I didn’t grow up eating it, but King Ranch Casserole (named for, but not orginated by, the manifest destiny/occupied South Texas dream, King Ranch) became a key part of my existence when I moved back to Texas. I make it for brunch on the weekends (it is, as many point out very similar to chilaquiles, thus a stepsister of migas), as a special occasion supper (after you’ve reached a position of comfort with the person; it is a casserole and everyone eats a lot of it), or when out of town as a par examplar guilty Texas meal. In Austin, Anne Simmons and I often had the Friday night King Ranch special ( a variation on the recipe with a chipotle cream sauce) at Threadgill’s, once even bringing dates by and challenging them to an informal King Ranch eating contest (We won, obvs.)
Not being above eating/making things with two cans of soup as main ingredients, I’ve made the standby recipe so far with no complaints. (My mother has offered a low fat recipe, to which I not-so-politely refused. Matt Martinez worked up a beef version that’s a little more scratchy) I’ve also threatened to make it for vegetarians with some sort of chicken substitute. But being of the mind that there’s many worse things to do than make a nice sauce, I’d been itching to take the cans (tomatoes don’t count) out of the recipe. The original recipe calls for boiling a whole chicken and picking the meat off the carcass, a time-consuming, unrewarding step if there ever was one. So use supermarket boneless/skinless instead, poach them, and you come out ahead.
Sure I think writing about food on a blog is bourgy and boring, but I saw an information need in that there were no recipes for “King Ranch no soup” that I could find on the net, and that this turned out well. It’s not like I put up a picture, either. You all know what a casserole looks like.
