Chicken and Tamales Casserole
This is an amazing comfort dish from my childhood: a baked casserole of chicken thighs, sauce-rich tamales, a creamy soup base, and cheese on top. Served over rice, it may not be attractive, but it will easily feed a family of five with enough room for tasty leftovers.
This one was originally made with the chili-gravy-rich Garibaldi beef tamales that were available up until about 2019. Now I use regular, smaller tamales from local shops, but you may need to stack them, since most tamales are much thinner than the 11 oz Garibaldi beef tamales. If you want the real thing, see my Garibaldi-style beef tamale copycat recipe.
The Recipe
| Yield | Feeds a family of five, with enough room for tasty leftovers |
|---|---|
| Active time | About 20 minutes |
| Bake | 1½ to 2 hours covered at 350°F, plus about 10 minutes uncovered to brown the cheese |
| Equipment | Large Pyrex casserole dish (or other tempered glass, oven-safe to 500°F); large half-sheet baking pan to catch overflow; heavy-duty aluminum foil to cover both; hand whisk; digital temperature probe if you have one. |
Ingredients
| Tamales (choose one) | |
|---|---|
| 4 | Garibaldi-style 11 oz beef tamales (see the copycat recipe linked above) |
| 8–10 | Small traditional Mexican tamales |
| Store-bought tamales are much thinner than the Garibaldi originals, so plan on stacking them two high. | |
| Chicken, sauce, and cheese | |
| About 9 | Boneless, skinless chicken thighs |
| 1 can | Campbell's Cream of Chicken or Cream of Mushroom soup (your preference) |
| 1 cup | Whole or low-fat milk (tip: use the empty soup can to measure, one can full) |
| 3 cups | Grated or shredded cheese: cheddar, or your preferred good melting cheese |
| Optional | |
| A touch | White pepper |
| A few spoonfuls | Hatch green chiles, diced |
| To serve | |
| 1 pot | Cooked white rice, or your favorite |
| I personally recommend a good California rice such as Calrose. A neutral, no-flavor rice lets you taste the flavors of the dish better. | |
Preparation
Prep
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line the half-sheet baking pan with foil and set it aside.
- Cut the chicken thighs into chunks or strips.
Assemble
- In the glass casserole dish, space out the tamales so they are evenly spread across the dish with gaps in between, where the chicken will go. If the tamales are flat and thin, stack them two high in each spot, but not above the rim of the dish. Garibaldi-style tamales may stand a bit tall, and that is fine.
- Tuck the chicken into the gaps between the tamales, so you have tamales with every gap filled with chicken.
- If you are using the optional items, add a sprinkle of white pepper or spoonfuls of chiles here and there in the dish.
- In a medium mixing bowl, add the soup concentrate from the can, fill the empty can with milk, and add that too. Whisk until evenly combined. Drizzle the mixture over the tamales and chicken so it is evenly spread and most, if not all, surfaces are covered.
- Spread the shredded cheese evenly over the top to cover everything.
Cover
- Lightly spray neutral oil or non-stick cooking spray on the side of the foil that will face the cheese. Skip this and the hot foil will grab the cheese and pull it all off when you remove the cover.
- Crease the foil into a slight tent so it sits above the cheese, then cover the dish. You want to protect the cheese from burning during a long bake without letting it stick.
- Set the casserole dish on top of the foil-lined baking pan. The foil catches any boil-over so it does not drip onto the bottom of your oven, and you will not have to clean the baking pan either.
Tip: Oiled, tented foil is the difference between a browned cheese top and a bald casserole with the cheese stuck to the foil.
Bake
- Bake for 1½ to 2 hours, until the chicken in the CENTER of the dish reads at least 165°F, usually about 1½ hours. Go longer, around 2 hours, if you want more tender chicken. Use a temperature probe to check if you have one.
- When it is nearly done, carefully remove the foil and put the dish back in the oven for about 10 minutes to let the cheese on top brown.
- Remove from the oven and let it cool a little.
Serve
- Serve with a large spoon over a bowl of rice. It may look goopy, but I promise this is crowd-pleasing comfort food.
Notes and adjustments
- Rice. Cook white rice, or your favorite, to serve this over. A good California rice such as Calrose is my pick, because a neutral rice stays out of the way of the sauce.
- Tamales. The dish was built around the Garibaldi 11 oz beef tamales, which brought their own chili gravy to the party. Smaller store-bought tamales work fine stacked two high, and the optional Hatch chiles help make up some of the missing kick. My copycat recipe is a work in progress; once it is dialed in, that is what goes in here.
Where this came from
This is the dish I mention on the Garibaldi-style beef tamale page. Growing up, it was always made with those giant freezer-section tamales, and when they disappeared around 2019 the casserole lost its main ingredient. Local tamales fill in for now. Recreating the original tamale is partly about getting this dish back exactly the way I remember it.
Published 2026-09-06.