Chicken, Cheddar, Bacon & Rice Bake

I came upon yet another fun food blog titled, What's cooking in the burbs! She has some serious great looking recipes that I can't wait to try! I'm no where near going through them but I did however find this little gem on Pinterest which is what got me to her blog in the first place. She adapted this recipe from AllRecipes and we LOVED it! I really struggled with putting the bacon in or leaving it out (healthy eating...remember?)! However, I still had a ways to go before I reached my goal for the day, so in went the bacon! Just FYI in case you're interested, this recipe, as is, runs about 445 calories per serving. If you leave out the bacon you can subtract 135 calories and come up with 310 calories per serving! If bacon is involved, I will typically favor the bacon IN instead of the bacon OUT! So let's get started, because once you make it, you're not going to want to stop eating it! This recipe serves about 6 people, so for 2 of us we had plenty of leftovers!

Ingredients

4 TB butter

1 medium onion, chopped (about one cup)

4 garlic cloves-minced (I used 3 because they were pretty big)

1 tsp seasoning salt

1 tsp Kosher salt (I forgot this when I made it-tasted just fine)

1/2 tsp black pepper

4 TB flour

3 1/2 c chicken stock

3 1/2 c milk

1 1/2 c long grain rice

3 c cooked chicken

1 1/2 c cheddar cheese-shredded

1/2 c cooked-crumbled bacon

To start it out you're going to melt the butter in a pan and add the onions. Cook the onions until they are tender, then add the garlic, seasoning salt and pepper. Stir this all together and add in the flour. Mix well! It's going to start to "clump" together so make sure you don't leave it alone for too long! Stir in the milk and chicken stock and turn the heat on the stove up to medium-high. Add in ONE CUP of cheese! (NOTE: This is not all the cheese for the recipe! I ALWAYS mess up and see "stir in cheese and add the whole cup and half and then realize later I was only supposed to put in a portion of the ingredient.) 

Continue to whisk until everything comes to a simmer. Add in the rice and lower the heat to medium-low and cook about 20 minutes or until the rice has absorbed most of the liquid! 

While this mixture was cooking, Dee Jay was working on getting the bacon cooked and crumbled!

Once your rice mixture is finished on the stove, add in the chicken and bacon to the rice/sauce mix! Pour all this into a 9x13 pan and sprinkle the remaining 1/2 c of cheese on top! Place it in the oven for 20-25 (we did 22 minutes) and bake until the cheese is bubbly! 

This is everything in the pan EXCEPT for the cheese topping!

I cannot express to you how much we enjoyed this recipe! It's not to heavy or loaded down, it's just...dare I say...perfectly delicious! Stay tuned for some more yummy recipes! 

Until then...

Dangerously Delicious Pasta Bake

I love pasta. I love cheese. I love tomatoes. I love garlic bread. I love lamp. (JK) Well I guess with my mixture of Italian and Japanese background it would be only right to share with you this pasta bake right after we had an Asian dish! It was delicious!! Each bite was full of flavor and definitely made enough to go around!! I found this recipe on Tracey's Culinary Adventure (still absolutely LOVING all her recipes)!  So let's stop the chit chat and get right down to it!!

Ingredients
1 (28 oz) can whole peeled tomatoes
1 lb. Italian sausage (Casing removed) hot or sweet
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
3 C water
12 oz Ziti
1/2 c heavy cream
1 oz Parmesan cheese
Dash or two or three of parsley (flavor according to your liking)
4 oz Mozzarella cheese

Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees.

Add your can of tomatoes to a food processor and pulse about 10-12 times until all the large pieces are broken down and you have "tomato sauce".

Set a LARGE skillet on the stove over medium heat. Add the sausage (casings removed) and cook until no longer pink. All the while take a wooden fork or spatula and break up the sausage as you cook. 

The casings are still on in this picture. The easiest way to remove them (if you never have) is to take a small knife and slide it under the casing the whole length of the sausage. If you try and peel it off it can get messy and squishy (couldn't think of a better word lol). This way once you have a slit the entire length of the sausage you can just peel it back and it comes right off! 

Once the sausage is cooked, go ahead and add in the garlic and red pepper. Cook about 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until it gets fragrant (I promise this won't take very long)! 

Garlic-I can smell it cooking just looking at it

Stir in your tomato blend and salt. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes. 

I threw in some green onion at the last minute! Added color and little pop of flavor! 

Once you have simmered this mixture on the stove, add the 3 cups of water and pasta to the skillet (I told you that you would need a BIG skillet)!! Cover and turn up the heat back medium and cook about 15 minutes! You are going to want to stir this frequently or else it will all start to stick together and to the pan!!

After about 15 minutes (I checked the pasta to see if was soft) you're going to want to add the heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. Stir this all together and season with salt and pepper. 

Heavy cream to help thicken the sauce

Okay, now if you have a skillet that is oven safe, you're going to want to top the pasta with Mozzarella cheese and place it in the oven for 10 minutes to bake. My skillet is NOT oven safe so I transferred mine to a baking dish, topped it with cheese and baked for 10 minutes! Threw in a couple slices of bread (in the toaster) to make garlic bread slices while the pasta was cooking! After the 10 minutes of cooking, your cheese should be melted and slightly browned on top! WARNING: this is a heavy dish and will make plenty! So, pace yourself!! I wanted to eat it ALL but also didn't want to wake up the next morning and only be able to fit in stretchy pants for the next few days! Moral of the story here: A small helping with go a long way because it's rich with flavor and the sausage adds some "meat" to any helping! (Sorry, no pun was intended there! That was cheesy (again sorry))!! Sheesh!! 

Pre-Bake

Right out of the oven

Ready to eat!

A good indication that it was delicious! 

Wiped the plate down with my last bite of bread (just in case you were thinking, Did she lick the plate clean?)

So, there you have it! A delicious weeknight meal that will last you and yours a couple of days!! Check back soon for a pork tenderloin recipe!! Until then...

~Happy Eating~