Baked Chicken Brown Rice Vegetable Casserole

by Sabrina Snyder

Published on Last updated

296 Comments

4.91 from 53 votes
4
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes
Jump to Recipe

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy.

One Pan Baked Chicken and Rice Casserole, served with brown rice, carrots and peas, is healthy, flavorful and involves almost no clean-up!

Chicken and rice casserole with peas and carrots

Healthy Chicken and Rice Casserole

One Pan Chicken Brown Rice Vegetable Casserole recipe will delight you with its ease and quick cleanup anytime you are tired of cooking! I spent a weekend retesting, reshooting and double checking every bit of this chicken and brown rice recipe!

Chicken thighs baked in brown rice with chicken stock, butter and carrots bake up into a fluffy chicken and rice bake. Right when you take it out of the oven you pour on some frozen peas and mix. The heat of the dish will warm them without making them mushy. Dinner is prepped in 10 minutes, an hour in the oven and you have a healthy easy meal people will fight over!

How to Make this Chicken and Rice Bake

To make this Chicken and Rice Casserole with brown rice and veggies, preheat oven to 375 degrees. The perfect size baking pan for this recipe is 13 inches by 9 inches.  Scatter rice on the bottom of the pan. Layer chicken on top. Season the whole pan generously with salt and pepper. Remember this will be seasoning the whole dish, not just the chicken. Scatter the carrots between the chicken pieces. Scatter bits of the butter around the pan. (optional)How to make chicken and rice casserole - raw chicken on top of brown rice and veggies Pour the boiling hot stock on top gently. Wrap tightly with foil and cook for 60 minutes. pouring chicken stock on top of chicken and rice bake Right when coming out of the oven, toss with frozen peas. Let sit for 3-4 minutes. Enjoy your Chicken and Rice Bake! 🙂 Chicken and Rice Bake, or Chicken and Rice Casserole ready to serve

Dinner then Dessert TIPS Want dinner on the table in 30 minutes? If you swap the brown rice for white rice in this chicken and rice casserole, the meal will be done in 30. The meat won’t be quite as soft and tender, but it will still be delicious! chicken dish made from a baked chicken and rice recipe

CHICKEN AND RICE CASSEROLE RECIPE NOTES (UPDATED) 7/12/2016:
Some of you had left me comments that the timing wasn’t working in this Chicken Brown Rice Vegetable Casserole recipe so I tested it once and it worked well but I did notice an extra 5 minutes didn’t hurt so I am updating it with the new time. Here is a not so fancy screenshot on my iPhone (excuse the not Pinworthy photo) of my original remake the way we do it every week (no edits, 375 degrees, exactly 60 minutes) and it was definitely a tender rice bake, not soupy: Chicken and Brown rice out of the oven
Then I decided to test this baked chicken and rice recipe a couple of more times because with 3 of you saying the same thing I knew there was a disconnect between what I was seeing/tasting and what you all were experiencing and I knew it was more than a five-minute difference.

Adjusting the Chicken and Rice Bake Cooking time

Here is what I came up with…

  • I use 3-4 ounce skinless thighs (this time in July 2016 I used 4-ounce bone-in skinless thighs). I realized this may have been the biggest issue that may have presented itself. When I went to the store and bought some more chicken I got some of the normal chicken thighs that were on sale, both bone-in and boneless. The boneless ones were almost 6 ounces each, bone in was closer to 7.
  • The larger boneless thigh (6 ounces each) batch took 1:30 minutes to cook. The bone in (7-ounce thighs) batch took 1:45 (I think this may be where most of the discrepancy was)
  • Second, I noticed that between my normal chicken and the larger thighs that they seemed slightly frozen in the middle. I don’t know if anyone else’s chicken was like this, but that may also add to the timing issues. If they are at all frozen it just means it will take even longer since the colder the chicken is it will just make the boiling stock get cold quickly which will also add to the cooking time.
  • I know no one mentioned this but I think it’s worth mentioning if you peel back the foil to take a peek during cooking you are letting all the steam out which will make the cooking time go way up.
  • This is totally not meant to insinuate anything but I would also just test the temp of your oven. I have a thermometer that lives in there so I know my oven is pretty spot on but you never know.
  • Final note: The biggest difference in your cooking time will be the temperature of your chicken and the temperature of your water. If your chicken is fully defrosted and you use boiling hot water/stock and you wrap tightly with foil, you should have a fully cooked, non soupy meal in 65 minutes.

If you guys have any other notes, I am happy to answer in any way I can. I didn’t realize how much larger the chicken in the store would be! My apologies to those who had fails, I wish I could deliver you a tray of this Chicken and Rice Casserole cooked through, I made four trays of it in the last three days determined to get to the bottom of this… (Thank goodness this dish freezes well!).

Pin this recipe now to remember it later

Pin Recipe
Dinner, then Dessert

One Pan Baked Chicken & Brown Rice Vegetable Casserole

One Pan Baked Chicken Brown Rice Vegetable Casserole, served with Carrots and Peas, is healthy, flavorful and involves almost no clean-up!
Yield 4
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes
Course Main Course
Cuisine American
Author Sabrina Snyder
One pan easy baked Chicken Brown Rice Casserole served with Carrots and Peas. Healthy, flavorful and almost no clean-up involved!
PrintRate

Ingredients
 

  • 6 4 ounce boneless skinless chicken thighs** (Please read the recipe notes: you can also use bone in, but don't leave skin on, it will get oily)
  • 1 1/2 cups brown rice
  • 3 cups chicken stock (boiling hot)
  • 2 tablespoons butter (optional)
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 lbs sliced carrots
  • 1 bag (12 oz.) frozen peas

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  • Scatter rice on the bottom of the pan.
  • Layer chicken on top.
  • Season the whole pan generously with salt and pepper.
  • Remember this will be seasoning the whole dish, not just the chicken.
  • Scatter the carrots between the chicken pieces.
  • Scatter bits of the butter around the pan. (optional)
  • Pour the boiling hot stock on top gently.
  • Wrap tightly with foil.
  • Cook for 65 minutes (If your chicken pieces are larger please refer to the notes for updated cooking times).
  • Right when coming out of the oven, toss with frozen peas.
  • Let sit for 3-4 minutes.
  • Enjoy 🙂

Notes

Adapted from Diethood. Which, by the way, is a totally awesome blog you should check out!
RECIPE NOTES (UPDATED) 11/12/15: Some of you had left me comments that the timing wasn't working in the recipe so I tested it again:
I use 4 ounce skinless thighs. I realized this may have been the biggest issue that may have presented itself. When I went to the store and bought some more chicken I got some of the normal chicken thighs that were on sale, both bone in and boneless. The boneless ones were almost 6 ounces each, bone in was closer to 7.
The larger boneless thigh batch took 1:30 minutes to cook. The bone in batch took 1:45 (I think this may be where most of the discrepancy was)
Second, I noticed that between my normal chicken and the larger thighs that they seemed slightly frozen in the middle. I don't know if anyone else's chicken was like this, but that may also add to the timing issues.
If they are at all frozen it just means it will take even longer since the colder the chicken is it will just make the boiling stock get cold quickly which will also add to cooking time.
I know no one mentioned this but I think it's worth mentioning, if you peel back the foil to take a peek during cooking you are letting all the steam out which will make the cooking time go way up.

Nutrition

Calories: 550kcal | Carbohydrates: 82g | Protein: 26g | Fat: 13g | Saturated Fat: 5g | Cholesterol: 88mg | Sodium: 530mg | Potassium: 1279mg | Fiber: 9g | Sugar: 14g | Vitamin A: 38080IU | Vitamin C: 13.8mg | Calcium: 110mg | Iron: 2.9mg

Want to save this recipe? Create a free account to easily save your favorite recipes

One Pan Baked Chicken Brown Rice Vegetable Casserole, served with Carrots and Peas, is healthy, flavorful and involves almost no clean-up!

Psssst… want to hear a little secret? This One Pan Chicken and Rice Casserole recipe is one of 10 in my FREE e-book 5-10-30: 5 Cuisines, 10 Full Meals and 30 Total Ingredients that is a bonus for email subscribers only! It includes shopping lists that set you up for two weeks of weeknight dinners with no ingredient waste and tips for cooking and alternate ingredient options. If you haven’t subscribed for updates you may want to now and get the e-cookbook FREE!

One Pan Baked Chicken Brown Rice Vegetable Casserole, served with Carrots and Peas, is healthy, flavorful and involves almost no clean-up!
One Pan Baked Chicken Brown Rice Vegetable Casserole, served with Carrots and Peas, is healthy, flavorful and involves almost no clean-up!

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the cookbook Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients, published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

See more posts by Sabrina

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

Categories

Leave a comment & rating

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Comments

  1. Omg this recipe is absolutely perfect!!!!
    I was kinda skeptical, but I give it a try because my experience with brown rice it’s hit and miss. Well it’s is fool proof.

    This is going to become a staple in our house. Thank you ?

    Reply

  3. Have you tried substituting one can of cream of chicken soup for an equal amount of chicken stock? I think the result would be creamier but I don’t know if it’s the right amount of liquid since it would be thicker. Any thoughts? Thank you.

    Reply