Filthy Casual for Life

There is a restaurant here in town that serves King Ranch Chicken. People swear by it. However, I have never been bold enough to give it a try. When I saw that Pioneer Woman had a recipe with the ingredients, it sounded pretty good.

I used the recipe from her cookbook The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Come and Get It! However, she also has a version readily available online here.

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Ingredients

1 large yellow or white onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 yellow bell pepper, diced
1 jalapeno, diced
1 whole chicken, roasted and cooled
1 – 10.5 ounce can cream of mushroom soup
1 – 10.5 ounce can cream of chicken soup
1 – 10.5 ounce can Rotel
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 cups chicken broth
16 corn tortillas, torn into pieces
1 1/2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cups grated Monterey Jack cheese

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Instructions

Gather your ingredients. Make note that I purchased 1 lbs. of shredded chicken to use. I didn’t want to take the time to roast a whole chicken. I’d like to point out that this was plenty of chicken, but the recipe calls for a lot more. While 1 lbs. worked for us, you might want to actually follow the recipe and use all the meat from a whole roasted chicken.

Pre-heat your oven to 350° F. Butter your 9×13 casserole dish. Shred your whole chicken. Prep all of your vegetables.

In a large bowl, mix together the cream of chicken, cream of mushroom, and Rotel.

Once mixed, add in the chili powder, cumin, cayenne, salt, black pepper, and the chicken broth. Stir.

Line the bottom of the buttered casserole dish with half of the torn corn tortillas. Then, layer half of the chicken on top. Add half the diced veggies. It will look like this. How beautiful.

After the veggies, layer on half of the cheeses followed by half of the soup mixture. Repeat the process. The remaining tortillas, chicken, veggies, cheese, soup.

Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove foil and then bake an additional 15 minutes.

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Thoughts

The family really liked it. It is fairly flavorful. However, as I mentioned, we only used 1 lbs. of chicken. You can tell from the picture above that it looks lacking on chicken. It was fine for us, but I think if you want it heartier, you should shred a whole roasted chicken.

Would I make again? Yes. I think I would like to make it an enchilada filling removing the corn tortillas altogether, and filling up flour tortillas instead. I am not a big corn tortilla girl.