Panera who? Make this copycat recipe for the ultimate comfort chicken and rice stew with hearty mushrooms and carrots.
30 Mins
experienced
cheap
4 Servings
Nut Free
Egg Free
Fish Free
Shellfish Free
Soy Free
Tree Nut Free
Sesame Free
I'll admit, I used to be a Panera regular solely for the chicken and wild rice soup. But honestly, when a friend told me "Panera serves hospital food!", I had to agree. The soup you get at the restaurants scratches an itch, but it could be so much better.
That's where I decided to step in and come up with an upgraded version that doesn't require wild rice (a hard ingredient to find for some people) that's an easy one-pot meal. The bulk of the work for this recipe is just chopping up your ingredients. If you have a knife, a cutting board, a bowl, and a stove with a pot to cook things in, you'll be just fine. No fancy or weird ingredients, just basic items.
What's even better is that this recipe has the potential to be Big 9 Free as long as you skip the flour step and replace milk with a plant based milk of your choice... it's not strictly necessary but it does make your stew thick. Otherwise it's possible to thicken up the stew with a slurry of cornstarch (see hints below) or by adding in potato starch instead of flour.
I hope you and your family try this recipe and enjoy the savory, creamy tastes of chicken, mushroom, and rice stew. It was a pleasure to test out many times in my own home!
Recipe 
Ingredients 
2 whole, cut into cubes Chicken Breast the white meat portion of chicken
2 whole, cut into coins Carrot 
1 large diced finely Onion 
500g, cut into quarters Mushrooms - 75g, or roughly 2 slices of bacon diced Lardons
2 tablespoons Olive Oil 
1 cup long grain Rice 
1 tablespoon Herbs de Provence - 1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar
- 1/4 cup Water
- 3 cups Chicken Broth
1 cup Milk 
3 cloves, minced Garlic - to taste Salt and pepper
Cooking Gear 
- Stove or cooktop
- Cutting board
- Chef's knife
- Bowl to store cooked chicken and lardons
- Large pot to cook stew
- Optional extra bowls to organize mise en place
mise en place 
- Chop up all ingredients to sizes specified
Steps 
- Heat up the cooking pot on the stove to medium-high. Add in olive oil.
- Brown chicken in olive oil until mostly cooked through, and then set aside.
- Add lardons to the pan and cook until crispy, then set aside in the same bowl with the chicken once cooked
- Add onions and carrots to the pan and scrape the browned bits off the bottom carefully as you saute them.
- Once the onions are translucent, put in the mushrooms and garlic and stir to combine.
- Add in 1/4 cup water, and put the lid on the pot. Cook until the mushrooms are dark brown and shrunk in size.
- Remove the pot lid and deglaze the pan with balsamic vinegar. Cook liquid down until dissolved completely.
- Add in chicken, lardons, and herbs. Stir.
- Coat all of the mixture in the pan with flour.
- Pour in chicken broth and bring to a boil.
- Add in the rice. Stir vigorously so that the rice doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.
- Reduce to a rolling simmer and cook until rice is done (about 10 minutes)
- Once the rice is tender and the stew is thick, add in the milk. Cook until heated through.
- Enjoy!
*tips and hints* 
- If aiming to avoid wheat, skip adding flour to the meat. Instead, either coat the meat in corn or potato starch, or make a slurry using 1 tbsp of corn starch to 1/4 cup water. Add the slurry in at the very end, after you've turned off the heat, and wait a few minutes for the soup to thicken.
- This recipe can be made without the addition of meat products. Omit the chicken (or sub for veggie chick'n), sub veggie broth for chicken broth, and use 1/4 cup of oil instead of lardons at the beginning. It won't be as rich, but it is still quite hearty and delicious.