Field of Dreams Chicken Casserole

Is this Heaven? No, it’s Hot Dish.

A Major League baseball game was held at the site where the movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed near Dyersville, Iowa on August 12, 2021. The weather that evening was unusually perfect for that time of year and the pregame ceremony where Kevin Costner led the players of the Chicago White Socks and the New York Yankees out of the cornfield onto the field was poetic. It was a great game which the White Sox won 9-8 on a walk-off home run.

The next day, I was walking through Hy-Vee, the Iowa-based grocery store chain, and saw an end cap display of Field of Dreams Corn Flakes. They were under the Hy-Vee brand and featured the character, John Kinsella, the father of Kevin Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella. Of course, I bought it.

That same month I canned chicken using my new pressure canner. There were all kinds of scary stories about the supply chain crisis and how we might have food shortages. Hy-Vee had a great sale on eight-packs of chicken thighs for $0.97 per pound. I bought four of them and turned them into 19 pints of shelf-stable, old farmer delicacy.

It’s now January and what could be more comforting on a cold winter evening during the Omicron surge than a chicken and noodle casserole with crunchy corn flakes on top?

Homemade canned meats are a bit of a forgotten treasure. I regard them to be like charcuterie in the sense that it is an artisanal form of meat preservation. However, for the sake of making the casserole, two cups of any cooked chicken like leftover rotisserie chicken can be used as a substitute.

I have stayed away from the condensed soups that are typical of midwestern hot dishes and am using a homemade Béchamel sauce as a replacement. I’m not being snooty; I just don’t need the sodium of commercial canned soups. I do use a package of frozen mixed vegetables. It’s a perfect convenience ingredient, especially in winter.

Ingredients:

Condensed Soup Substitute

• 2 tbsp. Butter
• 3 tbsp. All-Purpose Flour
• ½ cup chicken broth (from the canned chicken, if possible)
• ½ cup milk
• ¼ tsp. Sea Salt
• ¼ tsp. Ground Black Pepper

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Whisk in the flour and stir until smooth. Add ½ cup chicken broth and ½ cup milk. Continue heating and stirring constantly until the mixture comes to a simmer. Stir and simmer at a low boil for several minutes until the mixture thickens. Stir in ¼ tsp. sea salt and ¼ tsp. ground black pepper. Remove from heat.

Casserole Ingredients

• 4 cups Wide Egg Noodles
• 2 cups Chicken, cooked and cubed
• 12 oz. Frozen Mixed Vegetables
• 4 tbsp. Butter
• 1 cup White Onion, diced
• 1 cup Celery, diced
• 1 tsp. Sea Salt
• 2 tsp. Ground Black Pepper
• 2 tsp. Herbs de Provence
• 1 tbsp. Lemon Juice
• 1 cup Fontina Cheese, grated
• Condensed Soup Substitute

Topping Ingredients

• 3 cups Corn Flakes
• 4 tbsp. Butter, melted

Directions:

Step 1: Preheat oven to 350°F. Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook egg noodles. Drain and set aside.

Step 2: Make the condensed soup substitute.

Melt four tablespoons of butter in a skillet and sauté 1 cup diced onion and 1 cup diced celery. Add 1 tsp. sea salt, 2 tsp. black pepper, 1 tsp. Herbs de Provence and 1 tbsp. lemon juice. Mix in 12 oz. package of frozen mixed vegetables. It’s not necessary to thaw the vegetables; they will cook thoroughly in the oven.

Stir in two cups of cooked chicken. Mix in one cup of grated Fontina cheese. Mix in the condensed soup substitute. Stir in egg noodles.

Melt four tablespoons of butter and mix thoroughly with 3 cups corn flakes.

Step 3: Coat an 11″x7″ baking dish with oil or non-stick spray. Spread the chicken and noodle mixture evenly throughout the dish. Top with buttered corn flakes. Bake for 30 minutes.