Chicken Taco Bake… Thingie…

It’s actually pretty simple. You only need a few ingredients and less than an hour (way less, depending on the rice you use).

Ingredients

-One pound boneless, skinless chicken breast (Or vegetarian substitute. I think I used MorningStar Farms NotChicken.)
-One 12 oz. can of corn
-One 12 oz. can tomato sauce
-One package taco seasoning (I use normal or mild ’cause I hate spicy food, but whatever’s your bag..)
-4 cups rice (prepared)
-Cheese (Cheddar, colby jack or your choice.)

First off, cook the rice. Last time, I used this organic brown rice, which was great, but it takes an hour or so to cook. You can use plain instant white rice. While that’s cooking, brown your (Not)chicken in a separate pan. Best bet is to cook it just a little less than normal, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

Once your rice and chicken are ready, add everything except the cheese into the pot with the rice. (You can use a separate bowl if you’d like, but I prefer to do less dishes.) Mix well, you don’t want pockets of taco seasoning surprising you when you dig in. Also– do not drain the corn. You need the water from the corn along with the tomato sauce to mix with the seasoning and to keep the dish itself from drying out.

Put it all into a baking dish (The Pyrex 8×12 deals. Should be two inches or so deep.) and add shredded cheese. Bake at 325 degrees for fifteen minutes or so. Keep an eye on it! The oven’s mostly just to get everything heated up and melting the cheese.

That’s it! Remove and enjoy.

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Variations

I’ve cooked this dish so many different ways, I thought I’d toss out a few of those suggestions as well.

-Marinate the chicken in tequila and lime juice overnight. When you cook the chicken, add the marinade to the pan.
-Toss a bit of lime juice and cilantro into the rice.
-Wrap it up in a tortilla shell or add crumbled tortilla chips before you bake it.