Chicken Rice Casserole makes for a crowd-pleasing dinner that comes together in under 5 minutes of prep time.
Made with only 4 ingredients, this dish has juicy chicken breasts and tender rice in a deliciously creamy sauce. This is a casserole that meal packs a lot of flavor in a filling one dish dinner and a meal that everyone will love!
Enjoy!
There is nothing like Chicken Rice Casserole for dinner. This dish is deliciously easy, creamy and totally satisfying and you’ll never believe it needs just 4 ingredients!
This is a special dish because the recipe comes from my BFF, Penny and she’s been making this for years. It’s her go-to, must have, favorite easy weeknight meal that I just had to try.
I have to admit, when I first made it I knew it would be tasty but… I had NO idea what I was in for and it’d definitely become a regular in our rotation!
This easy dish comes together in under 5 minutes, it’s one of the quickest dinner preps on my whole site (along with One Pot Pizza Tortellini Bake).
This dish is belly warming and comforting while being simple and easy to make, it’s like serving a nice warm hug from your Mom!
The chicken comes out incredibly tender and juicy, the rice is perfectly cooked in a rich and creamy sauce and the whole thing is loaded with flavor!
This easy Chicken Rice Casserole takes about an hour to bake (depending on your oven, you may need a few extra minutes but for me it’s about an hour), but that is one of the things that make it kind of the perfect dish.
We’ve made this just as written over and over but I’ve also added a little bit of onion to the bottom of the pan or a couple of handfuls of fresh mushrooms.
With very little minimal prep time, you can slide this casserole into the oven and relax, or maybe help with homework without feeling the usual dinner time rush!
5 minutes of work, and then perhaps a glass of wine or read your book for an hour? I feel like that’s a good idea for ALL weeknights!
I use homemade onion soup mix in this recipe, but you can use the kind in the envelope if you haven’t had a chance to mix up a batch yet. The flavor will be amazing either way!
My friend Penny also said she sometimes replaces the onion soup mix with a packet of gravy mix depending on what she has on hand!
If you are lucky enough to have leftovers, this makes for a delicious lunch the following day.
Equipment
Ingredients
- 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- 1 cup long grain white rice uncooked
- 1 ½ cups water
- 1 ounce dry onion soup mix 1 packet or use homemade
- 10.5 ounces condensed cream of mushroom soup 1 can
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°F.
- Spray a 9×13-inch casserole dish or glass baking pan with cooking spray (the rice doesn't cook well in a metal pan). Add chicken breasts and season with salt & pepper.
- Pour uncooked rice over chicken. Sprinkle with onion soup mix.
- Combine mushrooms soup and 1 ½ cups of water. Pour over chicken.
- Cover and bake 1 hour 15 minutes or until rice is tender.
Notes
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Casserole, Main Course
Cuisine American© SpendWithPennies.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited. Please view my photo use policy here.
I’m eating this now. 1 cup of parboiled rice, 1 can of mushroom, two cans of water, 5 boneless skinless chicken thighs, Lipton onion and roasted garlic. Perfect. Just not pretty enough for company.
Don’t waste your time on this poorly instructed dish… I followed the instructions thoroughly. The dish was cooked in the oven for the 1.15 hr and rice still wasn’t cooked so I let it cook another 45 min and rice was still hard… I finally put in a pot and the rice still did not cook correctly. Both pieces of cookware I used are completely ruined.
Sorry it didn’t work out for you Sarah, I haven’t experienced the same results and it does work as written for most readers. I can’t say for sure why your rice didn’t cook through.
Followed directions exactly Including covering pan and rice was no where near done . So disappointing . Had to take done chicken out, add water and cook for another half hour or so.
Oh no, so sorry to hear that Darla. I have made this several times and it always works out, so I am not sure what happened! Did you cover it tightly?
I had only canned onion soup, the liquid was equal to water in your recipe, I used slotted spoon to save onions and continued following Molly’s recipe, 1 other change chicken tenderloins not breasts,
I did keep onions on 1/2 the chicken and the 3 boys and hubby loved it. Thank you
Disappointed recipe did not state to bake covered, I found out afterwards in the comments. Followed recipe exactly but rice would not cook.
Step 5 indicates cover and bake.
So so good and so easy! I tried another similar recipe from Campbells and it was so bland. This had a lot of flavor with not a lot of ingredients. I sprinkled some Thyme on top but that was the only change. So excited for an easy but delicious recipe.
I’m always looking for an easy, low salt dinner recipe. I read all the comments and made some command decisions. I used:
Rice Select Royal Blend rice
2 cans Campbells LOW SALT READY TO EAT cream of mushroom soup (45mg sodium each)
3/4 c water
3/4 packet of onion soup (mostly the onion bits and a little of the seasoning)
I had chicken thighs instead of breast (8 of them)
The casserole took 100 minutes to cook.
It turned out fabulous! Turns out my MIL’s father used to make this dish, so the recipe is very old!
Great
This is a favourite in my house now! We love it, thanks for the awesome recipe! Could you make this in the slow cooker? If so how long would you recommend to cook it?
I have not tried this recipe in a slow cooker so I can’t say for sure. Let us know how it goes if you try it.
Looking forward to more yummy food !thank you
Thanks so much Cynthia!
How can I sign up for the newsletter?
Hi Mary, To receive our newsletters, you can sign up here or scroll down to the bottom of the post and you will see a green signup box.
Could of said they where boneless,skinless chicken breasts.
Hi Peter, we did use boneless skinless chicken breasts in this recipe. If using bone-in you may need to increase the cooking time slightly to ensure your chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165°F. Enjoy.
I really wanted to like this recipe. I read the reviews and added a little extra water. It looked great and smelled great. But I cooked this for almost 2 hours covered and the rice isn’t cooked. I love rice and make it almost everyday. My husband is very disappointed. Said I should have probably made the rice first. And the chicken is just way too dry. Cooking it for an hour and a half – 2 hours is way too much. No one will eat it now and so much food is going in the trash.
Amazing taste!! Easy to fix and chicken was very tender!
So happy to hear that Brenda!
SHould the chicken breasts be thawed or frozen?
They should be fresh or defrosted.
What is the garnish?
A sprinkle of parsley.
I tried this recipe as presented. I must say I was disappointed in the flavor due to the onion soup mix. I rarely use processed mixes of any kind and now I remember why. Wasted perfectly good chicken breasts which came out very dry. Oh, well. Live and learn!
How disappointing Shaster. The onion soup mix does flavor this recipe so if you don’t like using onion soup mix then I could see that you may not enjoy the flavor of this recipe. I do have a homemade onion soup mix as well, hope that helps.
I would omit the onion soup mix and add about 1/2 c more of rice and mushroom soup mix.
Is there any way to make this in the instant pot?
It sure can Ashton, check out this Instant Pot Chicken and Rice Recipe.
This recipe has been around since the 70’s. A friend of mine won a local recipe contest with it. That was the first time I’d heard of it. I’ve probably made it a zillion times. You can also use cream of chicken soup and add veggies to it.
Those sound like delicious substitutions Barb! Thanks for sharing.
Hi, I made the chicken & rice with the onion soup mix and thought it was very taste. My chicken was a little dry, which was MOL due to cutting each breast into thirds so I could freeze it for individual meals. I think next time I will leave them whole and cut up after cooked. I like more rice to chicken ratio. So my question is it better to cook with less chicken? Or can the rice, soup(s), and water be doubled? If so how long would you recommend cooking it? Thank you for the recipe! Going to try the Salsa Chicken casserole next! :-)
I have only made the recipe as written. To double the rice, you may want to do a separate dish with a second recipe of the rice. Oh, enjoy the salsa chicken casserole Judy!
The rice will not cook
So sorry to hear that Ann! We have had great success with this recipe.
I noticed the recipe didn’t mention to cover the pan tightly with foil to bake. Maybe that’s why some have reported the rice not cooking?
Thanks Catherine, you are right. This recipe does need to be covered before baking!
I just made it and had the same issue.
Good flavor- tender chicken- I cut recipe in half and used brown rice. Baked for over 2 hours still not quite done. Next time I will make the rice separate on stove top.
Changing the ingredients can certainly cause the recipe not to turn out. Brown rice takes longer to cook than white rice and requires a different ratio of water to rice.
How much brown rice and how long to cook??
I have not tried this recipe with brown rice. The cooking time will likely be longer. Other readers have mentioned that they needed to add some liquid to the rice as well. Please let us know how it turns out if you try it.
Holly; can I use yellow rice in the chicken and rice casserole?
While I have only made this as written, I think yellow rice will make for a fine variation to this casserole Harriet!
Did you make it with the yellow rice? If so did you use the same amount of water or what the yellow rice calls.for?