Cover and cook over low heat 5 minutes or until done.
