Cheesy Chicken Casserole [Recipe]

Hands down this is probably my favorite food on the planet. From the chicken and noodles down to the extreme cheesiness, this dish is extremely simple to make and has been a staple in my life as far back as I can remember.

To this day I still request that we have Cheesy Chicken Casserole for dinner on my birthday, whether I’m making it or we’re visiting my parents and my mom is making it, if we’re not going out to eat, this is the meal that I choose.

I’m a pretty simple guy when it comes to the recipes I know how to make. I can make grilled cheese sandwiches, I can make fried bologna sandwiches, I can make other types of sandwiches… and then I can make this chicken casserole dish.

There are only a few ingredients and the cooking part basically involves boiling some spaghetti noodles and cooking up some chicken. Then you mix all the ingredients together in a casserole dish and throw it in the over for 45 minutes to bake together. It’s extremely simple and absolutely delicious.

Chicken Casserole Recipe

Ingredients

2 Cups Chopped Boneless Chicken Breasts (Cooked)
10-3/4 oz. Can of Cream of Chicken Soup
4 ozs. Spaghetti (Cooked and Drained)
1/2 Cup of Milk
2 Cups of Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Preparation

Pre-heat the oven to 350-degrees.

1. Cook the chicken in a skillet. You need to make sure the chicken is cooked before you add it to the casserole or you’re bound to get sick. So just throw the chicken breasts in a skillet or a pan, and cook it up like you would normally cook up some chicken.

2. Boil the spaghetti noodles. Get a nice large pot and boil up some water, then throw some spaghetti noodles in the boiling water and cook until done, then drain. I know the recipe says 4 oz. of spaghetti noodles, but I’m absolutely awful when it comes to measuring out spaghetti. I believe that around 2 oz. of uncooked spaghetti is a single serving, but it always seems to be a lot more. So in this case I would just suggest cooking a bunch of spaghetti based on how many people are going to be eating this.

Note: this recipe does freeze very well, so if you make too much, you can always freeze it and heat it up at a later time. It’s always a nice surprise when I find a frozen bag of this in the freezer.

Making the Casserole

It’s up to you how you want to handle this next step, but I usually leave the drained spaghetti noodles in the pot I used to cook them and mix everything in there, then transfer the mixture to a casserole dish, but if you have a large enough casserole dish that you can easily mix things in, then feel free to do this all in the casserole dish itself.

1. Mix everything together. Take the cooked chicken, the cooked (and drained) spaghetti, the can of cream of chicken soup, the milk and 1 cup of the shredded cheddar cheese and mix them all up in a casserole dish (or the pot used for the spaghetti, as I mentioned above).

Note: for the cheese, I usually just dump the majority of the bag of shredded cheese into the mixture, saving a little bit to use at the end to top the casserole with. I definitely do not measure out any cups worth of cheese in this recipe and it tastes amazing. Just note that at the end of the day, use the entire (normal size) bag of shredded cheese.

2. Once everything is mixed together and in a casserole dish, throw that thing in the oven for 45 minutes.

3. At around the 42 minute mark, or so, open the oven and sprinkle the rest of the bag of cheese on top of the casserole and throw it back in for a few minutes until the cheese melts on top.

4. Once the cheese has melted on the top, remove the chicken casserole from the oven and spoon out onto your plates. Don’t be shy, you’re going to want to take a lot… it’s that good.

Once you’re at the table, top the casserole with some salt and dig in, then come back here and tell me it’s not the most unhealthy, most delicious casserole you’ve ever tasted… ok, don’t do that. I may just be crazy and it may taste like garbage, but I absolutely love everything about this thing.

After you’ve cleared your plates, if there’s any of the chicken casserole left in the dish, scoop it out and put it in Tupperware containers, or just straight into plastic freezer bags, and freeze it up for later. Or, if you’re like me and you know you’re just going to eat it for lunch the next day, pop it in the fridge and reheat it in the microwave. It tastes just as good the 2nd time as it did the first time.

And there you have it, one of the most complicated dishes I can make well, Cheesy Chicken Casserole.

It may not be the most involved meal on earth, but it’s always a fan favorite around my house, and has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid. It’s one of those recipes that I will pass down to my kids when they get a little bit older so that they can start making it for me on my birthday while I sit back and relax, ha!