recipe – chicken green chile casserole

This is a recipe I got from Chris Dunn – @Thorobredz on twitter.
I don’t claim to be any great cook, so I’m just going to relate what I did and the reader can adjust to their preferences, rather than give instructions on what “should” be done.

This is pretty simple – just layering some ingredients then baking it: chicken, green chiles, refried beans, and cheese. The layers will be separated by flour tortillas.

I started with about a pound-and-a-half of cooked chicken.

I heated up 2 cans of vegetarian refried beans and diced almost a whole onion and mixed into it, plus quite a bit of granulated garlic and some salt. Since I didn’t season the chicken, I was counting on the beans to carry most of the seasoning. If you want to do it that way, add whatever seasonings you like here. Though, most people would probably just/also season the chicken.

Obviously, fresh chiles would have been best but we are out, so I used two 13oz. containers of Bueno mild chopped green chiles (frozen vegetables section of the grocery store), which are actually very good. If there were no women and children eating it, I would have used their ‘Autumn Roast’ which is really good but fairly hot. I drained as much juice out of these as I could. The juice can make the tortillas soggy, BUT the juice adds a lot of flavor, so decide for yourself which way you want to try it.

I used a mixture of some pepper jack cheese i grated and some shredded “fiesta blend” cheese from a bag, as this was what I had on hand. If I had to guess, I would say it added up to four cups.

For the final ingredients prep, I toasted four burrito-size flour tortillas.

Time to build it.

This was four layers, so, I used a fourth of the ingredients in each layer.
Last time I made this, I also added a final (fifth) tortilla on top and cheese on top of that. I didn’t do that this time – if you do, you’ll obviously need some more cheese.

I used a little non-stick spray stuff in a casserole dish, 10×10 and 4 deep.
I started by laying a tortilla in the bottom then spread some refried beans, then the chile, then the chicken, then the cheese. I shredded the chicken with my fingers as I went, btw. But, last time, i just diced it. I think we all liked it better shredded.

Needless to say, just keep doing that – we found the amount of ingredients distributed really well into four layers. The toasting of the tortillas helps them to not be as soggy.
For the top, i diced up maybe a quarter each of a red, yellow, and orange bell pepper, mainly for looks.

I baked it for about half an hour at around 350-400 (this stupid oven doesn’t hold consistent temp!), covered.

BTW, I used a very sharp knife to slice it when done so the layers didn’t squish. And be sure to slice thoroughly so it is all seperated and you don’t get surprises when you go to serve it. And wiggle it a bit in case the bottom tortilla stuck.

I served it with guacamole, sour cream, shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, and some chips on the side.

I am thinking I could do some nice things with rice in there next time or on the side.

Now, that whole thing took me a couple hours to make (incuding bake time) but I am notoriously slow so I would say most people would take an hour.

I hope I didn’t leave anything out.
If I had known I was gonna’ post this, I would’ve taken a pic :P

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