Pinteresting Summer

Challenge 22-Doritos Chicken Bake

I'm finally back from my sojourn to Ohio and even with my best intentions of trying out pins while I was visiting, I still failed miserably. It is just too hard to visit, keep your eyes on a three year old, and try out pins at the same time. However my mom did try one with Kathryn while she was babysitting that turned out pretty cool that I will post pictures up of soon. Now on the the star of the post-the Doritos chicken bake.

I pinned this one not to long ago and when I was deciding what to make for dinner yesterday, I immediately recalled this one in my memory and decided to give it a go. The recipe comes from http://www.jamhands.net/2008/12/mexican-chicken-casserole.html (which is a really cute blog for mom's by the way)

Mexican Dorito Casserole 

Serves 4-6

2 c. shredded cooked chicken
1 c. shredded cheese (or more if you are a cheese hound)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
1 can Ro-tel tomatoes (canned tomatoes with jalapenos-mild)
1/2 packet taco seasoning (or more- to taste)
Bag of doritos

1. Pre-heat oven to 350-f degrees.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except doritos.

3. In a greased 2 qt baking dish, put a layer of crushed doritos (about 2 cups), then a layer of the chicken mixture. Repeat once more, ending with a layer of chicken mixture. Top with more shredded cheese, cover, and bake for 30-35 minutes, till bubbling hot.

Now I always make my shredded chicken in the crockpot-throw in a crockpot liner, about a cup of chicken broth, 3 or 4 frozen chicken breasts, salt, pepper and turn it on high for 4 hours. The chicken will be cooked, tender, and super easy to shred.

The instructions are pretty straight forward and easy to follow (a major plus). Just throw everything in a bowl and mix it up.

Before mixing

After mixing

Be careful when crushing up the Doritos for the bottom of the casserole dish, my fingers were coated in cheesiness pretty quickly and I had to rinse them off twice during the process. I had trouble with the first layer when I poured the chicken on top of the Doritos, the chips wanted to mix in with the chicken instead of staying on the bottom like they were supposed to. I did my best to spread them around and same for the second layer.

Oven ready

I used about 3/4 of a cup of cheddar cheese for the top and I covered it with foil like the instructions indicated. Timer was set for 30 minutes and it came out of the oven looking like this:

Taste wise this casserole is delicious. The Rotel (or Great Value diced tomatoes and green chilies) does give it a bit of a kick but nothing crazy. It is pretty high calorie (I was too afraid to put all the ingredients into the calorie counter app) but if you practice portion control it isn't too terrible. Now the only thing I was disappointed in was that the Doritos got soggy while baking and I was missing that wonderful crunchiness I love about them. I remedied this by adding a few crushed chips on top of my serving. (I used about 3/4 of the bag in the recipe)

This would be a great covered dish for a party and makes a great all around dinner, however the spiciness made it not so toddler friendly (which I think she was OK with since she got to have cereal for dinner instead).