Potato and Chicken Casserole

With all the left over Goody Girl Potatoes on hand, I needed to come up with a way to recreate a meal. I had the idea to add some baked chicken along with some cheese and turn the potatoes into a chicken and Potato Casserole.

I rinsed the chicken breast and patted dry, then seasoned with Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning. The potatoes were boiled in cajun crab boil, so I figured the chicken should also be flavored with the same seasonings.

A pat of butter on each chicken breast before putting in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Here are the Goody Girl Potatoes. There are onions, bacon, sour cream, garlic, cheddar cheese and green onions in here.

I mash them up a bit by hand.

Then add a can of low sodium Cream of Chicken soup.

And because these pretty little pearls of mozzarella wouldn't have lasted much longer in the fridge, I added them to the bowl as well - thinking they would act as glue to hold the casserole together.

There was only about 1/2 cup of mozzarella in there.

This is what it looks like after I gave it a good stir.

It sure doesn't look very appetizing, but lets think of the flavors here - all the same flavors of a loaded baked potato plus the creaminess of the cream of chicken soup and some mozzarella balls, which I have to admit seem a bit out of place, but once melted, who would know.

Chicken is ready.

I gave this a rough chop into bite size pieces.

And added the chicken pieces to the potato mixture.

Remember that pan I cooked the chicken in? With the olive oil and chicken drippings? I'm just going to use that for the casserole as well.

So I dumped the entire potato and chicken mixture into the casserole pan.

After I spread it out evenly I baked in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes.

Everything seemed to melt together and I waited until the top browned before I pulled it out.

I thought this was a brilliant idea. In theory. Jim tasted it and said it was way too salty. So my first mistake was seasoning the chicken with the salty cajun stuff. The potatoes to start with were very spicy and salty from the crab boil, but I really thought the addition of the low sodium cream of chicken soup would cool down the "heat."

This dish sat in the fridge for two days, with only two servings missing. uggg.. I've put a lot into this... not just many ingredients and wonderful flavors, but the time I spent to create two dishes. I can't let two pounds of potatoes go to waste. Is it possible to recreate this dish again?

You won't believe what I did next...