Today’s recipe proves that it’s really okay to detour from the original recipe. Maybe you don’t have all the ingredients on hand. Maybe you can’t stand mushrooms or chicken or sour cream. The truth is, you can really custom make any recipe into a dish your family will love.
When I flipped over my bag of egg noodles the other day, I was hoping to find a stroganoff recipe. I have yet to make one I really enjoyed, and this was the first time I had purchased this brand of egg noodles. I was hoping for the stroganoff recipe to end my quest. Instead, there was a rather bland recipe for Creamy Chicken Noodle Bake. It didn’t use cream of mushroom/chicken/broccoli soup though, so I was interested (nothing against the cream of soups…I just get sick of every casserole recipe including them!), but it looked pretty boring.
The other problem was that it called for 4 cups of chicken, which is a lot of chicken for this frugal girl to dump into a measly casserole. AND it was devoid of any veggies. When I make a casserole, I want it to be all in one. Our meat, our veggies and our starch.
So I decided to manipulate this recipe a bit, and the finished result was just lovely! Know that you can change this up however you like. It’s a great basic recipe that you can really change up to suit your families tastebuds!
Cheesy Chicken Noodle Casserole
adapted from the back of a noodle bag <—Classy!
Ingredients:
- About 8 oz of egg noodles (cooked until al dente)
- 2 cups of cooked chicken (diced)
- 4 cups of chicken broth
- 6 tbsp butter
- 6 tbsp flour
- 1 16 oz bag of chopped broccoli (drained completely and thawed)
- 1 cup shredded cheddar
- 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
- salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Heat butter in a deep pot and mix in flour, salt, pepper and italian seasonings. Heat through until the mixture starts to brown (you’ll want to be on medium to low heat to be sure you don’t burn it!)
- SLOWLY add your chicken broth to the pot, letting each little bit incorporate before adding more. This is the most important part! If you don’t do this slowly enough and without constant stirring, you will have a lumpy base.
- Add cooked noodles, chicken and broccoli to the pot and stir
- Pour into a 13x9x2 inch casserole dish that you have sprayed with non stick spray
- Place in the oven for around 35 minutes
- Take out and add cheese over the top and put the casserole back in the oven for 10 minutes
- Let sit for a bit after you take it out of the oven so it has time to thicken
You might want to add some parsley or cracked pepper to the finished product, but I loved it straight from the oven!
Enjoy!
Be sure to check out my other frugal recipes here: Frugal Recipes
sounds yummy! I’m gonna try it!
oh….and I have a yummy hamburger stroganoff recipe I could share with you if you want….but it does involve cream of chicken/mushroom soup LOL 🙂
Oh that’s fine! I’m not against it. I’d love the recipe!
I made this last night because I already had some chicken thawed out. It was easy to make and the family loved it. If you don’t have chopped broccoli on hand then I think it would also be good with chopped celery or carrots.
That’s awesome Tracy! I’m so glad your family enjoyed it so much. I get nervous putting recipes out there because even though I know my family likes something, maybe others won’t!
So thank you for coming back and sharing that your family loved it!