Green Chile Chicken Lasagna

[Vaughn McMillan]

A local New Mexican restaurant here serves a green chile chicken lasagna dish and I tend to order it any time I'm eating there. It's a basic white lasagna with roasted chopped green chile and shredded boiled chicken. I decided to try my hand at making some at home, and I've gotta say it came out even better than I had hoped. I'm pretty sure the restaurant uses something like Campbell's cream of mushroom soup as the base for the sauce, but I wanted to do something that wasn't out of a can.

I found a pretty simple recipe for chicken and spinach white lasagna on the interwebs, left out the spinach and instead used some roasted and chopped Hatch green chile (medium heat). I think I added about 3-4 heaping tablespoons of chile to the white sauce. I didn't really measure, I just kept adding chile until it looked like about the right ratio of green to white. I also made a bit more sauce than the recipe calls for, and probably used more mozzarella cheese and diced garlic, too. And I used chopped grilled chicken breast instead of boring ol' boiled and shredded chicken. I baked it as per the recipe and then browned the top under the broiler. All I can say is yum!

I don't usually take a lot of food pics, but I couldn't resist...

Here's the lasagna fresh out of the oven:


Here's another look after tucking into a big serving of it:


And here's an post-action shot of a knife Mike Stafford made out of a circular saw blade and gifted to me. It's perfect for dicing garlic:


Around here, you can find a lot of traditional New Mexican food that uses green chile. But there are a few places that branch out from the typical beans and tortillas approach. One notable favorite of mine that I've eaten at a few restaurants and made at home is green chile chicken alfredo. It's just chicken alfredo with roasted and chopped green chile added to the sauce. But the lasagna, even though it's a bit more involved to make, is even better than the alfredo in my opinion.

 

[David Johnson]

Every thing goes better with green chili. That recipe really looks delicious. Maybe Mama will try that.
\David

 

[Mike Stafford]

A local New Mexican restaurant here serves a green chile chicken lasagna dish and I tend to order it any time I'm eating there. It's a basic white lasagna with roasted chopped green chile and shredded boiled chicken. I decided to try my hand at making some at home, and I've gotta say it came out even better than I had hoped. I'm pretty sure the restaurant uses something like Campbell's cream of mushroom soup as the base for the sauce, but I wanted to do something that wasn't out of a can.

I found a pretty simple recipe for chicken and spinach white lasagna on the interwebs, left out the spinach and instead used some roasted and chopped Hatch green chile (medium heat). I think I added about 3-4 heaping tablespoons of chile to the white sauce. I didn't really measure, I just kept adding chile until it looked like about the right ratio of green to white. I also made a bit more sauce than the recipe calls for, and probably used more mozzarella cheese and diced garlic, too. And I used chopped grilled chicken breast instead of boring ol' boiled and shredded chicken. I baked it as per the recipe and then browned the top under the broiler. All I can say is yum!

I don't usually take a lot of food pics, but I couldn't resist...

Here's the lasagna fresh out of the oven:

Here's another look after tucking into a big serving of it:

And here's an post-action shot of a knife Mike Stafford made out of a circular saw blade and gifted to me. It's perfect for dicing garlic:


Around here, you can find a lot of traditional New Mexican food that uses green chile. But there are a few places that branch out from the typical beans and tortillas approach. One notable favorite of mine that I've eaten at a few restaurants and made at home is green chile chicken alfredo. It's just chicken alfredo with roasted and chopped green chile added to the sauce. But the lasagna, even though it's a bit more involved to make, is even better than the alfredo in my opinion.

That certainly looks good enough to eat. I will make it for my wife as she loves dishes like this. I noticed that the recipe contained a serving multiplier and originally called for an 8x8 pan. You obviously used a larger pan. What size did you use and did you double the recipe for that pan or did you triple it?

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

I think it's a 7 x 11 inch dish. I didn't formally increase the ingredients, but went a bit heavy on a few things (butter, cream cheese, mozzarella, garlic). I think the only thing I actually measured was the milk. I also ended up cooking more lasagna noodles than would fit. I didn't know they'd expand so much when cooked.