Broccoli and Rice Casserole

I love this casserole but hate the idea of using Cheese Whiz or Velveta. To me, Velveta is way too thick and well, I am just not that crazy about it.  A little bit of that stuff goes a longgggggggg way. So, I wanted to try using real shredded cheese. The original recipe for this, calls for cream of chicken, velveta or cheese whiz, frozen broccoli and lots and lots of  butter.This is what I have come up with.

A bunch of Broccoli-cut up and washed
2 cups of cooked rice-I used brown
shredded cheddar cheese, or you can use maybe monterey jack w/some cheddar
1 can cream of muchroom
1can cream of celery
1 small onion,diced
butter
Chop the onion and saute it in the butter, I used maybe 2 tbsp of butter. Cut up your broccoli and steam it. DO NOT boil ur broccoli. The vitamins in broccoli are water soluble and will just leach out in the water. Your broccoli should still be a bright green. Cook your rice. Add all these ingredients to a very large bowl. mix together. Add the soups. Mix together.  I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it's not. You can cut up your broccoli and onion ahead of time if you like. You can even put this casserole together ahead of time, and you can freeze it :)

Once you've mixed those ingredients together, add maybe a cup of shredded cheese to the bowl and mix together. I also added some garlic powder, red pepper,salt and cracked pepper to this. You can leave it out if you wish, but we like some spice lol. Spray a casserole dish, and pour mixture into dish. Add some more cheese on top and bake at 350. Original recipe says to bake this for an hour. BUT since I did not use frozen broccoli or processed cheese, it was done a lot quicker. You're just melting the cheese really good here, not heating up broccoli(bc I steamed it).

*if you do not want to use the "cream of soups" you can easily make ur own. I went into it a little bit in this blog post. 

http://roorooskitchen.blogspot.com/2010/01/homemade-cheese-sauce.html

next time, I may just add some shredded chicken to this and see how that turns out :) 


I can't tell you enough just how good this is! SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE VELVETA!!!!