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Chicken Bacon Ranch Casserole- One heck of a family-pleasing dish!
With pasta, chicken, Ranch flavor and BACON how can you go wrong? You can’t.
Sometimes it is best to not over think food. I have a habit of doing that and you know what? Sometimes you just need something that tastes good and you know your family will eat it. No wasted time, energy or money. This is just that dish.
Most kids like the ingredients and if they don’t then this can easily be split into 2 separate baking dishes like I did. One that is ‘veggie free’ for my son and one with ‘all the veggies’ for the rest of us. I added fresh tomatoes to this (but you could easily use well drained canned diced tomatoes), fresh red pepper and diced onions. I followed the formula of the very popular Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza Casserole recipe created by BeyerBeware. I have made this a few times as it is a great dish to bring to get together’s and pitch-in’s.
This time I reduced the amount of alfredo sauce I used because my family and I are kind of odd- we like a thicker, dryer casserole. The results were fantastic just like the original recipe and just the way we like it!
Ingredients
- 1 lb bacon,cut with scissors, cooked and drained
- 1 lb chicken breasts,cut into cubes or chicken thighs cut into strips
- 1 envelope of Ranch Dressing mix
- 1 red pepper, diced
- 2 small tomatoes, chopped
- 1/3 C chopped onion (or 1 very small one)
- 3 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 jar of Alfredo sauce, I used light 15 oz from Prego
- 1 C of milk
- 4 C of Italian blend cheese
- 1 lb of rotini pasta
Instructions
- Brown the bacon in a large pan, remove and drain the grease.
- Return the pan to the stove and cook the chicken until done.
- Meanwhile cook the pasta to al dente, drain.
- Sprinkle cooked chicken with all of the Ranch packet, stir.
- Add to that the jar of Alfredo, stir.
- Pour the milk in the jar of Alfredo, replace lid, and shake to combine with the remaining Alfredo in jar.
- Pour in the chicken mixture, stir.
- Cook on low heat for 3-4 minutes.
- Remove from heat.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Add 1 C of cheese to the bottom of a 13×9 (or 2 smaller) baking dish.
- Ladle in about 2 C of chicken sauce mixture.
- Add the pasta.
- Cover with the chopped veggies,1 C of cheese all of the remaining sauce.
- Top with remaining cheese and the crumbled bacon.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until bubbling and lightly browned.
