Gluten Free Chicken and Dressing Casserole From Scratch
Like a lot of other people from the US, I grew up occasionally eating casseroles like this one, and find them incredibly comforting on a cool day. The versions we got were generally made using canned cream soups for a convenient sauce base. While it can make a tasty quick sauce, that option is out for multiple reasons these days. Condensed soups period aren’t readily available where I’ve spent the past 20+ years, and I did find out about the celiac in the meantime. Though, I do understand that there are more gluten free options available back home these days.
I had considered making something like this using one of my usual “instead of canned soup” sauce concoctions, which I will post here the next time I do put one together. But, when I was trying to put together a plan, I ran across one old recipe reworking from Cleverly Simple: Old-Fashioned Chicken and Dressing Casserole. This is my own slight rejiggering of that one. Besides making your own gravy, it also calls for starting with bread rather than any type of packaged stuffing, which also saves me needing to figure out just how much bread to use in place of a package.
I was a tad skeptical of the way the eggs were used in the sauce, but decided to go ahead and trust in the process. (Hint: It turned out great!)
I grew up on dressing usually made from some combination of stale bread and cornbread, and still prefer it that way. There’s even more incentive these days, given how much more expensive commercial gluten free breads (and some of the ingredients for homebaked) tend to be. You can bet that I don’t waste stale bread, or odds and ends like the heels. If I don’t have any immediate use for them, I will stash them all together in the freezer for later.
Similar with cornbread. It’s more of an occasional treat for me these days than a regular thing, and I really am the chief cornbread eater around here. We always have a piece or two left for the freezer, which usually comes back out for dressing.
Tonight’s casserole made an excellent excuse to clear out the freezer bread hoard plus the recent leftover breads before they went in there too, while also using up the last of the chicken broth and cooked meat left from making it. And it turned out extremely satisfying. Next time, I would probably also make some gravy on the side to serve over it, but this was very moist and creamy inside without the extra saucy action. I am also a major fan of gravies in general.
Chicken and Dressing Casserole From Scratch
Materials
Bread Mixture
- 1.5 liter cubed stale bread combination (preferably part cornbread) (6 cups) Can use commercial bagged stuffing cubes if you can find them.
- 1 large onion, or two smallish chopped
- 2-3 stalks celery strung and chopped
- 2 cloves garlic minced or pressed
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons chopped parley or 2 tsp. dry
- ¼ teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
- 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
Poultry Seasoning (grind or mix together) – Makes around 2 teaspoons, or twice what you need here
- 1 teaspoon dried sage
- ⅓ teaspoon dried rosemary
- ½ teaspoon dried marjoram
- ⅓ teaspoon dried thyme
Gravy
- 1 liter chicken broth (or quart)
- 4 eggs
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 250 ml milk (or 1 cup)
- seasoned salt to taste
Topping
- 500 g chicken (1 lb.) Cooked, in bite-sized pieces
- 250 ml coarse dry bread crumbs, or panko
- 2 tablespoons melted butter
- 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
- ½ teaspoon Creole seasoning or seasoned salt
- ½ teaspoon dried marjoram
Optional Quick Chicken Gravy To Serve
- 500 ml chicken broth (2 cups) preferably rich
- 100 ml milk (½ cup)
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- seasonings to taste
- 2 tablespoons butter stir through at the end
Instructions
Prepare Bread
- I did this part the night before. If you're using any frozen, pull it out and let it thaw until it's easier to cut.Today I have a combination of the current freezer hoard of old bread ends and leftover cornbread, along with remnants from the most recent cornbread and that Savory Carrot Dill Oat Bread with Walnuts. Unless it's something like raisin bread, any bread you've got should work here.
- Chop your bread into the size cubes you want. If you lay a piece of baking paper under it, that will keep your cutting board clean, catch the crumbs, and make it easy to transfer on the paper.
- Here, we're aiming for about 1.5L or 6 cups of chopped bread–which this assortment luckily came out very close to. If you have more or less, adjust the other ingredients to match.
- For best results, you'll want to bake the bread some to dry it out more and get a little toasting. Preheat your oven to 150°C or 300°F.
- Spread the bread cubes out on a baking sheet, and bake for 30 minutes or so, stirring and turning it over a time or two while it's cooking.Let it go until it feels drier to the touch, and starts smelling toasty. You're not necessarily going for crouton dry here.
- Let cool down, and set aside. I put it back in the same bowl, and covered it to keep until I was ready to cook the next evening.
Prepare The Dressing Mixture
- Chop the onion and celery, and mince or press the garlic.
- Place the onion and garlic into a fairly large, deep pan with 2 tablespoons butter.Sauté over the lower side of medium heat.. Let it steam fry under a lid to soften for around 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- While that's frying, put your poultry seasoning together if you don't have ready made.The rosemary we have is hard and twiggy-feeling enough that I did go ahead and grind it all together, more like most US commercial poultry seasonings. If your rosemary isn't like that or the texture doesn't bother you, feel free to just hand-crumble and mix the leaves together. These herb amounts will make double what we need here, so I saved the rest in the empty sage jar.
- Take off the lid when the onions and celery have softened to your taste, and sauté for a few more minutes until the onion starts browning a little for flavor.Add the garlic, and fry for another minute or so. Take off the heat.
- Add in the bread cubes, poultry seasoning, pepper, and parsley. Mix everything together well in the pot.
- Start the oven preheating to 180℃ or 350℉. Grease your pan(s) generously with butter. Again, I used squeeze margarine, which is very convenient for this. The inspiration recipe originally called for a 9"x13" pan. (Approximately 23 x 33cm.)
Make the Casserole Gravy and Crumb Topping
- Heat the broth in a pan that will hold at least 2L/2 quarts or so.Again today, I was using what was left of the most recent homemade broth mixed about half and half with chicken bouillon.
- Here we are going to depart a decent bit from the source recipe, since we're thickening this with cornstarch instead of a flour roux.
- While the broth begins to heat. prepare the crumb topping. Mix your crumbs and seasonings together in a bowl. Stir in the 2 tbsp. of melted butter to coat the crumbs. I just used the squeeze margarine here too, since I already had it out and it was easier. Set aside.
- While the broth continues to heat, beat the eggs in a suitable sized bowl, and whisk in the milk and cornstarch. Don't make the same mistake I did, and try to whisk the starch directly into the straight egg. It will clump like crazy that way. Add at least half of the milk before the starch.
- All whisked together, smooth.When the broth reaches a boil, turn it to medium heat and slowly whisk in the egg mixture.
- Heat until it just starts to bubble, whisking often from the bottom. This will probably take a while, but you do want to keep the heat to medium and take it slow.What you're aiming for is a fairly smooth pouring custard consistency, which coats the spoon like this.
- Season the gravy to taste. I ended up adding around ¾ teaspoon of seasoned salt to this batch.
Assemble and Bake
- Spread your stuffing mixture out in the bottom of your greased pan(s). Distribute your cooked chicken over the top.I knew this recipe would make more than two people needed, so I divided it between two smaller pans with the aim of freezing the smaller foil dish for later.
- Pour the custardy gravy over the top, and even it out. Tap the pan(s) against your surface to drive air bubbles out of the bread layer, and gently poke down to the bottom some with your sauce spoon to help the gravy flow down into there.
- Grind some pepper over the top of the sauce if you would like, and distribute your crumb topping.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes. You want it nicely bubbly around the edges, and some browning on the crumbs.
Optional Quick Gravy for Serving
- I didn't make this tonight, but sort of wished I had, even though the casserole turned out very moist and creamy. An extra dousing of gravy over the top is always welcome with dressing.Proceed very much like for the casserole gravy, only with half the quantities of liquid and minus the egg. It works well to heat the broth to a low boil and make a cornstarch slurry with the milk, then whisk that in over medium heat. Stir pretty often until it thickens and starts bubbling, though you don't need to be quite as careful as with the egg. Finish by adjusting seasoning to taste, and stirring some butter through after removing it from the heat.
Serve
- Enjoy!This will go well with about any simple vegetable dish you like, and some potatoes if you want to double carb it. But, I always want green beans with anything this reminiscent of a holiday dinner. Luckily, we had some leftover roasted green beans with a little carrot added in for variety. Tonight we also had some lentil salad out of the fridge (not shown).
