Chicken and Rice Casserole

Cream of chicken and rice casserole

This chicken and rice casserole recipe, made with Campbell’s condensed cream of chicken soup, is a simple recipe that anyone can make. It tastes great and is almost impossible to get wrong.

It is an easy recipe that only needs a few ingredients.

Origin of this Campbell’s Chicken and Rice Casserole Dish 

This recipe is one of my late Grandma Molly’s special recipes. My Granny used to live alone in Forest Hill in South London, and as a kid, I used to visit her by train whenever I was around.

My Gran was not really a great one for cooking, but she always made this simple recipe for me when I was visiting, as she knew I loved it.

I believe her version did not even have any garlic or shallots in it, and I do not think she even pre-fried the chicken, as I sometimes do. It was that simple!

Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup 

The key to the recipe is, of course, the Campbell’s condensed soup. Remember the iconic paintings of Campbell’s soup cans by Andy Warhol?

Yes, those are the ones! They look a bit like this: 

Now, back in the good old days, Campbell’s used to be the best-known and eaten brand of soup that I can remember.

But now it does seem to be less easy to get hold of, and certainly, where we live in Ireland, I could not find any Campbell’s ‘condensed’ cream of chicken soup anywhere when I wrote this post, so I used a replacement.

Campbell’s is now ‘Erin’ in Ireland

However, I have since discovered that Campbell’s condensed soup in Ireland was re-branded many years ago by the Irish ‘Erin‘ brand of soup as you can read in this news article. So I was able to update this post with some more recent pictures using the ‘real thing’, which I could find locally.

The Erin brand also comes in a tin that looks pretty similar to the Original Campbell’s branded tin, as you can see here:

And after making this casserole it seems to taste exactly the same as the original Campbell’s product, so I am glad I found this out.

You can also use this recipe with chicken and ham or chicken and mushroom to make a nice tasty pie, if you have some shortcrust or puff pastry in your fridge or freezer. I have also done this recently and it works well.

Use Condensed Soup if you can get it

So for the original photos of this post, I used a different manufacturer’s can of cream of chicken soup for these pictures. You can tell the older photos as I pre-fried the chicken, garlic and shallots as described in the optional step in the recipe.

From the newer photos, you can see the difference in the appearance of the casserole if you do not follow the optional step.

You could of course also try a condensed cream of mushroom soup if you wanted some variation – that also works.

However, the soup I used originally was not a ‘condensed’ soup, so the sauce is slightly different and less thick than usual. So if you use a non-condensed can of soup, you may want to thicken the sauce using some cornflour as mentioned in the recipe.

So my recommendation is, if you can get your hands on some Campbell’s or Erin’s condensed cream of chicken soup, please do use that.

It is just better, and will give you a thicker and tastier sauce in your casserole! Their soups really are the best!

I have used chicken breast in this recipe, but if you wish you can also use chicken thighs and cook the chicken on the bone if you prefer. It is up to you.

The secret to getting the nice fluffy rice in the photos is to rinse and soak your rice before you cook it. Check out some tips in my pilau rice recipe, just leave out all the added ingredients and add only a pinch of salt, but follow the same process of rinsing and soaking.

I hope you get to try this recipe. If you do, please let me know how you get on in the comments section below!

How to make chicken and rice casserole with Condensed Cream of Chicken soup

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