In The Kitchen: CHICKEN & BACON RICE BAKE

One of the things I fell in love with while living in Hawaii was baked rice dishes!!  They're a blend of East and West.  It's a rice dish usually covered in cheese, gravy or tomato sauce and sometimes all three!  This dish is awesome you can make it with whatever ingredients you have in the fridge.

I've made this exact dish with shrimp and mushrooms before and it was delicious!  

Hubs specifically requested Chicken & Bacon tonight so here we go :)

Ingredients:

2 strips of bacon (1 strip per person)
1 onion
pepper
4 cups broccoli (you can use less lol!)
1 cup cooked chicken (I bake an entire chicken for the week to make meal prep easier and for the chicken stock)
3 cups leftover refrigerated rice
cooking spray
1/4 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp garlic
1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 cup white cheddar
1/4 cup mozzarella (save half for topping at the end)
1/4 cup Parmesan (save half for topping at the end)
1/4 cup furikake

Begin by dicing your bacon and onion into small pieces.

Take a oven proof baking dish and spray with cooking spray.

And now you will begin "layering" your baked rice dish.

Add your LEFT OVER rice.  

The reason you want to use left over refrigerated rice is because it tends to hold up better against the cheese and cream sauce you will put on top.  If you use fresh same day made rice the dish will become too soggy.

Saute your diced bacon and onions.

Season with black pepper. 

(I chose not to salt this dish because you will get plenty of salt from the bacon & cheeses)

Cook bacon until your preferred done-ness.  

People tend to feel very strongly about how "done" they like their bacon.

But don't forget you will be baking the bacon in the oven so you don't want to over cook either!

Then combine your bacon, onion with your broccoli and chicken and mix together.

Then spread evenly over your rice in the baking dish.

Once you're done with the "layers" of your rice dish you can put it to the side.

Pre-Heat oven 400 Degrees F.

And begin your Cheese Sauce.

Add your chicken stock and butter over low heat.

Add your garlic.

Forgot to add this in the ingredients picture at the beginning but you'll also need 1/4 cup milk.

And then you can add in your cheeses. You really can use whatever cheeses you want - you can even just do one type of cheese if you prefer.  I just used what I had in my fridge at the time.  

Add in your cheddar, half of your mozzarella and half of your Parmesan (you'll want to save half for the topping later). 

Make sure you stir, stir, stir!

At about this point I like to add in some cornstarch (sorry forgot to add this in the ingredients picture)  I just realized it was a bit watery as I was making it so I wanted to thicken the sauce.

I pour a little bit of the sauce from the sauce pan into a cup and mix with the cornstarch until it dissolves and then add it back into the cooking cheese sauce.

Don't just add your cornstarch DIRECTLY into the sauce pan it won't dissolve properly and will cause lumps in your sauce.

Stir until everything is completely dissolved and your sauce is thick enough to coat the back of your cooking utensil.

Pour your sauce carefully over your rice dish that you prepared earlier.

Now you'll want to do a foil cover on top of your baking dish.  Doing this prevents the cheese sauce from burning while it's in the oven.  

And then pop it into the oven for 30 mins.

After 30 mins. pull from oven take off foil cover and sprinkle with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan cheese from earlier.

Bake for another 10 min or so just until the Cheese browns you'll want to keep an eye on this depending on your oven it could brown much quicker!

Sprinkle with Furikake for garnish and extra seasoning!

Serve piping hot! :)