Festive Rice Casserole is definitely a classic, vintage casserole recipe but boy is it good! It’s warm, cozy and cheesy! With rice being the main ingredient, it’s a great side dish and is gluten free. By swapping out the beef bouillon with veggie broth, you could easily make this vegetarian as well. The slivered almonds also add a great crunch that keeps you going back for another bite. There’s a little bit of prep work (nothing difficult) but then it goes for a long cook in the oven giving you time to work on the rest of your meal. Or, you could serve this with a side salad and have a whole meal with not much else to do.
In the steps below I describe just how Grandma would make this casserole and there’s no reason to stray from her recipe. However, if you wanted to simplify things, you could skip saving the mushroom liquid and the beef bouillon and just add soy sauce to beef, chicken or vegetable broth to the casserole. If you do that directly without warming it first, you’ll likely want to add 5-10 minutes to the bake time. Also, I would imagine Grandma used packaged shredded cheese in her casserole, but I would strongly recommend shredding your own. It just melts to much better and really creates a cheesy end result that can’t be achieved in the same way with packaged shredded cheese.
With nearly all casseroles, this one is a great base recipe to experiment with and change up as inspiration hits. Or, swap things out depending on what you have on hand in your pantry. I hope you give this recipe a try and would love to hear what you think about it. And don’t forget to share a photo of your results with me on Instagram (@bdhbakes).
