My grandma never measured anything...

I miss being at home in Birmingham. When this happens I usually just eat my way through it. My grandma is the queen of throwing something together.

Look at that face! She bleeds peppermint candy and Pepsi and I love her so much. I mean she invented Chopped in her kitchen. No recipe ever tasted the same but in a way it kinda did. This is evident in her vegetable soup, which she made anytime she needed to clean out the pantry. She never measured anything and never pulled out a recipe, all she did was taste it.

Being in her kitchen was like being in a maze, you had to taste your way out.

This truly handicapped me in Culinary school because you had recipes and recipes to me are time consuming and distracting. Which is why I’m a terrible baker. They are very necessary when you are trying to teach somebody how to make something or ensure consistency. I make a lot of stuff at home that just taste good to me but when people ask me how they can make it I can’t really tell them. I’m going to work on that.

This recipe is exactly what my problem is. Maybe its a casserole or a pot pie, I’m not really sure. So for reference purposes we are going to call it “Chicken and Broccoli Pot Pie Casserole”

These are the ingredients:

6 Cooked chicken boneless, skinless thighs, Chopped

About 2 cups or a bag of broccoli florets

1.5 Cans of cream of chicken soup

Bisquick Mix/Red Lobster Cheese Bread Mix

So I tried to video what I did so I could look back and maybe explain it a little bit better.

I seasoned the chicken thighs with just a little cajun seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper. Cooked them on both sides until they were done, maybe 4 mins on each side. This is my go to seasoning for meats normally. I picked chicken thighs because they hold up well in recipes that have cooking redundancy. Which means after being cooked in the skillet, if you need to bake the dish they won’t dry out. That sometimes happens with chicken breast which means you need to master undercooking them just enough so they don’t over cook in the next phase. Either way… Chicken thighs are flavorful and easy.

I didn’t have cream of chicken soup in the can and I rarely buy it just because I usually have everything on hand to make it. I’m going to link a really simple recipe that you can use and this is basically how I always make condensed cream of anything. Check out that recipe here. So you can either make your own or just buy a can, but honestly making it yourself taste sooooo much better.

Now I took the chicken out, diced it and set it aside. In the same pan I cooked the broccoli. I added maybe 1/4 a cup of water to help steam it and loosen the flavor bits in the pan and just tossed it around until it got hot and flavored. Don’t ever throw any of the flavor away.

Then I just mixed the chicken, the broccoli and the cream of chicken.

Ok now this is where it gets interesting. I just put biscuit mix on top. You can do the red lobster cheese biscuit mix, bisquick (that’s what I used), or biscuits in the can. Everything is already cooked so when it goes in the oven you’re simply cooking the biscuits. If you’re feeling really adventurous you can make your dough from scratch and just spread it on there.