Y'all, this is the best dinner ever for those busy weeknights and the days when you have more month than paycheck! It's creamy and full of gooey cheese - tastes kind of like chicken enchiladas but SO much easier.
Next time try this classic creamy chicken spaghetti with Rotel!
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❤️ Why you'll love it
- Less than 10 minutes of prep time!
- Family friendly comfort food for over 70 years!
- Assemble it ahead, make it ahead, freeze it... this Tex-Mex casserole can handle it all!
There are a lot of versions of the classic King Ranch chicken casserole recipe but the original is quick, easy, and has stood the test of time.
Chicken, Rotel tomatoes with chiles, and onion are mixed with a creamy, rich sauce and layered in a casserole dish with corn tortillas and a generous amount of cheese.
It's one of those easy recipes you find at church suppers and neighborhood block parties.
This Tex-Mex casserole freezes well, travels well, and disappears fast whether it's on the family table or at a potluck - you can't really ask for more than that.
🧾 Ingredients
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- chicken breast (cooked, leftover chicken, or rotisserie chicken)
- butter
- yellow onion
- red or green bell pepper (or both)
- Rotel tomatoes
- cream of chicken soup
- cream of mushroom soup
- corn tortillas
- Cheddar cheese
🔪 Instructions
- Preheat oven and prepare a baking dish according to instructions in recipe card below. In a large skillet saute onion and bell pepper in butter.
- Remove from heat and stir in soups, Rotel, and chicken.
- Layer with the cut up tortillas, chicken mixture, and cheese. Repeat layers.
- Bake. Top with a little fresh cilantro before serving.
Slow cooker instructions
Yes! You can make this easy King Ranch Chicken casserole recipe in a slow cooker! It's just as yummy with layers of corn tortillas, gooey cheese, and creamy chicken filling!
- Spray the inside of the crockpot with nonstick cooking spray.
- Mix the soups, rotel, veggies, and cooked chicken.
- Layer the tortillas, soup mixture, and cheese in the crock pot.
- Set on low for 4 hours. Uncover the last 30 minutes of cooking time.
🥄 Equipment
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You'll need the following items to make this recipe successfully.
🎥 Video
Click on the image to watch me make this easy meal from start to finish with extra tips! (Video opens in a new tab).
🥫 Storage
You can assemble this a day or two ahead of time and bake when you're ready.
Let the leftovers come to room temperature and then cover with plastic wrap or put in an airtight container and refrigerate promptly. They'll be fine for 4 or 5 days.
Freeze for longer storage.
To freeze
Casseroles like this King Ranch chicken are a life saver for busy people. I like to make a double batch and freeze one for those times when my life is spinning out of control OR someone from church needs dinner.
Let cool to room temperature. Wrap the casserole dish in plastic wrap then in aluminum foil and freeze.
You can freeze this for up to 6 months with no problem and, full disclosure, I once found one in the freezer that was over a year old and it tasted fine.
To thaw- let thaw overnight in the refrigerator, remove aluminum foil and plastic wrap, and bake according to instructions.
💭 Tips
Expert Tip: Give the aluminum foil a good spray with nonstick cooking spray before covering the casserole. It will keep the melty cheese from sticking.
- Use reduced sodium soups to lower sodium in this recipe if you need to. It will still taste great.
- Save time by using shredded chicken or rotisserie chicken.
- Try frozen green bell peppers or the diced bell peppers and onions in the produce section of the store.
- Assemble this on Sunday night and keep it in the refrigerator. You'll just need to pop it in the oven for a quick meal on the busiest weeknight. Better yet double the recipe and freeze one for another time.
- Manufacturer's have downsized! I've had to downsize the size of the pans - if you've been making this recipe for awhile you may notice that the pan is smaller.
👩🍳 FAQs
Well, like so many things in my state there are a lot of tall tales! It's named after the biggest ranch in the Lone Star state (King Ranch is bigger than Rhode Island) and most likely was created in the 1940s or 50s but no one knows by whom. If you grew up in Texas you had it in the school cafeteria pretty much weekly.
If you can't find Rotel go ahead and use a 10 oz can of diced tomatoes (undrained) and a 4 oz can of green chiles (undrained). If the measurements are a little more don't sweat it.
No. So here's the deal. If you use flour tortillas they will break down in the sauce and became tasteless and gluey - something like that baby cereal that you try to get your baby to eat when they are tiny - only you end up wearing it instead. Please use corn tortillas.
🥄 Cook along!
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🍽️ Serve with...
Looking for what to serve with this King Ranch casserole recipe? I've got you!
- Salad
- Tortilla chips and honeydew salsa
- Cowboy caviar
- Southern green beans (leave out the potatoes - there's enough carbs!)
- Texas sheet cake
- White Texas sheet cake
- Pecan pie with cinnamon ice cream
- Mmmm.... Ranch style beans - straight out of the can and warmed up... Just like mom used to make.
📚 Related recipes
Here are some more of my favorite comfort food casserole recipes!
📞 The last word
Traditional King Ranch chicken with Rotel is absolutely the ultimate comfort food just the way Mom made it...It's not too spicy nor too bland.
It's so easy to make - you can even make it ahead of time. Book mark this recipe - it's right up there with smothered chicken on the yum scale!
This is a 1950s Junior League kind of recipe. I don't think anyone knows where it got started but it's a classic type of mid-century casserole like the ever popular Monterey Chicken.
Definitely the kind I grew up on. You have to kind of miss those days when it was fine to eat a ton of sodium and fat.
No one ever looked down on my mom because she made a casserole with ingredients out of a can. Cooking in the 1950s and 60s was a quick and easy kind of thing.
If you have time read on below the recipe to find out my concerns about the "Pinterest Perfect Personality Disorder" we've created in our modern society.
If you click on the number of servings in the recipe card you can adjust the measurements up or down for the exact number of servings you need. Don't forget that you can click on "add to collection" to save it to your own, private recipe box!
If you love this recipe please give it 5 stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖 Recipe
King Ranch Chicken Casserole (Original Recipe)
Equipment Needed
- 7x11-inch casserole
Ingredients
- ¼ cup butter
- ½ cup bell pepper, chopped
- ½ cup onion, chopped
- 10.75 ounces condensed cream of chicken soup
- 10.75 ounces condensed cream of mushroom soup,
- 10 ounces diced tomatoes & green chilies, undrained, I use RoTel
- 2 cups chicken breast, cooked and diced
- 12 corn tortillas, 6 inch, cut into bite-size pieces
- 2 cups Cheddar cheese, shredded- about 8-ounces
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F.
- Grease or spray 7x 11-inch baking dish (2 quart) with cooking spray and set aside.
- Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat.
- Add diced bell pepper and onion.
- Cook, stirring often, about 5 minutes or until tender.
- Stir in both soups, undrained tomatoes with chiles, and diced chicken.
- Add about ½ the tortillas to the bottom of the prepared baking pan.
- Top with chicken mixture.
- Sprinkle with ½ the cheese.
- Repeat layers ending with cheese.
- Spray aluminum foil with nonstick spray and cover the casserole dish tightly.
- Bake covered for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 20 minutes more.
- Let stand for 5 minutes before serving.
Slow Cooker
- Spray the inside of a crockpot with nonstick cooking spray.
- Mix the veggies, soups, and chicken in a large bowl.
- Starting with cut up tortillas layer the casserole ingredients as above, ending with cheese.
- Cover and cook on low for 4 hours - remove cover the last 30 minutes of cooking time.
Notes
- Use reduced sodium soups to lower sodium in this recipe if you need to. It will still taste great
- Add ¼ cup green bell pepper.
- Save time by using shredded chicken or rotisserie chicken.
- Try frozen green bell peppers or the diced bell peppers and diced onions in the produce section of the store.
- Assemble this on Sunday night and keep it in the refrigerator. You'll just need to pop it in the oven for a quick meal on the busiest weeknight. Better yet double the recipe and freeze one for another time - it's a great freezer meal.
- It's even better the next day.
- Manufacturers have downsized! I've had to downsize the size of the pans - if you've been making this recipe for awhile you may notice that the pan is smaller.
Nutrition Facts
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We'll never share your email or send you spam. Pinkie swear.The last last word
So I often steer clear of canned, condensed soups - at least I used to. I felt like any recipe was better with homemade sauce.
Not always true.
Not always do-able. I don't care what anyone says.
I do make this King Ranch chicken with a homemade sauce and a few substitutions from time to time but, to be perfectly honest, my family eats the original version better than anything else I've come up with.
Either I've failed as a food blogger mom OR the original version is just that yummy. You can decide for yourself.
I originally posted this King Ranch Casserole recipe in 2008 but when I was searching through the blog posts I couldn't find it anywhere. I have no idea what happened to it but I thought I'd better add it back on the blog.
As a food writer I feel like I have a certain responsibility to inspire y'all to make amazing food with fresh ingredients.
I'd be a liar if I said that I never used convenience foods. Even boxed mac and cheese sometimes, y'all - oh the horror!
Social media has created a generation of women who constantly feel judged for how they parent, how they clean their homes, how they dress, and how they cook.
That's not even a complete list of things we are judged on. When you are a food writer you can add several categories to that list.
Most food bloggers have a tough time admitting that sometimes the recipes are puke-worthy rather than drool-worthy.
Sometimes I glance furtively around at the grocery store hoping that no one who "knows" me sees me buying corn dogs.
I've considered wearing a trench coat and pair of the fake glasses with the nose and moustache (mustache, moustache - both correct) on shopping days.
My kids eat sugary cereals and pop tarts. All but one prefers boxed mac and cheese to homemade AND they'd often rather eat at Whataburger than one of my homecooked meals.
I used to fight it but I finally realized that I don't have to impress anyone with my clean eating habits, my cooking skills, or my menu.
Somedays I have client work that keeps me so busy that I'm thrilled for them to be able to microwave a couple of corn dogs and open a can of green beans.
That, my friends, is reality.
The images that I put on the blog are carefully arranged to look fantastic - or as fantastic as I can make it look.
The food I put in front of my family rarely gets plated like that. Like you, we're a busy group of people and I'm tired of trying to be Pinterest perfect.
I am saying all this to say that I hope when you read Restless Chipotle that you don't feel like the recipes are something you have to live up to. I hope that you see them as every day comfort food that fits your lifestyle... that you can make fit your lifestyle.
I hope you are comfortable substituting canned soup for a sauce when you just don't have time to make it from scratch. And I hope you never feel diminished because of it.
Please don't tell anyone - I'm still struggling with the Pinterest Perfect Personality Disorder.
Very Last Last Word - I Promise
First published November 2008. Last updated September 7, 2021 for better images and to update recipe information and pan sizes.
Patricia A Jensen
Quick question, Mayre. I want to make this for dinner tonight, but don't have the corn tortillas and really don't want to go to the store for one ingredient. Soooooo, what do you think if I substituted layers of Doritos Corn Chips? Since you probably won't be able to respond today (it's Sunday and hopefully you've taken the day off) I'm going to try it. Can't hurt and I'm sure it will be delicious. Thanks for sharing.
Marye
it will work! Emailing you.
Granee
Yummy. Your recipe states 16 ounces of cheese or about a cup, but there are 2 cups in 16 ounces. Thank you for sharing.
Marye
2 cups is an 8 ounce block shredded - which is what is called for in the recipe?
Pam
I make this at lot at my house, but instead of bell peppers I use chopped green chilis. So good.
Maria Williams
I made this recipe exactly as directed Except I used plain Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, and I used canned chicken breast. It was absolutely delicious and so easy and quick to make! Regards
Diane Fallon
I didn't see sour cream in the recipe???
Marye
Because my recipe doesn't use it?
Sara
If you haven't tried using flour tortillas, you should! That's how my mom always made this dish! She also served it topped with sour cream, cilantro, and freshly diced and seeded tomatoes- it was my favorite childhood meal! Just discovered your blog and I love it! I'm saving recipes left and right!
Marye Audet
It's so easy, too. 🙂