Updated Chicken and Rice

I always loved the chicken and rice that became popular back when I was a teenager. I still remember the first time I ate it because it was significant to me. It was at a dinner theater where a local theater group performed and my mother’s woman’s club made the dinner. This was significant because the show was what got me interested in theater and chorus, which became my main extracurricular activity in high school. From then on, the chicken became named dinner theater chicken.

These days, we are trying to eat healthier, so I updated the recipe a bit. Instead of white rice, I used brown. Instead of instant onion soup, canned cream of mushroom soup, and whole milk, I used a combination of less processed ingredients – well, except the onion powder. If you like onions, real ones would probably be better, but I don’t, so I used the powdered type. I did leave the butter in, though – hey, it needed a little fat, right. I also recommend spraying your baking dish with cooking spray before beginning. I did not, and you can see the darker part around the edges. Well, that darker part is not burnt and tastes good, but does make for a bit of scrubbing on clean up that I think would be reduced by the spray. Oh, and before you begin, brown rice takes a long time to cook, so this takes about 2 hours. It doesn’t taste exactly like the old recipe, but it is similar and is at least as good. And, you definitely get that comfort food message you got with the original.

• 1½ cups brown rice
• 2 cups beef broth
• 8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
• 1 tsp. onion powder
• 2 cloves garlic,minced
• ⅔ cup nonfat dry milk, divided
• 3 Tbsps. cornstarch
• 2 cups white wine
• 1½ pounds thinly slice chicken cutlets
• ½ stick butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Spray a 9″x13″ baking dish with cooking spray.
3. In a the baking dish, stir together rice, beef broth, mushrooms, onion powder, garlic, cornstarch and ⅓ cup of nonfat dry milk.
4. Place chicken on top of rice mixture and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
5. Drizzle butter over chicken.
6. Stir together wine and remaining nonfat dry milk. Pour over chicken.
7. Bake for approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours or until rice is tender.

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