Mexican Chicken Casserole

Cooking Light, December 1998

This was QUITE tasty, don’t get me wrong, but when I put it together that morning I said, “I hope it tasted better than it looks.” There’s too much cooking liquid with the chicken that goes into the “cheese” sauce. The cream cheese made it creamy, but adding the shredded cheese to a broth mixture, just didn’t look right. It looked curdled. And with all that sauce, the tortillas just melted in the casserole and tasted more like polenta than corn tortillas….rather, I should say tamales than polenta.

This was not helped by the fact that I should have cut the tortillas to fit the pan a little better. They all seemed to meet in the middle and make that center section one solid clump of tortilla mess. So, either make sure your pan is large enough to fit the tortillas, or just cut them so they don’t overlap so much in the middle.

It was really good, though, and I took it for lunch twice this week. I would just cut back on the cooking liquid or allow it to boil down before adding the cream cheese and cheese. I wouldn’t be so concerned if your cheese looks curdled, because it really isn’t.

Measuring cups and spoons

Knife

Cutting board

Large nonstick skillet

Dutch oven or other pot to cook the chicken

Two forks (for shredding the chicken)

Casserole dish