Neiman Marcus Chicken Casserole with Bacon
Neiman Marcus chicken casserole bakes shredded chicken, bacon, cheddar and Monterey Jack in a cream cheese and sour cream sauce for 45 minutes.
Neiman Marcus chicken casserole takes the cold party dip of the same name and turns it into a hot dinner. Shredded cooked chicken is folded through a sauce of cream cheese and sour cream, loaded with crisp bacon and two cheeses, then baked until the top blisters. It uses a rotisserie chicken and a packet of bacon, so there is nothing to cook from raw except the bacon itself. Forty-five minutes in the oven is all it needs. It feeds six people from one dish, and the leftovers reheat without turning rubbery.
| Prep Time | 20 | Cook Time | 25 |
| Servings | 6 | Calories | 585 kcal |
Ingredients
- 750 g (1.5 lb) cooked chicken, shredded (about one rotisserie chicken)
- 225 g (8 oz) full-fat cream cheese, softened to room temperature
- 240 g (1 cup) sour cream
- 250 g (8 oz) streaky bacon, about 8 rashers
- 150 g (1.5 cups) mature cheddar, coarsely grated
- 150 g (1.5 cups) Monterey Jack, coarsely grated
- 6 spring onions (green onions), thinly sliced, white and green parts kept separate
- 2 garlic cloves, finely grated
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
- 0.5 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 0.25 teaspoon fine salt, or to taste
- 60 ml (0.25 cup) whole milk, if the sauce needs loosening
- Butter, for the dish
A shop-bought rotisserie chicken is the sensible starting point: it is already seasoned, it is moist, and it saves you the only genuinely time-consuming part of the recipe. One average bird yields close to the 750 g you need once the skin and bones are removed.
Buy both cheeses in blocks and grate them yourself. The anti-caking starch on pre-grated cheese is the single most common reason these casseroles come out oily, and the difference in the finished dish is obvious. Full-fat cream cheese and full-fat sour cream are not negotiable either, as the reduced-fat versions carry more water and split under the heat of the oven.
Essential Kitchen Tools
| 23 x 33 cm baking dish | Shallow enough for the top to brown evenly |
| Large mixing bowl | Folding the chicken through the sauce without compacting it |
| Frying pan | Rendering the bacon from cold |
| Box grater | Grating both cheeses from the block |
| Instant-read thermometer | Confirming 74 °C at the centre |
A deeper dish works but needs around ten extra minutes, and the surface area that browns is smaller. Two smaller dishes are a good alternative if you want to freeze half.
Why This Recipe Works
Cream cheese and sour cream behave differently in the oven, and the recipe relies on both. Cream cheese is stable and holds the filling together as a sliceable mass; sour cream is looser and more acidic, and it keeps the whole thing from tasting like a block of fat. Use only one of them and the casserole is either stodgy or runny.
The two cheeses are chosen for the same reason. Monterey Jack has a high moisture content and melts into long, smooth strands, while cheddar brings the savoury depth that Jack lacks but turns grainy when it is the only cheese present. Blended, they give both texture and taste.
Bacon does more than add salt. The tablespoon of rendered fat stirred into the sauce carries smoke flavour through every spoonful, while the crumbled rashers folded in and scattered on top provide the crunch that an otherwise soft dish needs. Splitting the bacon between the filling and the finish is deliberate: inside it softens, outside it stays crisp.
Pro Tips for Better Results
Soften the cream cheese properly. Thirty minutes out of the fridge, or 20 seconds in the microwave. Straight from the fridge it will never beat smooth.
Pull the chicken, do not chop it. Ragged shreds trap sauce; neat cubes shed it.
Keep a third of the cheese back. Cheese mixed into the filling melts invisibly. Only the cheese on the surface gives you a browned, blistered top.
Season before the chicken goes in. Once the solids are folded through, any salt you add sits on the surface rather than distributing through the sauce.
Bake uncovered, always. Foil traps steam and leaves the casserole pale and watery.
Let it rest. Ten minutes is the difference between a clean square on the plate and a puddle.
Nutrition Facts (per serving)
| Calories | Protein | Carbs | Fat | Fiber |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 585 kcal | 44g | 6g | 43g | 0.4g |
Based on one of six servings of the casserole alone, with no side dish or rice. Swapping the sour cream for full-fat Greek yoghurt brings it to roughly 520 kcal and raises the protein by about four grams.
Neiman Marcus Chicken Casserole with Bacon
Neiman Marcus chicken casserole bakes shredded chicken, bacon, cheddar and Monterey Jack in a cream cheese and sour cream sauce for 45 minutes.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 190 °C (375 °F, gas mark 5) and butter a 23 x 33 cm (9 x 13 inch) baking dish . Bringing the dish to temperature along with the oven is unnecessary here; the filling is already cooked, so you are only melting and browning.
- Lay the bacon in a cold frying pan and set it over medium heat. Starting cold renders the fat slowly instead of seizing the meat, which is what gives you flat, evenly crisp rashers rather than curled ones. Cook for 10 to 12 minutes, turning once, then drain on kitchen paper and reserve one tablespoon of the fat.
- Shred the cooked chicken into bite-sized pieces with your fingers or two forks, pulling along the grain. Torn edges hold sauce far better than cubes cut with a knife, which stay slick and slide apart in the dish.
- Beat the cream cheese in a large bowl until it is completely smooth before anything else goes in. Cold or lumpy cream cheese will never dissolve into the sauce later, and you will find white pockets in the finished casserole.
- Stir in the sour cream, the reserved tablespoon of bacon fat, the garlic, onion powder, paprika, pepper and salt. Mix until the sauce is one even colour. Taste it now: this is the only point at which you can correct the seasoning easily.
- Fold in the chicken, the white parts of the spring onions, two thirds of the cheddar, two thirds of the Monterey Jack and three quarters of the bacon, crumbled. If the mixture feels stiff and does not fall from the spoon, loosen it with the milk a tablespoon at a time.
- Spread the mixture into the buttered dish and level the surface without pressing it down. A loose, slightly uneven top catches more heat and browns in patches, which is where the best bites come from.
- Scatter over the remaining cheddar and Monterey Jack, then bake uncovered for 22 to 25 minutes, until the edges bubble steadily and the centre reads 74 °C (165 °F). Covering it traps steam and gives you a pale, loose casserole.
- If the top is still blond at the end, slide the dish under a hot grill for 2 to 3 minutes. Stay with it; the cheese goes from golden to bitter in under a minute at that heat.
- Rest the casserole for 10 minutes out of the oven, then crumble over the remaining bacon and the green parts of the spring onions. The rest lets the sauce set enough to hold its shape when you serve it, and the raw onion and crisp bacon stay sharp because they never saw the oven.