Food from books is back! Today’s recipe is inspired by the book “Kitchens of the great midwest” by J. Ryan Stradal. This book features a lot of recipes and well, one of them was a wild rice chicken casserole that sounded super good. So I decided to adapt it and make it my own way, so that’s what we are doing today.

Ingredients to make this wild rice chicken casserole
So as the name says, you will need two ingredients for sure: wild rice and chicken and while those two are pretty nice on their own, we need to add a bit more flavor.
- Chicken: I used chicken breasts and cut them in smaller pieces to make it easier to eat after.
- Wild rice
- Vegetables: Mushrooms, shallots & garlic (tons of it).
- Herbs: Thyme, basil, salt & pepper.
- Cream
- Vegetable or chicken broth: I used vegetable as it’s the one I had at home but chicken broth will work really good too.
That’s all you need. You will also need a pot where you can cook everything, I used a dutch oven to do this recipe but any other big pot will work good as well.
Kitchens of the great midwest, a quick book review

As I said, this is a food from books recipe and that means that I read a book and then cook something from it. This book was such a delight, it is a fiction book about Lars Thorvald and his wife, Cynthia. They are both kinda like foodies, specially him. They both work in the food industry, Lars more a sous-chef, Cynthia more like a sommelier. Suddently Cynthia gets pregnant and she has to stop drinking wine cause you know, babies.
When their daughter is born, Cynthia abandons Lars and their daughter (Eva) to pursue her career as a sommelier. The story kinda picks up here and it’s a very chill book. It is funny and has a lot of heartwarming moments, also some sad ones but to be honest there is so much food talk that I kinda forgot about the sad moments.
One specific passage that stuck with me was when Lars wants to feed his newborn some ossobuco and I just found that super funny (I admit, I would not know what to feed a newborn either Lars).
Alternatives to this wild rice chicken casserole
Not really similar but other one pot recipes and other food from books recipes featured in tofucado:
Food from books
- Chicken paprikash from Dracula
- Smoky buns from a long way to a small, angry planet
- Roasted quails from shadow & bone
One pot recipes
One pot wild rice chicken casserole with mushrooms
Course: MainDifficulty: Easy4
servings10
minutes30
minutes40
minutesIngredients
500 g chicken breasts
2 shallots
4 to 6 garlic cloves
400g mushrooms
250g wild rice
2 tsp thyme
2 tsp basil
1 tbsp Butter
Salt and pepper to taste
4 to 5 cups of chicken or vegetable stock
3 tbsp cream
Directions
- Slice the shallots, garlic and mushrooms. Set aside
- I like cutting my chicken breasts in smaller pieces but if you want to cook them full, you can totally do that.
- In your pot, add the butter. When melted, add the shallots and the garlic. Cook for 5 minutes.
- Add the chicken breasts and brown them a bit. Add the herbs, salt & pepper.
- Add the mushrooms, mix everything and cook for 5 minutes.
- Add the rice and mix everything.
- Add the broth (until everything is covered) (roughly 3 cups). Leave the pot simmering for 10 to 15 minutes and then add more broth, the rice will soak it all up.
- Continue to simmer for 10 more minutes then add the cream.
- Simmer for 5 more minutes and let it rest 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy!
Recipe Video
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