The Healthy Tales

A few years ago, I decided to try Weight Watchers and one of the best support systems I have found has not been attending the meetings, but rather reading posts on Dottie’s Weight Loss Zone. It is a regular message board atmosphere focused on the ups and downs of weight loss while on Weight Watchers. I have found numerous recipes in the forums that I make over and over. Cheesy Chicken and Rice is one of them. I wasn’t sure what I was going to cook this week, but I went shopping in my pantry and found all of the ingredients and knew it was a sign. So right now Cheesy Chicken and Rice is about 30 minutes away from being dinner.

All you need are 7 simple ingredients:

1.5 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts (or tenders), 1 cup instant brown rice, 1 envelope Lipton’s dry garlic/mushroom soup mix or onion soup mix, 1 can of Low Fat Cream of XYZ soup, 2 cups water, and 4 oz Velveeta Light.

Start by layering the bottom of your casserole dish with the brown rice. Like so:

Next cut the cheese into small chunks. Once you are done combine the water, soup, soup mix, and a few pieces of cheese and heat until the cheese melts. Add more cheese, heat, stir, and repeat until the cheese and soup have melted into the water.

Next, remove the chicken from package and assess the size. I find tenders work the best for this recipe but breasts will do fine. If you are using breats, you might want to consider cutting them into small pieces and even using a meat tenderizer to decrease their thickness. Just be careful not to pulverize the chicken if you choose to use a tenderizer.

Place chicken pieces on top of brown rice, and then pour mixture over the chicken and rice. Cover with a piece of foil and cook for 60 minutes on 375 degrees.

Make sure you check on the mixture during the cooking process. I tend to take it out every 15 minutes to stir so that the chicken and rice cook evenly as well as ensuring the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.

After 60 minutes are over, uncover and let cool before serving.

This recipe makes about 6 servings at 6 Weight Watcher Points per serving!