Caveman Keto Weight loss through low carb cooking
Update: I’ve posted a YouTube video on making Cheesy Chicken Casserole!
I am constantly on the look out for recipes that I can make for the entire work week. I call these 5-day recipes because they can make lunch for two for 4-6 days which covers the wife and I for the week. My new favorite is this Mexican inspired cheesy chicken casserole!
Yum! Here is the final dish stored into our Ikea tupperware.
Start by cutting up the chicken into chunks.
If you make this for an entire week, you need a big pan! I use my Calphalon Wok which is great for cooking a huge amount of food.
Once the chicken is cooked, use the lid to act a strainer and drain the extra liquid. Then add taco seasoning and cook for a few minutes to incorporate. 
Grease a large pan and add the chicken.
Mix the sour cream, salsa and chiles.
Pour the liquid over the chicken and bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.
While the chicken is cooking, shred the Monterey Jack cheese. You can also buy preshredded.
After cooking the chicken for 25 minutes, add the cheese and cook for 5 more minutes.
Finished Cheesy Chicken Casserole!
Let the dish cool and cut into pieces. Store in tupperware and garnish with green onions.
- Serves: 8
- Serving size: ⅛th
- Calories: 351
- Fat: 17
- Carbohydrates: 7
- Fiber: 1
- Protein: 34
- 8 Chicken breasts
- 1 Cup Sour Cream
- 8 oz Monterey Jack Cheese
- 4 oz Diced Green Chiles
- 4 tsp Taco Seasoning
- 16 oz Green Salsa
- 4 Stalks Green Onions
- Cut the chicken breasts into chunks
- Cook the chicken breasts in a pan, if your pan isn't big enough, do it in batches
- Once the chicken is cooked, drain the excess liquid, in my case I just used the lid of the wok to get most of the liquid out
- Add taco seasoning to the cooked chicken breasts
- Transfer the chicken into a greased pan
- Mix sour cream, chiles and salsa together and pour over chicken
- Cook for 25 minutes at 350 degrees
- Shred the Monterey Jack cheese while the chicken is cooking
- Once the chicken is done, remove and cover in cheese and cook for 5 minutes longer
- Let cool, cut into pieces, transfer to tupperware and garnish with green onions
 Cuisinart 9-Cup Food ProcessorI first got this food processor as a wedding gift and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Well, let me tell you, its been a godsend on keto! I shred cheese, slice brussels sprouts, and rice cauliflower like a boss! |
 4.8 Quart Casserole DishGreat for cooking those gigantic, week long casseroles! I call them 5day meals on the website. Normal casserole dishes are 10×13 but this one is gigantic and can easily be divided into ten portions. |
 Glasslock Lunch ContainersThe easiest way to conquer keto is to premake your lunches. I used to use Ikea 365+ containers but they started to leak after a while. These glasslock containers are by far the nicest I’ve ever seen. |
I’ve noticed that even after you cook the chicken in the pan, there is a lot of liquid that accumulates in the baking dish. Do you usually drain that off, or leave it?
Thanks for your recipes! I look forward to reading your posts!
We have had the chicken cordon bleu a couple of times and it’s a real hit with me and the kids. I usually serve it with a side of broccoli or cauliflower.
Whoops! I made an omission on the original version, I did mean to say to drain the chicken. I used the lid and drained off most of the liquid. The rest of it turns into a sauce with the taco seasoning. I modified the original recipe to add this.
Thanks for your comment!
Any idea what the carbs come from? I’m guessing the sour cream, or the onions? I’m too early in Keto to be able to risk 7 carbs, so I’d like to cut them out if possible.
Carbs are mostly from the salsa. 4 carbs per from salsa, 1 per from sour cream, a little less than 1 per for taco seasoning, 1/2 for chiles, 1 for green onion.
Summary, less salsa for less carbs. But I always recommend you enter it into MyFitnessPal yourself to see what your ingredients end up being. Different brands might yield different results!
Happy cooking!
This sounds amazing – looking forward to making it sometime this week. However, might I ask how the chicken turned out? Despite the small chunks, I tend to feel like the chicken might be dry or rather bland, though I tend to find that with MOST chicken that’s seasoned anyway.
Ever try this with shredded chicken? I wonder if it might work…
I just made this today and I added a bit more taco seasoning than the recipe calls for in order to remedy this. It turned out great! I also added some sorrano and habenero pepper to the salsa over the green pepper for a bit more heat/flavor.
I made this tonight (forgot the damn green onion garnish, despite buying it) and I must say…it was amazing. My wife and I both loved it. I enjoyed every bite and now we have six servings for the week. Freaking awesome.
Yummy!!! Thanks for sharing this recipe. Me and a friend are batch cooking lunches, both are on a Keto diet and we switch on and off from week to week and this was a perfect dish for lunch all week!
Made this for dinner tonight and loved it! I made half of the recipe so I’ll eat the leftovers for my next 3 lunches at work. Thanks for the easy dish.
I made this for my fiance’ and I… traded chicken for 3lb ground turkey (didnt have enough chicken for the recipe)… AMAZING! Probably my favorite Keto recipe thus far!!
I know this is a crazy question but, about how many pounds of chicken would you say goes into this dish?
Well for the portion listed, I said 8 chicken breasts. Mine are pretty large at about 8 oz, so 64 oz total which is about 4 lbs. So I would say if your doing it by weight, use 3-4 lbs of chicken.
Hi, Caveman Keto. My husband and I just tried this dish tonight, and like everyone else, we loved it! We didn’t know how much chicken to use (didn’t see the comments here until after dinner), so my husband – being the engineer that he is 😉 – calculated the amount of chicken based on the nutritional info you have posted. He came up with 2 pounds that way. So, if you use 4 pounds of chicken in your recipe, the nutritional information you have listed is a bit off; it’s actually more consistent with using only 2 pounds of chicken. Anyway, just wanted to let you know and to say thanks for all the great recipes! We’ve been doing the keto diet about 4.5 months now, and we use many of your recipes!
This looks amazing! I think I found my lunches for the week after thanksgiving. My fellow students will be so jealous.
Was very good! I enjoyed every bit of it! Thanks for the recipe!!
What is the green salsa? i see so much repices on the net that i dont know which one to choose and i can’t find them on the market. Thanks
Its simply a salsa that is green 🙂 Its often found in the latin aisle. However, I’ve successfully just used red salsa and there is no problem using it.
I was wondering the same thing, so I Google searched it. Salsa verde! I had no idea what green salsa was, but salsa verde I understand!
“Salsa verde” translated means “Green salsa”
In Spanish, the adjective comes after the noun it describes. And “verde” means “green”.
Silly question, but with your 5 day meal plans do you eat a side along the main dish usually or no? I’m starting keto and your blog is one of the best out there (thanks for making things as idiot proof as possible) and I’m wondering if my appetite would be satisfied by just eating the servings you have put.
So for the lunch items I don’t eat a side with it but for dinner I do. For example the cheesy chicken casserole I eat by itself for lunch when I microwave it. You could throw frozen veggies in the same container and microwave it as well if you wanted more food. For dinner though I normally make bacon and cauliflower or cheesy spinach. Thanks for the kind words about the website! I do try and be as explicit as possible since I think a lot of people who pick this diet up might not have cooked a lot in the past. A lot of websites assume a lot of preexisting cooking knowledge when writing up their recipes.
Just a word of advice if you are looking to cut a few more carbs do not use the pre-made taco seasoning. If you read the ingredients it has cornstarch and sugar added and the one I looked at had 3 grams of carbs per serving. I make my own taco seasoning with salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic, cumin, and a little onion powder. It will not given you the thickening that you are looking for, but just drain your chicken really well and it will turn out just fine. 🙂
do you use fresh garlic or a garlic powder/salt? Do you just use pretty much equal parts of all?
Could I sub something else for the sour cream? Not a fan.
This sounds and LOOKS delicious! I love anything with a Mexican flair and simple-to-put-together dishes like this! Just printed it out to try!
I made this recipe last night for dinner, and it was great! I actually made one pretty big substitution, but it still turned out fantastic. I substituted out half the chicken for an equivalent volume of broccoli, because broccoli is cheaper than chicken and I need any excuse to get more veggies into my day 🙂 I cut the broccoli into pretty small “trees” and steamed them briefly (3 minutes) just to soften them up. I made sure to drain them well because I was worried about them giving off too much water in the casserole and making a liquid-y mess. I used about 2/3 of the taco seasoning on the chicken and sprinkled the other 1/3 over the broccoli. Otherwise I followed the recipe exactly! When I served it for dinner it was a little liquid-y (just a bit, totally fine though), but later when I divided up the rest into lunch containers it had firmed up and cut apart nicely. Thanks Caveman Keto! Here’s a screenshot of my version in MFP, if anyone else is curious about doing this substitution: http://i.imgur.com/Y1KQRAb.png
Totally stupid question, but… what size is that casserole dish? Some pics it looks like an 8×8 square, others it looks like the long ‘lasagna’ sort. Hint pls?
That’s a 9×13″ I think that one picture is just at a weird angle where it looks square.
Never mind about the dish, I used the lasagna-sized one. Oh man… this was delicious!!
Just made this for dinner tonight and it was amazing! So much flavor. Thanks for the recipe!
Thanks for another amazing recipe!! Of the many keto recipes I’ve tried, yours are consistently our favorites.
My friend and I just started keto and this was one heck of a recipe to begin with! My cooking skills are extremely limited but this was easy, didn’t take a ton of time and is delicious! I even froze a bunch of portions for later this week. Can’t wait to try more! Next step…meatza! Thank you!!
I do 2.5lbs chicken breast and 1.5lbs of cheap beef (chuck, etc). Always a great lunch for the week!
This looks so good!. I love your recipes!, but I’m still not getting your newsletter/blog. I would love to get your new recipes!.
Does this work well in the crock pot as well?
I thought it might need a little more vegetable content, so i added 300 grams of spinach to my magic bullet, and added the salsa verde. Blended until liquified. Now I have a cheesy Chicken and spinach casserole and don’t feel as guilty.
Am I missing something or is the protein way too high and the fat way too low on this recipe?
I was just giving this some consideration and substituting thighs instead of breast lowers the protein slightly and would significantly raise fat content. That’s going to be my next attempt.
I made this for dinner last night and it was really good. I made mine with less chicken and dark meat to lower protein and increase fats. It reminded me of my white chili recipe I make without beans.
OMW! This was delish! I pinned it on my ketolicious board on pinterest! This is definately a keeper! Everyone in the family loved it! We decided this was one to serve to guests the next time we had someone over for dinner! Most people think we eat “weird” foods until they actually eat some of it. Then we get, “Wow! What kind of diet is this anyway?!?!” LOL! (of course it isn’t a diet; it’s a way of life 🙂 can’t get people to understand that!)
The number of fats, carbs and protein that you have specified, is that for the complete dish or per serving.
I don’t think I’ve ever commented on a recipe online before! Recently found your site and this is the first recipe I’ve made. This was a HUGE hit at my house. My 12 year old daughter couldn’t stop raving about how delicious it was. Brought leftovers to work today and everyone was jealous, because it smelled so good while I was reheating it. They’ve asked me to make for the next potluck! I love how simple it was to make, with no funky ingredients.
I know this recipe calls for 8 chicken breast, but not all chicken breast are the same. I am not able to afford the free range organic and the chicken I bought has only 6 breast but weighs 4.83lbs with when I put in makes the recipe over 800 cal per serving with almost 80 grams of protein. Can you put the amount of chicken in pounds or ounces.
thanks
I made it with only 3.5# of chicken breast and it was perfect.
Holy cow, this was delicious. I ate it on lettuce wraps like a taco. Amazing! I also added more taco seasoning. It was so good that I felt like I was cheating!
My family LOVES this, even though I am the only one trying to eat keto/low carb. We like to use pepper jack cheese and I usually cook the chicken with broth in a crock pot, then shred it, so its’s ready to assemble when I get home from work. Next time I will experiment with adding a little fresh or key lime juice to the salsa mixture for a little extra tang. I’ve thought this would be a great recipe to adapt to a dip with veggies or Garden of Eatin’s gluten-free, non-GMO corn chips as a treat (not so much low carb, though).
I can’t figure out where the red in your picture comes from. It calls for green salsa and then green chili. The red looks like tomatoes or red pepper??
I think when I made this batch the salsa must have had some red in it!
I’m fixing it tonight and it smells amazing! Does it hold up to freezing?? Thank you for sharing
What would be a suitable substitute if I don’t have Taco seasoning?
This looks awesome and easy to do!.
I halved this recipe and made it for lunch today. Absolutely delicious! We didn’t end up with any leftovers. Even my 2 year old ate it and he’s going through a picky phase. Totally worth making to anyone whose curious!
Delicious. Its a big hit with my 2 year old and that says a lot because she is a picky eater
How do you tell what your macros are, when you measurement is “8 chicken breasts”? How big are they? It seems misleading to post calories and macros when you don’t have an accurate weight for them.
I halved this last night for dinner for my husband & I and we LOVED IT! We both took leftovers for lunch today. I am not explicitly following Keto so not sure if these alterations affect that but I used diced tomatoes with green chiles and monterrey jack/mild cheddar mix (both items are just what I had on hand) and they added some nice color to the dish. I also sprinkled cilantro in addition to green onions and also a few slices of avocado for serving. I plan on exploring your website a lot more in the future!!