Chicken Wild Rice Casserole

Another Pinterest recipe and it came from this website originally - it's super easy and super delicious.  I couldn't find pre-cooked wild rice so I bought this box of wild rice/long grain rice mix..  That sucked, there was like 20 pieces of wild rice in my dish!

Here's the ingredients:

3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, finely diced

3 stalks celery, finely diced

3 carrots, peeled and diced

2 Tablespoons fresh minced garlic

2 Cups shredded, cooked chicken breast

2 Cups steamed white rice

16 oz prepared wild rice

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic salt

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Cheese Sauce

4 Tablespoons butter

1/4 Cup all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

2 Cups chicken broth

2 Cups shredded cheddar cheese

Top with 1-1/2 Cups shredded cheddar cheese

 Preheat oven to 350˚F.  Heat oil into a medium dutch oven or pot over medium heat.  Saute onion, celery and carrots until softened, about 10 minutes.  Stir in garlic and cook for 1 minute.  Stir in chicken, both rices, salt, pepper and garlic salt.  Reduce heat to low.

To prepare cheese sauce melt butter into a medium saucepan over medium high heat.  Whisk in flour, salt and pepper then slowly pour in chicken broth whisking continuously.  Whisk until thick and nearly boiling then stir in cheese until melted.  Pour cheese sauce into rice mixture then transfer to a 9×13 inch baking dish. Top with additional cheddar cheese and bake for 25-30 minutes or until cheese is melted through.  Serve.

What did I do differently?  

- I actually half'd the cheese sauce recipe and omitted the salt in that

- In the main recipe part omitted the onion, added a few shakes of dried onion flakes and omitted the garlic salt and only added 1 clove of garlic (it could have used 2).  

- Oh, and instead of white rice I used medium grain brown rice.  

- OH, and I didn't add the extra cheese to the top of the dish.  Hey,  I'm trying to be good, guys!

Brent was really excited about this recipe, so much so that he said he'd be willing to eat this a couple times a month!  Impressive!  :)  I was really happy with this meal and I'm stoked to have leftovers

I totally just ordered Taste of Home's Cooking for Two recipe book.  Looking forward to trying some of those out.  (It's on sale, too... And if you Google Taste of Home coupon code you can get one for free shipping on retailmenot.com) That would be great if either one of us were out of town so we could have dinner the next night, too!  Woo!