Month-of-Few Ingredients: Chicken and Noodle Leftovers to Love

You know those days, like in the Chopped television kitchen, where you just open up the refrigerator door and say, “What’s for dinner?” Yeah, like that.

Well, I had one of those a little while ago and I scrambled to figure out what in the heck DH was going to be eating that night. I’d had a great day at the computer working on manuscripts and frankly forgot my other role: Feeder-in-Chief. So there it was, 6:00 and it struck me that I didn’t have a dinner plan.

Normally, I’m pretty good. I make menus, shop for the ingredients, and everybody gets fed good stuff on time. But not that night. Okaaaaay. Now what?

Fortunately, I always cook too much of whatever I’m making so that I can speed up dinners with prepared foods ready to repurpose. It was gonna be one of those nights. So I did a quick inventory. I had some noodles in the freezer leftover from when we had creamy mushroom pasta (tastes just like beef stroganoff). In the refrigerator was some roast chicken and some turkey gravy. There were some mushrooms on their way to dehydration. There was about ¾ of a bag of spinach, too. Oh, there was other stuff, but those five seemed more compatible with one another.

The recipe that follows is approximations. I didn’t measure anything because I was using up leftovers. You okay with that? This is a very quick dinner since you are mainly recombining ingredients.

Chicken and Noodle Leftovers to Love (serves 4-6)

About 4 cups cooked noodles

About ¾ bag of fresh spinach

About 1 cup shrively mushrooms

About 1 ½ cups turkey gravy, peppered and heated in microwave

About 2 cups cooked and shredded chicken

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Spray casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray.

Toss noodles into heavily salted boiling water to heat noodles (and in my case thaw). Don’t over cook. You just want them hot.

Toss spinach and mushrooms into boiling noodles and immediately drain the noodles. This partially cooks the spinach and mushrooms.

Put noodles mixture into casserole dish and stir in gravy that you reheated in the microwave.

Stir in chicken. Bake for about 15 minutes in oven (or until hot). Serve immediately.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up  Him: “What do you call this?” Me: “Dinner.”

Him: “No, really.” Me: “Your favorite. Casserole.” Him: “Whatever you call it, it’s really good.” Me: “Whew.”

A reminder:

House rules for what counts as an ingredient:

Salt and pepper are not ingredients.

Oil is not an ingredient when it’s for the cooking pan, not the recipe.

Water is not an ingredient.

If you liked this recipe, I’d really appreciate you spreading the word on your social media outlets. Here are some pre-made Twitter and Facebook posts you can use or modify.

Twitter: Easiest #recipe for for leftovers you’ll ever find. Check out Chicken & Noodles Leftovers to Love by @good2tweat at http://bit.ly/2kYBiCr

Facebook: Need dinner really fast? These five leftovers led to the creation of Chicken and Noodle Leftovers to Love! Posted on Sharon Arthur Moore’s blog, Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time at http://bit.ly/2kYBiCr