King Ranch Chicken Casserole

This King Ranch Chicken Casserole recipe gives you strong, spicy flavors that will stay in your memory forever. Chicken is one of the best ingredients to use in the kitchen when you want a protein-heavy dish, so take advantage of it. Despite the spice, this is a family friendly King Ranch Chicken Casserole; the spice comes from canned tomatoes and green chiles, preferably from the Ro-Tel brand, and a small amount of ground chili powder, which you can adjust.

This quick King Ranch Chicken Casserole recipe is basically chicken-cheese casserole with Texas flavors. Tomatoes, chiles, garlic, tortillas, and the shredded cheese of your choice (cheddar is recommended) combine with chicken and cream of chicken soup to give you a very sturdy and comforting main dish. The ingredients are layered like a Southwestern or Texan version of chicken lasagna. This particular recipe makes only a 9×9 square, but you can double it to serve more people. It’s a great potluck dish, and while it’s not as well-known outside Texas and surrounding states, you’ll find people who know and love the dish.

If you’ve never tried King Ranch Chicken Casserole before, try this recipe. I think you’ll find that this simple King Ranch Chicken Casserole meal is a keeper.

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Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• It’s simple! You literally cook the vegetables and then layer everything in a pan. It takes more time to gather the ingredients from the fridge and spice rack than it does to put the casserole together. OK, not really. But that cooking and layering goes by really quickly!
• Are you learning to cook? This easy King Ranch Chicken Casserole for beginners is a great first choice for learning how to make casseroles.
• It’s a great way to use up cooked leftover chicken!
• It is tasty, tasty, tasty. You can’t go wrong with these ingredients in terms of flavor as long as you don’t overdo the spice.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 30-35 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients:

Cooking spray

1 Bell Pepper (Chopped)

1 Onion (Chopped)

2-3 cup Chicken (Shredded)

2 cans Fat free cream of chicken soup

10 oz. Can Ro-Tel

8 Corn tortillas

1 tsp. Chili Powder

1 tsp. Garlic Powder

¼ cup Reduced fat Cheese (Shredded)

Pepper to taste

Ingredient Notes & Substitutions

Cooking spray: You’ve got to grease the baking dish, and cooking spray does the job well. When you spray it on the dish, take a paper towel or basting brush and lightly spread the sprayed oil around the dish. You can use regular cooking oil and butter, too, but the spray is more convenient.

Cooked chicken: Raw chicken may not cook thoroughly in this casserole despite the 35-minute cook time. Use cooked chicken only. Also be aware that if you use leftover chicken and not chicken that you’ve just cooked, that will affect how long you can safely store the leftovers.

Ro-Tel: Use the original diced tomatoes and green chiles version for the classic casserole. However, you can try using other varieties, too. And yes, you can use store-brand tomatoes and chiles if you don’t have Ro-Tel.

Corn tortillas: Don’t use flour tortillas. Those won’t taste right in the casserole.

Chili powder and pepper: You can adjust these if you prefer a less spicy and bitey casserole.

How to Make It

Step 1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and grease a 9×9 baking dish well. Don’t skip this step unless you like scrubbing stuck food off of baking dishes!

Step 2. Cook the bell pepper and onion until softened. This should take only a few minutes. You’re not caramelizing anything, just softening it so that the casserole doesn’t have oddly tough bits of undercooked veggies.

Step 3. Mix the chicken, Rotel, soup, chili powder, garlic powder and pepper into the skillet with the vegetables. This version uses fat-free cream of chicken, but you can use regular, too. Just keep an eye on those nutrition counts because the dish is already rather high in fat.

Step 4. Layer one-third of the tortillas in the casserole dish, and top with one-third of the chicken mixture. Layering the ingredients in multiple layers improves texture and flavor.

Step 5. Add two more layers of tortilla and then chicken mixtures. Use everything up by the third layer.

Step 6. Sprinkle the cheese on top. All over. Spread it around to cover the whole casserole.

Step 7. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Always check the internal temperature with an instant-read thermometer to ensure it reaches at least 165F in the middle.

Enjoy!

Tips for Success

You may want to (if you have time and energy) shred cheese yourself instead of using the bagged stuff. The bagged, pre-shredded cheese will melt, but it can sometimes contain anti-caking agents that interfere with melting just enough to affect texture. But if all you have is bagged and pre-shredded, that will work out fine in this casserole.

Make the casserole first with basic diced tomatoes and chiles first (Ro-Tel or store brand) so that you know what the casserole is supposed to taste like before making variations.

Storage & Reheating

This is the best King Ranch Chicken Casserole recipe, so you’ll want to save leftovers. Move the remaining casserole to an airtight container and refrigerate. Eat the rest of the casserole within a couple of days if the chicken was cooked the same day you made the casserole. If you used leftover cooked chicken, however, then how long you store this depends on how long the chicken was stored. If you had that chicken for two days already, you don’t really want to store leftovers from the casserole.

Serving Suggestions

Homemade King Ranch Chicken Casserole ideas for accompanying dishes are many. This is a rich, cheesy casserole, though, so any dishes you serve with it should be a little lighter in texture for balance. A vegetable side dish like these Air Fryer Green Beans and some cornbread would be good matches for a healthy king ranch chicken casserole version of a meal. Or, try these Parker House Rolls if you don’t want cornbread.

Notes

No one’s really sure who first made King Ranch Chicken Casserole. A lot of people like to say it was former First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson who invented it, but there are basically no records linking her to its creation. There is a King Ranch in Texas, but there’s no record of the ranch inventing the casserole, either. What is notable about Lady Bird Johnson and this casserole is that she mentioned using Ro-Tel brand tomatoes when she’d make it, and that helped make the Ro-Tel company very famous!

King Ranch Chicken Casserole

Prep Time: 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 35 minutes minutes

Total Time: 55 minutes minutes

Learn howto prepare this King Ranch ChickenCasserole recipe with us and become an expert in the kitchen.

4 from 2 votes

Review Recipe

Ingredients 

• Cooking spray
• 1 Bell Pepper, Chopped
• 1 Onion, Chopped
• 2-3 cup Chicken, Shredded
• 2 cans Fat free cream of chicken soup
• 10 oz. Can Rotel
• 8 Corn tortillas
• 1 tsp. Chili Powder
• 1 tsp. Garlic Powder
• ¼ cup Reduced fat Cheese, Shredded
• Pepper to taste

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and grease a 9x9 baking dish well.
• Cook the bell pepper and onion until softened in a skillet sprayed with cooking spray on the stove.
• Mix the chicken, Rotel, soup, chili powder, garlic powder and pepper into the skillet with the vegetables.
• Layer ⅓ of the tortillas pieces in the casserole dish, and top with ⅓ of the chicken mixture.
• Add two more layers of tortilla and then chicken mixture.
• Sprinkle the cheese on top.
• Bake for 30-35 minutes.
• Enjoy!