Easy Dinner with Ingredients You Have on Hand

You have just finished a long day, you still have things to do, but you don't want to subject your family to fast food.  There's no time for the store - what to make for your family that has some nutritional value and you can use what you have in your pantry?  My solution to this is Chicken & Broccoli Casserole. 

I have nights in which we just have too much to do and I don't have time to run out to the store for a missing ingredient for another meal I had planned, or on a weekend night when I haven't yet made the weekly shopping trip.  As a mother I try and give my family something nutritious.  My two older children have a hard time eating their vegetables, so I have many meals that I have to sneak them into.  This is one of those.  

Let's start with what I had on hand, this night in particular.  Of course, if you don't have these exact ingredients, fill in the blanks with what you do have and make it work.  Trust me - there are no wrong ingredients with this 'on hand' recipe.  

I had some boxed mac & cheese in the pantry, chicken breasts and chopped broccoli in the freezer and some shredded cheese in the fridge.  BAM!  A quick and easy weeknight meal was formed.  

Whatever brand of mac & cheese you have on hand is fine ... this is what happened to be in my pantry.  Make your mac & cheese as per the package directions, (or however you normally would make it).  For this recipe because I wanted a larger size casserole, I used 2 boxes, but a smaller version you could easily use 1.  

While that's going, chop about 2 cloves of garlic.  Set aside.

Take your chicken breasts and cut into 1" pieces.  Now take some Canola oil and put some in your skillet and begin heating it - never use a cold skillet!  Once you are up to temperature, add your garlic and allow to infuse your oil for about a minute or so.  You really have to watch your garlic; if it burns it will turn bitter and that is never a good thing.  

While you are waiting for this, take your vegetable out of the freezer, in my case I had chopped broccoli.  I didn't want to cook it, just defrost it.  To do that, I placed it in a colander and ran under luke warm water until it was defrosted and to room temperature.  Then I just let it sit until I was ready for it.  

  Add your cubed chicken to your hot skillet with your garlic.  Add salt and pepper to taste and then cook until cooked through.  Try to avoid overcooking your chicken; this makes it hard and tough.  

I took my large Pyrex baking dish and sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.  Then, I added my cooked mac & cheese, chopped broccoli and my cooked chicken and garlic.  Combine.  I also had about 1/2 block of cream cheese in my fridge so I threw it in at this point and mixed in until it combined with everything, just to make it a little creamer.  However, you could omit this completely.  

 Now that everything is mixed together, add some shredded cheese to the top.

 Now, bake your casserole at 375 for about 10 minutes.  Remember, everything you have in here is already cooked, you are just wanting to heat through.  Once you hit the 10 minute mark, I turn my broiler on high and cracked my oven door.  I let it broil for a couple minutes, just long enough to get my cheese to turn nice and brown and bubbly.

 Voile!  Now you have a dinner that you can feel good about serving to your family; and all with ingredients you already had.  Again, substitute as needed, as per what you have in your fridge, freezer and pantry.  Maybe you have some pork or ham; use that in place of chicken.  Perhaps peas or carrots instead of the chopped broccoli?  Create til your hearts content.  As I always say ... you can never really go wrong with mac & cheese.  

Here's my plate before I dug in .... 

Surprisingly enough everyone loved this dish.  For my two year old I did a deconstructed version:

 To balance out her meal I gave her what she loves the most - apples.  She loves chopped apples!  This is her 'dessert.'  Here she is enjoying her pantry meal:

 So this wasn't my fanciest meal.  So this wasn't something that I would 'ohh and ahh' over.  This was something that I was proud to serve my family and something that I did with very little effort so that I could enjoy the rest of the evening with my family.  At the end of the day that's all it really comes down to, right?  

Cheers.