Stove Top Casserole

This is more of the pantry-cleanout cut the food costs system and I'm finding it is REALLY delicious.  It is easy to do on a woodstove, not even a cookstove just a woodstove, or in a crockpot if you have electricity like fancy people do. 

Why I Started Doing This:

My sister always accused me of making "stove top casserole" instead of soup (because it had so much in it there was no room for juice/broth).  I embraced that and this winter have gone great guns on my stove top casserole meals during lockdown and food budget cutting.

Here's my basic recipe:

1 cup of grain (rice, wheat berries, steel cut oats, barley, whatever)

1 cup of protein (fish, poultry, meat or dry beans/lentils)

2-3 cups of water or broth as you like (even a bouillon cube will do)...use this to rinse out any cans or jars you emptied in the prep to make sure you get all the delicious and vitamins you can in the pan.

1 med/small onion or 4 cloves garlic...or dried/powdered equivalent of either

1/4 to 1/2 cup of tasty ingredient (e.g. mushrooms, olives, capers, peppers, whatever you have...or skip it if nothing comes to mind)

1/2 cup or more of a basic veggie(s) like diced carrots, celery, etc.  Whatever you have.  I have used a can of mixed veggies really successfully.

herbs and spices as you like.  I have a lot of fennel seed at the moment so using that and some aging cayenne that has lost it's bite.

Anything else you want to use up and like (flax seeds, the last few raisins in the container, stale nuts)

Pepper and salt as you like.

Put it all in a pan with sides that go 1" or more above the level of the food/liquid so it doesn't boil over too much.

Put it on the stove and bring it to a boil.  Turn the heat down and simmer until it's done and/or you are sick of waiting.

If it's bland when you eat it, try a dash of vinegar or lemon juice or a bit of mustard stirred in.   I'm keeping away from much salt so I have been going with pepper and vinegar.  

Today's stovetop casserole was duck and brown rice with garlic and carrots and the end of a container of poultry seasoning, some dried mushrooms, and a bit of vinegar to serve.

Last week it was a jar of home-preserved kokanee and brown rice.

In November it was wheat berries and a jar of home-preserved chicken or deer meat.  (SO GOOD!!!!).  

Right now the duck bones are stewing in water with a bit of vinegar (I like my vinegars...) to make calcium rich bone broth.  Once I am done the bones I will roast them in the woodstove in a little cast iron pan inside the fire box and feed the bits to the chickens in their mineral supplement dish.