5-Ingredient No Peek Chicken and Rice Casserole

Flavorful, juicy chicken breasts on a bed of creamy rice. This easy one-dish no peek chicken recipe requires 5 minutes of hands-on time for a meal the whole family can enjoy!

Comfort food with no fuss! This super simple easy dinner recipe is a creamy combination of rice and tender chicken. It requires very little effort — just place all the ingredients in your baking dish, cover, and leave it to do its thing in the oven. 

This is a favorite in my house, not only because it makes seriously good chicken, but because it’s an easy weeknight meal when I don’t have much energy!

What’s in this No Peek Chicken recipe?

 Around here, we like to keep our simple recipes very budget friendly. This one is no exception. This recipe uses five simple ingredients, four of which are pantry staples you can buy on sale and keep around for a no fuss dinner!

• Uncle Ben’s Long Grain and Wild Rice Blend: I LOVE this blend. Not only does a wild rice medley sound and look fancy, but the spice packet it comes with adds lovely flavor to this recipe. 
• Cream of Mushroom Soup AND  Cream of Celery Soup: These two, working together, are the secret behind the creamy rice. While two cream soups might seem like a lot, it really is the perfect balance for this recipe. 
• Garlic Powder: This is here to season your chicken breasts, because as we all know, unseasoned chicken is a crime!
• Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts: You’ll need about 1 lb, or 4 chicken breasts for this recipe. If you’re not a fan of chicken breasts, you can sub this with 1 lb of whatever cut you’d like. Heck, this recipe is so forgiving you can make it with pork chops!

How does it work?

The science behind this dish is actually kind of cool. You’re basically steaming your chicken breasts, while boiling the rice. As the water and cream soup mixture begins to boil, it creates steam, which is trapped under the foil. 

This is why it’s called “no peek” chicken, because if you lift the foil up to peek, you’ll let out all that lovely steam.  

The steam cooks the chicken from the top, while the boiling rice mixture cooks from below. You end up with juicy, flavorful chicken and perfectly cooked rice without any effort from you!

Making No Peek Chicken and Rice Casserole

Step 1 | Mix the Rice

You’ll need a standard sized casserole dish or a 9×13 baking dish for this recipe. I like to spray mine with cooking spray to avoid sticky rice. 

You’ll start by pouring the rice mix + spice packet, cream of mushroom soup, cream of celery soup, and water into the bottom of the casserole dish. Mix all those ingredients together to create the bed on which you will put your chicken. 

Step 2 | Add Chicken

On top of the rice mixture, you’re going to lay your chicken breasts. It’s okay if they touch, and it’s totally okay for them to sink down into the rice. We want everything to get real friendly in this creamy chicken and rice bake!

Step 3 | Cover and Cook

Your last hands on step is to tightly cover your casserole dish with aluminum foil. This will ensure the steam doesn’t escape. Once you’ve covered your dish, resist the urge to look under the foil — there’s a reason this is called “no peek” chicken casserole.

Put your casserole in the oven at 350° for 1 hour. Check your chicken’s internal temperature — it should be at least 165°.

Step 4 | Rest and Serve!

Once you’ve taken your casserole out, uncover it and let it rest for about 10 minutes. Then, fluff the rice with a fork, and serve! Add some steamed veggies, like green beans or carrots, or a side salad to quickly make this a complete meal!

Substitutions

You can make several substitutions to this recipe. Be aware that any substitutions will most likely affect the taste or texture of the finished product. 

• For the rice blend: You can sub 2 cups of brown rice, white rice, or jasmine rice for the Uncle Ben’s rice blend. When I do this, I like to add a packet of onion soup mix for extra flavor (you can find a recipe for homemade onion soup mix here). The only rice I would NOT recommend subbing is minute rice. You will end up with rice soup.
• For the chicken breasts: This recipe will work with basically any cut of chicken – chicken tenders, chicken cutlets, or thighs!
• For the cream soups: Either soup can be subbed for cream of chicken soup. You can also use cream of potato or cream of onion soup. In fact, you can play around with the flavors in this easy dish just by changing which cream soup you use!
• For the garlic powder: Feel free to season your chicken any way you like! You can use simple salt and pepper, add seasoned salt, or level up with some cayenne or red pepper flakes for a little kick in your seasoned chicken.