What's for Dinner?

[limey]

Originally Posted by sad_winslow

Tonight was back to my staple favorite, baked chicken and rice. When it's cold out I can eat this almost every day, it's so good, and I keep toying with it to make it better. First I started replacing the water for the rice with chicken broth. Then I upgraded to peas, and tonight I added real actual mushrooms instead of relying on what was in the soup can. My next upgrade will be to find a better source of soup. Campbell's cream of chicken and mushroom (apparently a thing now, all in one can, conveniently) is good and all, but I'm ready to see what I can find that's a little less salt and a little more flavor.

http://i.imgur.com/sacM4Ev.jpg

If you've subbed broth for water, do you really need soup at all?

Originally Posted by sad_winslow

It looks a little bit like a pod of sunburnt whales, or maybe like two undulating loch ness monsters in a litterbox, but I assure you, it tastes like chicken.

[glatt]

The can of soup is both convenient to use and cheap. But Campbell's soup is horrible for you. It's a can of salt. I'd get a small carton of real cream and those real mushrooms you already tried, and just try pouring that on top. The chicken broth will give a lot of flavor (and salt) anyway.

[sad_winslow]

Originally Posted by limey

If you've subbed broth for water, do you really need soup at all?

Well, it's mostly there for the creamy quality. It wouldn't quite be the same without that little bit of creaminess to bring the rice all together in soft and almost gooey clumps. The broth just adds, I don't know, a hidden little dimension of richness. Maybe too rich for some folks. But I'm pretty sure my taste buds are, if not dead, at least due for a visit from a social worker to see about an assisted living facility.

Originally Posted by glatt

The can of soup is both convenient to use and cheap. But Campbell's soup is horrible for you. It's a can of salt. I'd get a small carton of real cream and those real mushrooms you already tried, and just try pouring that on top. The chicken broth will give a lot of flavor (and salt) anyway.

Yeah, it's convenience that's really the big thing. It's a nice dish to just chuck together with a minimum of effort. Pretty much everything in it is stockpile food except for the chicken, which is easy to snag at the store and hit the door. But using the real cream is a pretty good idea and I may try an experimental batch that way: if i'm going to the store anyways for the chicken and mushrooms, getting a pint of cream isn't too hard too. I do, for what it's worth, stick with low-sodium broth, because otherwise it'd end up rather... dessicating. I could already probably bottle the stuff as electrolyte-enhanced energy glop and sell it to passing joggers. It's pretty good, though, and the real actual fungus adds a joyful texture.

Unrelated to soup, but earlier I had a mouthful of haribo happy cola gummy colas in my mouth and I suddenly sneezed, utterly hosing my desk down with sticky giblets everywhere. It looked like I'd just ejected some sort of terribly important organ, or maybe what I imagine gummy worm droppings would look like. Gummy castings, if you will. That was pretty much dinner. So I've got that going for me tonight.