The Mystery of the Poppyseed Chicken Recipe

I moved from the comfort of my home with my California-transplant parents in Memphis to the somewhat small town of Montgomery, Alabama to pursue an after-college career in newspaper. I knew no one in that town and to make friends I did what any good Southern girl would do – I started attending church. Since I wasn’t raised practicing religion, I knew very little of the differences between Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist and so on. In my ignorance, I would choose churches to visit based on proximity to my apartment and detail of architecture. For a young liberal in a highly conservative community, I made quite few wrong turns on my road to faith and fellowship.

Poppy Seed Chicken sans the Ritz

I finally found a home with a large Methodist church and quickly wove myself into the comfort of a singles Sunday school class. And it was here that I began to discover just how awkward I was, a girl raised in the South by parents who were anything but Southern. (For starters, that not-raised-with-religion thing made me an outcast that I only recently began to appreciate. Eating avocadoes over fried okra was another….but that’s a story for another day.)

One day my Sunday school class went on a field trip to visit some sort of Christmas village and peek at the famous Boll Weevil Monument in the thriving metropolis of Enterprise, Alabama. Afterwards we headed over to the gracious home of one of our members’ parents for lunch. The mother had one of those almost liquid drawls that rolled past her lips so softly you almost didn’t see her mouth move. And she, too, barely moved – instead floating in one place as a team of African American women dressed in matching white uniforms scurried around her lighting silver chafing dishes and shining white dinner plates with white cotton dish towels. (Some things never change here.) It was an amazing site. Because food has always been of the utmost importance to me, I asked what our gracious host was serving us for lunch. My friend Emily (who to this day remains one of my very dearest friends) clapped her hands and said, “Poppy Seed Chicken.”

I melted. It had been less than a year since I moved away from my parents’ home in Memphis to live on my own in a town where I knew only a handful of people. And now someone was making my mother’s signature dish, the one my sister and I requested almost weekly. Poppy Seed Chicken. “My mother makes that!” I told Emily.

“So does mine and every mother, for that matter,” Emily said. Shocker there for me. After the blessing, Emily and I cued up at the chafing dishes and pulled back the heavy silver dome only to find a spread of shredded chicken mixed in a cloud of creamy white-with-black-speckles sauce and topped with orange-colored crackers. “This is not Poppy Seed Chicken,” I said to Emily.

“Oh yes it is,” she said. “Everyone makes it. Same basic recipe. Some people don’t add poppy seeds, though, so I guess that would be called just Chicken Casserole.”

What our host had served was what I have since learned is in fact Poppy Seed Chicken, also known as Chicken Casserole, which is made by mixing together shredded chicken, cream of chicken or mushroom soup and sour cream and topping with crumbled Ritz crackers and baked until hot and bubbly. The variations are endless, depending on which church cookbook you look through, with a sprinkle of poppy seeds in the sauce or steamed rice on the bottom. It can be served hot or cold and, regardless of how you make it, it’s always good.

I learned later that day that the Poppy Seed Chicken my mother raised us on was in fact called Romanian Smothered Chicken but took on the name of Poppy Seed Chicken when my sister and I were young. That recipe calls for bone-in chicken breasts browned in butter. Then you pour in a mixture of chicken broth (one to two cups), nonfat yogurt or sour cream (about a cup), seasoning salt (a tablespoon or two), chopped parsley and poppy seeds. Cover and simmer until done. Add a shot of lemon juice (maybe a teaspoon or two) to the sauce and serve over steamed white rice.

I have my mother’s Romanian Smothered Chicken recipe, which I make from time to time. I have made a Chicken Casserole once or twice, but honestly, my MIL seems to make it much better so I’ll leave that up to her. Must be something you’re born into, like a charming Southern accent. At least my son will know the mystery of Poppy Seed Chicken. And now, so do you.

Photo, Flickr, House of Sims