King Ranch Casserole

I’m always glad when February comes around.  February means I’ve gotten through the post-holiday blues of January, and March and better times are just around the corner. That said, February is the month I usually spend trying out “new to me ” recipes, and this week I made a King Ranch Casserole.

Despite the claim in Cook’s Illustrated that this was a healthy alternative to the traditional recipe which uses condensed cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soup, don’t get your hopes up.  When a casserole contain two pounds of shredded Cojack cheese and almost an entire bag of crushed Fritos it will be many things  (tasty and heavy as a cinder block) but healthy/calorie conscious is not one of them.

I placed a link to the recipe below so you can try it yourself, but here’s a few photos of and comments on my own casserole prep.

Two finely chopped onions, two minced jalapenos, a tablespoon of unsalted butter, two teaspoons of freshly ground cumin and two cans of Ro-tel tomatoes.  I cored and seeded the jalapenos to reduce the heat quotient.  Next time I am going to include the core and seeds of one of the jalapenos to bump up the heat.

Next I added chicken stock, boneless skinless chicken breast, heavy cream and flour.  I used King Arthur’s Unbleached All Purpose flour and it gave the roux a nice color.

I added two pounds of shredded Cojack cheese to the casserole and lined a 9″ x 13″ casserole dish with oven-crisped corn tortillas.  I then poured half of the casserole filling over the tortillas.

I then added a second layer of corn tortillas on top of the first filling layer and poured the remaining filling on top.

I covered the casserole with foil and baked in the oven at 450F.  After 30 minutes I removed the foil, covered the casserole with crushed Fritos and baked an additional 10 minutes.

Here’s the finished casserole.  As good as it was the evening I made it, it was as good if not better reheated over the next few days.  It took us three days to finish off the entire dish.

Here’s a link to the recipe for King Ranch Casserole.  Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.