Postpartum Chicken Casserole

Two years ago, our son Sean was born.  Among the many people to bring us food during those first two weeks was Virginia Wagner, whose chicken casserole recipe is now known to me as Postpartum Chicken Casserole.  It is truly one of my favorite recipes of all time.

Ingredients:

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1 can cream of chicken soup
8 oz. sour cream
1/2 stick butter
3/4 cup chicken broth (we will make it here, so don't buy it)
2 cups Pepperidge Farm Herb Stuffing mix
Garlic salt
Pepper

When I made this, I planned to double it and make it in a 13x9" pan, but didn't have quite enough chicken to truly do that, so these pictures will look a little creamier than normal.  Stick to the recipe and you will be fine.

To start, you need to put the chicken breasts in a medium saucepan, cover them with water, bring to a boil, and boil for 35 minutes.  This both cooks the chicken breasts and generates that broth that we need later.  Keep an eye on this, because it will foam up quite a bit.  Also, the foam is "unpleasant" to try to clean off the pan later, so you should probably be prepared with an SOS pad.  Just skim it off the top with a spoon before it overflows onto your stove.

Take the chicken out of the broth and put onto a cutting board.  Save 3/4 cup of the broth and pitch the rest.  It will not be very rich broth since we made it from white meat without skin or fat, but it will be okay.  The recipe is pretty rich, so using canned chicken broth might make it too rich for you.  Now cut the chicken into little cubes, or circles, or rhombuses, or whatever shape makes you happy.

Butter whatever pan you are using.  For a single batch, use a 2 1/2 quart casserole dish (one of the medium round ones).  Put the chicken into the dish.  Sprinkle it with garlic powder and pepper to taste.

In a medium bowl, combine the sour cream and cream of chicken soup.  Pour it over the chicken.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter with the chicken broth that you saved earlier.  When the butter has melted, add the stuffing mix.  Don't try to substitute Stove-Top for the Pepperidge Farm stuffing.  The taste is different, and although I love Stove-Top (and was known to occasionally eat a box of it for dinner in college), it does alter the taste of the final dish.  Also, never, never try to make regular stuffing out of the Pepperidge Farm stuff by stirring in boiling water and butter like Stove-Top.  The result is an abomination not really recognizable as stuffing.

Tangent over.  Back to the recipe.  Almost done!  Layer the stuffing mixture on top of the soup layer.  Cover the whole thing with aluminum foil and stick it into a 350 degree oven for an hour.  It smells like sunshine and happiness and love when it is done, really.

We had this the other night with baked potatoes and carrots.  It was fantastic and keeps very well in the fridge for leftovers.  Do try this one, because it is a wonderful rich and creamy dish.