5th Sunday Blasphemy: Reconstructing Chicken Spectacular
If you aren’t familiar with Chicken Spectacular, perhaps some of the casserole’s ingredients will spark a memory: French cut green beans, wild rice, pimientos, water chestnuts, and cream of celery soup.
It’s one of those classics that’s a cinch to throw together for any gathering.
The casserole had fallen off my radar for a couple of decades, but when I skimmed the recipe in an old cookbook not long ago, I remembered it as popular 5th Sunday potluck fare that we had at church when I was growing up.
For the uninitiated, any month that had five Sundays, instead of four, was cause for celebration at our church, and we would have a post-service potluck lunch. The church would provide fried chicken, then the congregants would fill table after table with casseroles and desserts. At least one family would always bring a big pan of Chicken Spectacular, it seemed.
Having recently rediscovered this lost dish, what did I do? Cooked it the classic way a couple of times. I fell in love with it all over again. Then, like the blasphemer that I am, I wondered: can this be improved?
Well, it depends on how you define “improvement.”
The beauty of the classic dish is how easy it is to throw together. The only bother to the original recipe is getting your chicken together, cooking some wild rice, and softening some onion in butter. Mix all the ingredients up with some canned cream of celery soup and mayonnaise, bake it off, and you are good to go. Easy enough.
If you don’t have any extra time, then Google the thousand versions out there and make it just like that. It’s delicious.
But, if you have about 15 extra minutes, make your own celery cream sauce: add some diced celery into the pan with the onion and cook until it softens, make a quick roux, then add some chicken broth and evaporated milk, simmer for a few minutes to thicken it up, and voila!
Classic or reconstructed? Your choice.
Enjoy …
Reconstructed Chicken Spectacular
1 6 oz. box Uncle Ben’s Long Grain and Wild Rice, prepared
3 cups cooked, diced chicken
4 oz. pimientos, drained and diced
2 cans French style green beans, drained
1 8 oz. can water chestnuts, drained and diced
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 sweet onion, medium, diced
4 ribs celery, diced
1 tsp garlic, minced
4 TB butter, divided
2 TB flour
3/4 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded (optional)
Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions
First, get your chicken and your wild rice prepared. Note that you can use 2 packages of the Uncle Ben’s ready rice and get the same results. (I was skeptical of ready rice until I found an Elizabeth Heiskell recipe that used it; it works particularly well in casseroles.)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Next, make the cream of celery sauce. Melt 2 TB butter in a pan and throw in the celery. Let it cook a couple of minutes then throw in the onion. Cook them both about 5 minutes then add your garlic in. Cook another 2 minutes, careful that the garlic doesn’t burn.
Add the additional 2 TB butter. Once the additional butter has melted, add the 2 TB flour and whisk about a minute. The mixture will begin to seize up. When it does, add in your chicken stock, stirring to make a thick sauce. Simmer for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly, then reduce the heat and add the evaporated milk. Simmer on low for about 5 minutes until the sauce has thickened. Remove from heat and add salt and pepper, to taste.
In a large mixing bowl, mix the chicken, rice, sauce, and all remaining ingredients except cheddar cheese. Check to see if it needs additional salt.
Pour into a 9 x 13 casserole dish and bake for 30 minutes until bubbly. If you want, add cheddar to the top and cook an additional 5 minutes or so until melted.