Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Doritos® Cheesy Chicken Casserole found over at Plain Chicken. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Nance’s take:  I picked this recipe because I am a sucker for an all-in-one casserole meal.  And because I was curious to see what a meal that included an entire bag of Doritos® would taste like.  Certain fatties in my family (I’m looking at you, mom and Rick) were all excited to see how this was going to turn out.  Please note that I did not include myself in the whole fatty remark.  Ha!  I am such a pretentious asshole.  I was all up in that shit, too.

The recipe calls for 3 cups of cooked chicken. You might not be able to tell it here, but these are HUGE chicken breasts.

It didn’t say anything about salt and pepper, but I cannot even look at unseasoned chicken for some reason. Does anybody remember the fad diet in the late 80’s in which you had to eat nothing but boiled (yes, BOILED) chicken 3 times a day? I can’t remember what it was called, but of course I tried it. And, of course, I did not lose weight. Probably because by the second day I was gagging at the sight of boiled unseasoned chicken. Please note the well placed arrow pointing out where I cut into the thickest part of the chicken to make sure it was done. I am the queen of over-cooking meat (think petrified) so I’m forcing myself to get better at checking it instead of just over-cooking it.

This was supposed to be an action shot, but I had a helluva time holding the bag of Doritos® while taking a picture at the same time.  My left hand doesn’t work for shit.

Ugh!  This is going to take all freaking day!

And then they all came flying out because that is how my life works. Sigh.

I’ll be honest here. I was very, very unsure as to whether or not this sour cream was okay to use. My general rule is this: Sour cream is okay to use the first day you open it and then the very next day. After that, it should be thrown away. Seriously. That’s what my rule is because I am a freak about spoiled food. Except I am not militant about throwing it away on the third day. I just don’t use it and then I throw it away when I clean out the refrigerator (which is usually at the end of the week when Shirley isn’t looking because she’s a nut bag that thinks we should save everything and just cut and/or scoop out any mold, ahem). This sour cream was opened sometime the week before. I’m sure you can imagine my trepidation.

I adore Rotel®.

Full Disclosure: I substituted a second can of Cream of Chicken soup for the mushroom soup as Rick is allergic. I like it when I can throw every single thing in a bowl and be done with it. Even if it does look like vomit. Tomatoey vomit.

This is what it looked like when I put it in the oven. In fact, the picture was taken directly from the oven because I forgot to take a picture before. Please note the cookie sheet that I placed underneath it. NO WAY was I risking this cheesy shit bubbling over and making a mess of my oven.

The finished casserole in my dish.

A close-up of the finished product. Since I am not one to plate my food, I don’t care about what it looks like as long as it tastes good. Rick said it was okay. Trey said he didn’t care for it. I was unimpressed with the whole mess and I feel like I wasted an entire bag of perfectly good bag of Doritos®. Never again.

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Robyn’s take:

This week’s recipe was Nance’s choice, and when I saw that it took a bag of Doritos®, I was definitely on board. Fred read the recipe and said that it sounded like King’s Ranch Chicken, which we’ve had at his parents’ house. There’s definitely a similarity, but I think their version uses tortillas or tortilla chips instead of Doritos®.

Anyway.

Ingredients:

We tried to get all healthy (HA HA HA) by using the lower fat or baked versions of all the ingredients (except the condensed soups). So we’ve got baked Doritos®, reduced-fat cheese, and light sour cream. I cooked a chicken in the crock pot the night before and pulled all the meat off the bones after it had cooled. It’s possible I had more than three cups of chicken here, but I didn’t even bother to check, because I was using all the meat either way.

(You’ll note that the bag of Doritos® was opened and then clipped shut. Fred decided he needed to do quality control and check to be sure the Doritos® were still good. In other words, he was hungry and they looked good.)

You crush the Doritos® (I left them in the bag and just crushed them with my hands – I’m sure there are a bunch of other ways to do it, but that’s what worked for me), and then dump them in the bottom of a (sprayed with Pam) 9×13 dish.

Then mix everything else (except for 1 cup of cheese) together in a bowl and dump it over the crushed Doritos§. I didn’t get any pictures of that step, because you know how to mix stuff. Maybe Nance got a picture of that step (she’s already written her part, but I don’t read hers before I write mine because I don’t want to pollute my artistic process)(HA HA HA)(who’s feeling parenthetical today?)

Then you bake it for 20 minutes, top it with your remaining 1 cup of cheese, and bake for another five minutes. I also didn’t get a picture of that. I was a slacker this week. Here, maybe this will make you feel better:

“I’M STAYIN’ LIKE THIS ‘TIL SOMEONE BRINGS ME SOME DORITOS®=^..^=!”

This is what it looked like fresh out of the oven:

I didn’t even bother to take a picture of the casserole on my plate, because I am not a food artist, and all the artsy lighting in the world wasn’t going to make that stuff look decent on a plate anyway.

Was it good? It was… okay. I mean, I ate one serving of it and then saved another for lunch the next day. If I never have it again in my entire life, I will somehow live. I am NOT saving this recipe and I’m not going to bother to make it again. I would have rather used the chicken to make a chicken salad sandwich with a side of Doritos®, honestly.