UN-Tasty Tuesday: Chicken and Broccoli Noodle Casserole

Warning: What you are about to read is about a recipe gone WRONG.. horribly WRONG! The following post does not have anything to do with the writer of the recipe (who in fact has both an outstanding blog AND outstanding recipes), but that of THIS Mama blogger who royally messed up this Tasty Tuesday dinner in every way possible! Please proceed with CAUTION!

I started last night out with very good intentions. A Chicken and Broccoli Noodle Casserole you say? Well, what a delicious concoction; fit for the whole family! Ya... not so much. A recipe that I had high hopes for quickly met its demise when I failed to accurately read the recipe. READ THE RECIPES PEOPLE! 

I compiled all of the ingredients first. The only slight changes I made were using 12 oz of an already cooked rotisserie chicken instead of cooking it myself, using frozen crushed garlic cubes (my new must-have kitchen staple - I will talk about this in depth in another post!), and I made my own chicken stock using chicken bouillon. I had a very bad experience recently with ready-made chicken stock and mold. I'm sure that you can fill in the blanks. Ugghh! So no more chicken stock for this mama!

The first step was to cook the noodles. The recipe called for 6 oz of noodles. This genius tossed the entire 12 oz bag in. Yup. I cooked the broccoli. I don't know how, but somehow I burnt it. I actually followed the instructions on that part. I mean, it is just cooking broccoli for gosh sakes! Apparently, I missed the mark.

I compiled the dish, mixing the sauce in with everything and low and behold it was dry. The noodles sucked up all of the sauce. That's when I realized that I doubled the noodles in the recipe. I had enough sauce for exactly half of what I had. I popped the dish in the oven and came up with the genius plan to whip up my own made up sauce to go on top. I threw a bunch of ingredients into a pot, vaguely following the recipe in my head. When it came out it looked delicious, if not dry.

I then dumped the entire pot of random sauce on top. Just the icing on top of a horrible cooking job! I didn't take a picture of it on our plates because I was so disappointed in myself. The broccoli was AWFUL. But, after picking all of that out, the remaining noodles, chicken, and sauce was palatable. With a lot more seasoning and properly cooked broccoli, this dish would have been really good. Everyone graciously ate it anyways. My father and Todd even went so far as to say it was "good". I will have to try this again sometime. The perfectionist in me is screaming for a rematch! But until then, I am left with leftovers from an UN-Tasty Tuesday and the taste of failure on my tongue.

Hopefully you all will have better luck!