My New Favorite Mexican Casserole

This one is a lot of work. It is a lot of steps, to make basically from scratch a layered style Mexican casserole.

I am very aware that a similar “king ranch” dish can be had just by dumping together several cans of soup and chicken. So I was skeptical – until I tried it and it is amazingly off the hook good and a world away from the cans of soup version. (Which is still good and I’m not doggin’ it, just that this one is better)

2-3 bell peppers diced (I used red,yellow and green for prettiness)

1 medium onion diced (I use 1016 sweet)

Saute in 2T vegetable oil with 1/2 t salt for 10 minutes

Add in three finely chopped garlic cloves

1T canned chipotle in adobo

2t chili powder

1/4 t pepper

Stir in and cook for 30 seconds more.

Add in 1-1.5 pounds ground pork. If you don’t do pork, then it would probably also be good with ground chicken, turkey or beef. I think it would also be good with shredded chicken or leftover beef brisket. But the original recipe calls for pork and I think the pork is really rich and tasty.

So cook the pork for 8 minutes.

Add in and stir 2T flour and cook for 1 minute. So it already gets kind of thick. This is what keeps the tortillas crispy after you layer it all, you need it to be thick and not too runny.

Add 14.5 oz chicken broth and 1 can of diced tomato (including most of the juice)

Cook for ten minutes.

It ends up looking like this:

During the minutes of meat and broth cooking above – get the tortillas crispy by spraying them with cooking spray and popping them into the oven on a cookie sheet in a single layer (12 corn tortillas at 350 for 4-5 minutes)

Use a pizza cutter to stack and cut four of the tortillas, leave the other 8 whole.

Take it off the heat and add 2T lime juice and 1.4 cup fresh chopped cilantro.

In a 13 X 9 pan layer 1/3 mixture, a layer of 4 whole tortillas and 1 C cheddar cheese.

Repeat with second layer.

Repeat with third layer, except using the 4 tortillas cut into wedges. This makes it so that you can cut into the casserole better and you don’t have whole tortillas sliding around and and messing up the layers when you cut into it. 

Bake 15 minutes at 450.

The thing about this is that the tortilla layers stay crispy so when you cut into it you get these nice saucy layers and then the crispy tortilla layers – it’s very pretty and very tasty and has a lot more texture than the typical king ranch style casserole.

I won’t lie, it takes a while, it’s hands on, it makes a mess – but it is so good and really worth the effort in my opinion.