King Ranch Chicken (DDD)

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large onion chopped
• 1 large green bell pepper chopped
• 2 small stalks of celery chopped
• 6 cloves of garlic minced
• 6 oz of button mushrooms chopped
• 1/4 or 1/3 cup of white wine
• 2 teaspoons of kosher salt or more to taste
• 1/2 tsp black pepper or more if you like
• 1 tablespoon of cumin or more if you like
• 1 tablespoon of chili powder or more if you like
• 1 can of Rotel tomatoes with chiles
• 1/3 cup of flour enough to make a roux
• 2 cups of chicken stock
• 1/2 cup of whole milk or half and half
• corn or flour tortillas about 1 dozen, I used flour
• monterey jack cheese
• cheddar cheese
• 1 whole rotisserie chicken from the deli dark and light meat removed and shredded

Instructions

1. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Get a large casserole dish or 9×13 pan out. Start by heating your vegetable oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Then saute your onions, pepper and celery till translucent. Add your minced garlic and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add your mushrooms and cook through, I added a bit more veg oil to help the mushrooms cook. Deglaze your pan with the white wine and cook veggies in wine till mostly absorbed. Add salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder and Rotel with chiles and mix together, let cook for a minute.
2. Then add your flour to make a roux. Whisk flour in slowly till the veggies and flour form almost a gravy, dough or a thick paste like concoction. After it has thickened add the chicken stock and whisk to get the roux to loosen up and combine with the stock. Once it has loosened into sort of a soup, add the half and half or milk and whisk. Cook over medium/low heat for a few minutes to bring all elements together and reduce to thicken into a nice sauce.
3. Take off heat and put a few spoonfuls of sauce in bottom of casserole dish so tortillas won’t stick. Then put down a layer of tortillas, 1/3 of shredded chicken and 1/4 of shredded cheeses, topped with dots of the sauce sort of spread out over it. Then repeat layers 2 more times, so there are 3 layers of yumminess total. Top with additional layer of tortillas, sauce and then cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or so uncovered and keep an eye on it, mine was done at about 35 mins in my oven. Slice in to this puppy and enjoy the best dish my husband says I have made in a long time. It is sort of like a mexican lasagna or enchilada casserole and you won’t be disappointed!