Easy Chicken a la King – on the table in 30 minutes

This easy Chicken a la King recipe is made from tender chicken chunks, red peppers and mushrooms in a creamy sauce. It’s on the table in 30 minutes – start to finish. Perfect for those days when you don’t have much time to spend in the kitchen

Chicken a la King

Who doesn’t love a hearty plate of chicken a la king? Deliciously tender chunks of chicken, juicy mushrooms and pops of colour from diced red peppers, all mixed together in a creamy sauce. Serve it over a bed of fluffy white rice and you will have a meal that is fit for a king.

Chicken a la king is one of those classic dishes that has stood the test of time, and remained reasonably true to the original recipe. My version calls for red peppers rather than green because I like the hint of sweetness the red peppers provide. I also like to add peas for little pops of additional colour and flavour.

Quick and easy

Because this dish is made with leftovers, it is super quick to make. You just fry up the vegetables, whip up a sauce, combine with the chicken and your dish is ready. On the table in less than 30 minutes. What could be easier?

Save time and money

Have you ever made a roast chicken and ended up throwing the carcass away, even though there was still a lot of meat left on it? You probably intended putting it on sandwiches, but just never got around to it and there wasn’t quite enough left over to make a full meal.

Here are some handy tips to make sure you save both time and money

• Next time you make a roast chicken, just shred and freeze the left-over meat. By the time you’ve frozen the meat from 2 or 3 leftover chickens you’ll have enough meat to combine into a delicious chicken a la king.
• If you are like me, you always end up cooking too much rice. Each time you end up with leftover rice, don’t throw it in the bin, just let it cool and then pop it into a ziploc bag and freeze. Top up the bag each time you have leftover rice, and in no time you will have a enough cooked frozen rice for a complete meal. Just defrost and heat it in the microwave and serve covered with the delicious chicken a la king.

Ingredients for chicken a la king

You can get the complete list of ingredients and full instructions on how to make this recipe on the printable recipe card at the end of this post.

You are going to need the following ingredients:

Ingredient	Quantity
For the chicken
Red bell pepper (diced)	1 cup
Onion (diced)	1 cup
Mushrooms (diced)	1 cup
Frozen peas	1/2 cup
Cooked chicken (shredded or diced)	3 cups
For the sauce
Butter	3 Tablespoons
Cornflour	2 – 3 Tablespoons
Milk	2 cups
Single Cream	150 ml
Other
Olive Oil (for frying the vegetables)	2 Tablespoons
Salt and Pepper	To taste

How to make chicken a la king

If you follow my easy steps you can have this dish on the table in 30 minutes.

Prepare the chicken

If you are using leftover chicken – just shred it (image 1 above). For 4 people you will need about 3 cups of chicken.

If you don’t have leftover chicken you can follow the simple steps below to poach the juciest chicken breast ever. You will need 1 medium-sized chicken breast per person.

The foolproof way to a perfectly poached chicken breast

1. Place chicken breasts in a saucepan of cold water and season with salt and pepper. There should be just enough water to cover the chicken.
2. Bring to the boil.
3. Once the chicken is boiling, put a lid on the saucepan and turn off the heat.
4. The chicken will continue to cook in the heat from the boiling water.
5. As soon as it is cool you can remove it from the water and and slice it.
6. The chicken will be perfectly cooked, and wonderfully moist and juicy.

Prepare the vegetables

I like to use white button or closed cap mushrooms because they keep their colour when cooked. You can use the open brown mushrooms, but they are going to turn your sauce brown when you add them.

Chop the red pepper and onions into 1cm dice (image 2 above). Chop the mushrooms into quarters (image 3 above).

Pour the olive oil into a small saucepan and gently fry the red pepper and onion until soft. Take your time with this step. Don’t allow the onions to brown. Brown onions are going to turn the sauce brown and we want the sauce to be lovely and white.

Add the mushrooms. Put the lid on the saucepan, turn down the heat to the lowest setting and let the vegetables continue to cook until the mushrooms have softened.

Make the sauce

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Mix 2 Tablespoons of cornflour into the milk and add to the melted butter in the saucepan. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and allow to simmer , stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens.

If the sauce does not thicken sufficiently, mix the remaining tablespoon of cornflour into a little milk and add a drizzle at a time to the sauce over a low heat, stirring continuously, until the desired consistency is reached.

You should end up with a nice thick white sauce.

Add the vegetables, chicken, peas and cream

Add the fried vegetables, chicken and frozen peas to the sauce and stir well to combine. Stir in the cream.

Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Allow it to simmer for 5 minutes to allow the flavours to combine. Don’t let it boil or you run the risk of the cream separating.

Serve over cooked rice, with a green leafy salad on the side. You may also like to serve this dish with spicy mushroom rice.

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Convert grams to cups

To help you convert your recipes, I have created a handy Cookery Conversion Calculator which will convert ingredients between grams, ounces, tablespoons, cups and millilitres. I hope you will find it useful.

If you live at a high altitude you may find you need to adjust your baking recipes to compensate for this. You can read about how to do this in this post on baking at high altitudes.

Pin for later

Why not pin this easy chicken a la king recipe so you can make it later.

Recipe – Easy Chicken a la King

I am not a nutritionist. The nutrition information has been calculated using an on-line calculator, and is intended for information and guidance purposes only.  If the nutrition information is important to you, you should consider calculating it yourself, using your preferred tool.

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