Poppy Seed Chicken

I had never had poppy seed chicken until I was in college. The cooks at my sorority house knew how to throw down on some poppy seed chicken. We would watch the menu calendar and hope and pray for them to make it, since it was pretty much the one thing that tasted really, really good.

Whenever our main cook retired, she made the seniors a cookbook of all of her recipes, including Poppy Seed Chicken. Since I wasn't a senior that year, I sadly didn't get a copy of the book. However, my mom had been holding out on me all of these years and had a recipe of her very own. It pretty much tastes the same, but my mom's has rice added into it.

Brian has said before that he would live on a deserted island if he had a lifetime supply of this casserole. The best part of it is the Ritz cracker topping. Also, you can get low-fat soup and sour cream to make it somewhat healthy. Also, normally I would advise to cooking with a wine/sherry that you would drink. However, in this dish, use the cheap, cooking sherry. It's more rustic that way.

Poppy Seed Chicken
Source: My mom

6 chicken breasts (Or a Rotisserie chicken from the grocery store)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
8 oz. sour cream
1 cup crushed Ritz crackers (One sleeve from the box)
2 Tbsp. poppy seeds
3 Tbsp. melted butter
1/4 cup Holland House Cooking Sherry
3/4 cup rice

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cook rice in 1 1/2 cups hot broth or water. Once rice is cooked, spread rice in bottom of a 9x13 pan. Boil and bone chicken breasts, or shred the meat from a rotisserie chicken. Put chicken on top of rice layer.

Mix soup, sour cream, and sherry in a medium sized bowl. Pour on top of chicken. Top with crushed crackers and poppy seeds. Pour melted butter over the crumbs. Bake for 30 minutes.