Best King Ranch Casserole Ever

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Kick the condensed soup to the side for a better King Ranch Casserole! This famous, Texas-born, stacked enchilada casserole features shredded chicken, corn tortillas, hearty vegetables, cheese, and a creamy Tex-Mex sauce made from scratch. Welcome to the table your new favorite dinner casserole.

WHAT IS KING RANCH CASSEROLE

King Ranch casserole is a stacked enchilada casserole with layers of chicken, cheese, corn tortillas, and quite possibly the best part -- a spiced chicken gravy. This is not your average chicken gravy, folks. It's chock-full of vegetables like mushrooms, bell peppers, celery, and onion, and gets its Tex-Mex vibe thanks to chili powder and cumin. But wait! There's more. Cans of diced, fire-roasted tomatoes, along with green chilis are added to the sauce as well, and I gotta tell ya, the flavor is here is deep, and nothing if not phenomenal.

HOW TO MAKE KING RANCH CASSEROLE

Have the chicken cooked and shredded.
Make the sauce by first sauteeing vegetables, then sprinkling with flour and stirring in the chicken broth. Allow to simmer and thicken.
Soak the tortillas in broth and assemble the casserole.
Bake the casserole.

HAVE THE CHICKEN COOKED READY

To make King Ranch casserole, you'll need to have cooked and shredded chicken ready to rock. You can bake your own chicken breasts, or pick up a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store.

MAKE THE SAUCE

Then, it's time for the sauce, which as I said earlier, is essentially a chicken gravy. Oil, flour, and broth = gravy. However, like I also said earlier, this is not your average gravy, and it begins with a sautée of all those yummy vegetables on the stovetop.

After the vegetables have softened, they get a sprinkling of flour (you could substitute gluten-free flour to make this a gluten-free meal), and the chicken broth goes in, followed by the spices and cilantro. The mixture bubbles until thickened, and the sauce is ready to go to work.

ASSEMBLE THE CASSEROLE

King Ranch casserole is a stacked enchilada casserole, which basically means you're working with layers of corn tortillas. It begins with a little sauce on the bottom of the casserole dish to keep it from sticking on the bottom. Then on goes the first layer of the casserole: Corn tortillas, sauce, shredded chicken, and cheese. The pattern is repeated once more (so that's two full layers) and ends with a top layer of tortillas, sauce, then cheese.

BAKE THE CASSEROLE

The casserole is baked until bubbly, and as hard as it may be, I would advise you to let this one rest for about 15 minutes or so before digging in. This will give the sauce time to set up so that when you cut into it, ingredients don't go oozing out all over the place. However, if you just can't find the willpower to resist digging in right away, it does taste the same...no matter where it sits on your plate.

KING RANCH CASSEROLE FROM SCRATCH

Fresh vegetables and herbs not only add vibrant, new flavors of the casserole, they add a pleasing variation in texture as well. Now, don't get me wrong, as a child, I loved mom's version of King Ranch casserole, but after trying out Texas Monthly's made-from-scratch version, going back to a make-shift Tex-Mex gravy would never be an option.

NEW AND IMPROVED

In comparison to the Texas Monthly recipe I started out with, I cut back on both the amount of butter andgarlic but upped the quantity of chili powder and cumin. Hello, flavor. Next, rather than roasting green chilis, peeling and seeding them, I opted for canned diced green chilis, and while I know using the fresh chilis would add more texture to the casserole, the freshly sautéed mushrooms, bell pepper, and onion were more than sufficient. Lastly, good-bye Rotel, hello fire-roasted tomatoes. Fire-roasted tomatoes have a deep, unparalleled flavor, and are total perfection in King Ranch casserole.