Poppy Seed Chicken

I love chicken over rice.  Maybe it's the Chinese in me, but I go through rice like there's no tomorrow.  Stick some sort of chicken dish in the oven, cook a pot of rice, throw together a salad and voilà!  Dinner!  Sometimes I really have fun spending a lot of time making dinner, but let's be real.  It's so much nicer to be able to whip up a delicious dinner in 8 minutes and then relax on the couch until it comes out of the oven.  Poppy seed chicken is one of those easy, delicious dishes I like to have with my rice.  I've had different kinds of poppy seed chicken:  some that are really runny with the rice baked right into the casserole, and others that were way too dry and had no creaminess to stir into the rice.  I knew I needed to adjust the quantities of things to make it how I like it.  Well this recipe is spot-on.

Poppy Seed Chicken

3 1/2 cups chopped cooked chicken

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 cup sour cream

1/2 Tbsp poppy seeds

1 cup crushed Ritz crackers

1 1/2 Tbsp melted butter

Mix sour cream, soup, and poppy seeds until well combined.  Stir in the chicken and make sure all of the meat gets coated with the creamy sauce. Pour into greased 8x8" dish.  Mix the crushed Ritz and the melted butter together.  Sprinkle over the chicken.  Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees.  Remove the foil and bake another 10 minutes, or until bubbly. Serve over rice.  Serves 4-5.

You can use fat free soup and sour cream, if you want a little bit of a healthier option.

You can also sauté some mushrooms and stick those in too, if you like that sort of thing.

Source:  recipe adapted from Paula Deen's Best Dishes:  Southern Family Favorites