Recipe: Stick of Butter Rice

Yesterday's belated Christmas dinner and gathering turned out well. I promised to share the rice recipe if it was good, and it most certainly was! I got the recipe from a friend, and am sure she found it online somewhere. Here it is:

Ingredients
I c. uncooked white rice (NOT instant)
1 (10 oz) can of Condensed French Onion Soup
1 (10 oz) can of Beef Broth
1/2 C. butter, sliced
Optional: small can of drained mushrooms can be added as well.

Instructions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees
In a 9x9 baking dish combine rice, soup and broth
Cut butter into slices and place on top of the mixture
Cover with foil and bake 30 minutes
Remove cover and bake 30 minutes more

This can be doubled or tripled to feed more.

This recipe is very simple. But I had complications to overcome: two family members are allergic to beef and/or dairy, so I opted to make a chicken version of this in addition to the beef version. I initially assumed I could fake the French Onion Soup with a packet of onion soup mix and some chicken broth. But when I went online to look at recipes for French Onion Soup, I learned there is more to the process than that. It takes 2 hours to properly make that stuff!! I discovered that detail just in time, and proceeded to make a small batch from scratch, substituting chicken broth for the beef broth in the soup recipe, and using a can of chicken broth instead of the can of beef broth with the rice. Also, I sliced a cube of Earth Balance Spread to put on top of it. I sampled this version of the rice recipe, and it was very tasty, but quite different from the original recipe.

I had made the assumption my two 9-inch pans would fit in one half of the oven, and I could place a pan of delicata squash in the other half of the oven. Alas, that did not work. So I placed the rice pans side by side, and baked the squash on a lower shelf. It worked out just fine!