Go Back
Print

Chicken and Dressing Casserole From Scratch

Gluten free version of an old comfort food classic, using a homemade gravy and no canned soup. An excellent use for those odds and ends of leftover stale bread.
Prep Time55 minutes
Active Time35 minutes
Total Time1 hour 30 minutes
Course: Casseroles, Main Course
Cuisine: American, Southern
Keyword: Chicken, Comfort Food, Gluten free, Stale Bread
Yield: 10 servings

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.
    A collection of sliced bread heels and pieces from previous batches of homemade cornbread, with the frozen pieces laid out on a dinner plate to thaw. To the side sits a glass container with another piece of cornbread and the end chunk from a recent loaf of quickbread posted on this blog, not frozen.
  • 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.
    Cubed bread on a piece of baking 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.
    A stainless steel mixing bowl of 1.6L capacity, nearly full of freshly cut bread cubes.
  • 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.
    Lightly toasted bread on the baking sheet.
  • 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.
    Two stalks of celery lie on a cutting board, above an onion and two peeled cloves of 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.
    A plastic container of chopped onion and celery sits next to a small stainless measuring cup holding crushed garlic. Behind them sits a pot with butter visible inside.
  • 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.
    Dried herbs sit on a shallow ceramic dish, in front of a granite mortar and pestle.
  • 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.
    Fried onion, celery, and garlic in the bottom of the pot.
  • 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.
    An open plastic container of chicken broth sits next to a box of chicken bouiilon cubes. A medium-sized saucepan sits behind them.
  • 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.
    A bowl with panko bread crumbs with seasonings visible on top sits between the open panko bag and a bottle of squeeze margarine.
  • 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.
    The same stainless mixing bowl that held the bread cubes earlier, with a wire whisk resting in it.. Now it contains four raw eggs removed from the shells. next to it sit a box of cornstarch and a measuring cup with milk.
  • All whisked together, smooth.
    When the broth reaches a boil, turn it to medium heat and slowly whisk in the egg mixture.
    The egg, milk, and starch mixture in the bowl.
  • 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.
    The finished pot of gravy, showing it pouring off a spoon to demonstrate the consistency you want.
  • 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.
    Two pans of stuffing mixture topped with chicken.
  • 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.
    Sauced baking pans
  • Grind some pepper over the top of the sauce if you would like, and distribute your crumb topping.
    Casseroles now topped evenly with the seasoned breadcrumbs.
  • Bake for 30-35 minutes. You want it nicely bubbly around the edges, and some browning on the crumbs.
    The bigger dish of finished casserole that we're eating today.

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).
    A plate with a piece of the casserole and some cooked green beans with carrots.