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Quick and Easy Chicken Tortilla Casserole
If you like Mexican food, this casserole is everything you love the most all mixed onto one delicious dish. Tomatoes, chicken, cheese, green chilies, and even corn tortillas make this one amazing meal. And the ingredients don't have to stop there!
With this great dish, you can easy make it something completely different just by mixing up the ingredients within. Why not try tomatoes, green chilies, and jalapenos one night, and then onions, black beans and corn the next? You could even throw in some queso and make this a whole new meal!
What makes this meal even more flexible is the creativity you can have in how you serve it.
The first night we ate this for dinner like a dip with tortilla chips. The next night we had it for leftovers over rice. Seeing as how we still had plenty left after two meals, we made nachos with the rest of it and covered it with more cheese.
Just like all of my other recipes, this one allows for a lot of creativity on the part of the cook.
Use cream cheese instead of the sour cream for a slightly sweeter taste. Add in jalapenos for a slightly spicier dish. You can even substitute or remove some off the vegetables altogether.
Cook Time
Ingredients
- 1 large chicken breast
- 2 large green chilies
- 1 large green pepper
- 2 large tomatoes
- 1 large yellow onion
- 1 (10.75oz) can black beans
- 1 (8oz) container sour cream
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 (10.75oz) can cream of chicken soup, see my Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup recipe for alternative
- 1 (8 count) package corn tortillas
- 3 cups shredded cheese
- 1 large jalapeno, if desired
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare a 9x13 casserole dish by spraying it generously with cooking spray.
- You will want to prepare your chicken to be used in your casserole by cooking it first. If it is fresh and thawed, then great. You can begin cooking it right away.
- If not, you will need to thaw it out. The best and safest way to do this is to set it out in your refrigerator overnight to thaw slowly.
- You can also thaw it in the sink under room temperature water, or thaw it in the microwave (like we do).
- Now instead of cooking it in the oven slowly for a long period of time, we thought we'd make this quick. We cook our in a saute pan on the stove. To do this heat a saute pan (with a cover) over medium heat.
- Add your thawed chicken and cover. Cook for about 5-10 minutes until brown, and then flip. Do the same on the other side.
- While your chicken is cooking, mix your cream of chicken soup, sour cream, and milk until well blended in a large bowl.
- On the side, chop your tomatoes until you reach the desired size. We dump ours into our food processor to save chopping time and get them pretty small.
- Add them to your soup mixture.
- Now chop your green chilies. Make sure to remove the stem and seeds before chopping to keep the heat down on the casserole. We dump ours into our food processor after chopping them roughly, to save chopping time and get them pretty small. No one wants to bite down on a huge piece of hot green chile.
- Add your chopped green chilies to your mixture.
- Finally chop your green bell pepper. I love bell peppers and wouldn't mind at all chomping into a piece of this, but I still dump mine into my food processor to save chopping time and get them pretty small. I want my casserole to be pretty consistent.
- Add your bell pepper to your mixture.
- If you would like to add any additional ingredients to your casserole, this would be a great time to do so.
- If you are using corn, black beans, or anything else canned, make sure to drain the liquid from it first before adding it to your casserole mixture.
- When your chicken is done, you'll want to either chop it roughly or shred it. BY shredding it, you can spread it through your casserole more evenly and will need less chicken.
- Dump this into your mixture and mix in.
- Now chop your corn tortillas into small pieces and mix them into your casserole mixture as well.
- Finally, add 1 cup of your shredded cheese and mix everything in really well.
- Spread your mixture evenly in your casserole dish and cover with aluminum foil. Bake for 40 minutes.
- After 40 minutes, remove your aluminum foil cover, sprinkle your last 1/2 cup of cheese on top and bake for 5-10 minutes longer.
- Yummy! Yummy!
Nutritional Information
| Nutrition Facts | |
|---|---|
| Serving size: 1 serving | |
| Calories | 270 |
| Calories from Fat | 99 |
| % Daily Value * | |
| Fat 11 g | 17% |
| Saturated fat 5 g | 25% |
| Unsaturated fat 0 g | |
| Carbohydrates 22 g | 7% |
| Sugar 4 g | |
| Fiber 2 g | 8% |
| Protein 22 g | 44% |
| Cholesterol 60 mg | 20% |
| Sodium 610 mg | 25% |
| * The Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet, so your values may change depending on your calorie needs. The values here may not be 100% accurate because the recipes have not been professionally evaluated nor have they been evaluated by the U.S. FDA. | |
Personal Review
One of the best things I love about this dish, other than it's Mexican flavors, is that I can use just one single chicken breast without feeling like I'm skimping on meat.
I also love that it works wonderfully regardless of the ingredients you have on hand. When we made this the other night, I had no sour cream. We could have easily substituted it with cream cheese, mayo (gross!), or any number of other ingredients, but we decided just to eliminate it altogether.
It turned out just delicious, even without one ingredient. We didn't have anything exciting like black beans or corn at the moment, so we added additional fresh tomatoes and green chilies to pump up the flavor.
However, we just got back from the grocery store and made sure to grab the sour cream, the black beans, and the corn. Now we're going to make it again, with a different kind of twist!
