Our viral chicken green chili casserole with cottage cheese and green salsa is the ultimate comfort food recipe. It's high protein, easy, and comes together in less than 30 minutes using pre-cooked shredded chicken.
Why you'll love our cottage cheese chicken casserole recipe!
- Our green chili casserole with chicken needs just 5 ingredients
- Trying to get more protein? Our chicken and cottage cheese casserole packs 44 g of protein in each serving!
- Taco seasoning, green salsa, and diced green chilis combine to give the casserole its Tex-Mex flavor.
- Our chicken and green chili casserole is low-carb, keto-friendly, high protein, and gluten-free!
Be sure to try our low carb taco casserole with cottage cheese to add variety to your life, which is very similar except it's made with ground beef and a red salsa.
This Green Chili Keto Chicken Casserole is the best!
I just made this today as I was looking for an easy, inexpensive meal and WOWZA is this ever delicious! ~ Alexandra
I double this for a family get together. It was a hit! ~ Jorgie
Made this for the work week today and added riced cauliflower to stretch it and it was amazing. ~ Linda
What you'll need
- shredded or ground chicken - precooked or rotisserie
- taco seasoning - homemade or storebought, use a sugar-free brand if possible.
- green salsa - the chunkier the better, made without sugar. LaVictoria has a great chunky brand.
- diced green chili’s - we used mild, but feel free to use spicy chilis
- cottage cheese - use a full-fat, low carb brand (4% milk fat), low fat will work too if you drain the liquid.
- Colby jack or 3 cheese blend - sliced or shredded from a block, pre-shredded doesn't melt as well and has hidden carbs
- optional toppings - sour cream, avocado, green onion
How to make green chili chicken casserole
Step 1. Prep. Preheat your oven to 375 F. Spray an 11x7 baking dish or casserole dish with nonstick cooking spray.
Step 2. In a medium-sized bowl, add the taco seasoning, salsa, green chilis, and cottage cheese (drained). Mix in the precooked and shredded chicken and stir until it's all mixed and combined evenly.
Step 3. Spoon the prepared chicken mixture into the prepared baking dish.
Step 4. Top the casserole with the sliced or shredded cheese.
Step 5. Bake for 20-minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbling.
Garnish with green onions, if desired. Serve with sour cream and salsa, optional. This is delicious served over cauliflower rice! Enjoy!
Depending on the cottage cheese you're using, the salsa brand, or how chunky your chicken is shredded...some readers have said this casserole is on the runny side.
For best results, drain the cottage cheese. A medium shredded chicken works best, if the pieces are too large the sauce doesn't blend well and sinks to the bottom. Regardless, it's amazing!
Jenni's tips
- The key to this being a 30 minute recipe is starting with precooked chicken. If you need to cook it beforehand, boiling chicken on the stovetop would be the fastest method, we used an instant pot to make shredded chicken from frozen for this recipe.
- You'll want 2 lbs of raw chicken for the recipe if you're cooking the chicken first. If you're using rotisserie chicken, it'll lose about 25% of its weight and you'll want to use 1.5 lb of pre-cooked chicken.
- Be sure to drain the cottage cheese before cooking with it to prevent your chicken green chili casserole from being overly liquidy.
- Using a chunkier salsa instead of a runnier salsa is also recommended. A salsa with more liquid may leave a little liquid in the bottom of the casserole after cooking.
- If you prefer your cheese crisp, broil after baking for 1-2 minutes.
Can this casserole with cottage cheese be lightened up?
Our chicken casserole recipe with cottage cheese was originally written back in 2018 for our low carb audience. The original recipe uses full fat cottage cheese and cheese slices. Yes, we were putting cottage cheese in recipes before it was even a trend 😉
To reduce the fat in the recipe, you can use low fat cottage cheese and just do a light sprinkle of cheese over the top.
Many readers have also added in cauliflower rice to increase the bulk and sneak in extra veggies!
More Chicken Casserole Recipes
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Recipe
Cottage Cheese Green Chili Chicken Casserole (Keto, Low Carb)
Ingredients
- 6 cups cooked and shredded chicken breasts ** See NOTE below
- 3 T taco seasoning
- ¾ cup chili Verde salsa chunky if possible, like La Victoria brand
- 1 4 oz can of mild green chilis drained
- 2 cups cottage cheese drain if it seems on the runnier side
- 5 oz sliced or shredded Colby jack cheese you'll need to cut some of the slices down to fit in the pan
- Garnishes - chopped green onions and/or Sour cream optional
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 375 F.
- In a medium-sized bowl, mix the taco seasoning, chili Verde salsa, green chilis, and cottage cheese. Add the shredded chicken and combine it all together.
- Spoon the mixture into the baking dish and top it with the Colby Jack cheese slices.
- Bake the chicken cottage cheese casserole for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbling.
- Garnish with green onions and serve with sour cream and salsa on the side. Enjoy!
Video
Notes
- Having pre-cooked chicken in the freezer is a life saver for assembling easy dinners like this one! If you need to cook your chicken, you'll need 6 cups of cooked and shredded chicken, which is about 2 lbs of raw boneless skinless chicken breasts or 1.5 lb cooked chicken meat). You can boil fresh chicken breasts, boil chicken tenders, or pressure cook frozen chicken tenders.
- In recipe testing, the chicken was cooked before making the casserole and it was still warm. If you're starting with cold pre-cooked chicken, you may need to cook the casserole a little longer.
- Some readers have reported that the casserole was delicious but on the runny side. The shredded chicken is the key to how the casserole consistency turns out and medium shred for the chicken works best. If the shredded chicken pieces are too chunky, the sauce sinks to the bottom of the casserole and it becomes runny. Although, If you shred the chicken too fine, it seems more like a dip. Either way, it'll still taste amazing and this is a reader-favorite recipe and you can adjust your shred the second time you make it! You can either shred your chicken with a mixer or shred it with 2 forks.
- You can also use ground chicken instead of shredded chicken like we did with our beef taco casserole, but this recipe with ground chicken hasn't been tested.
- Using regular cottage cheese (small curd 4% milk fat) instead of light is recommended, light cottage cheese will add more liquid to the mixture, plus regular. cottage cheese is great for a low carb keto friendly casserole.
- Using a chunkier salsa instead of a runnier salsa is also recommended, the one we use is La Victoria brand.
Nutrition
John says
Made this tonight, version for 4. I added a little chili powder to ensure it had some kick. It did. Great flavors, might well be my new signature dish! Thanks.
Valerie Ray Antle says
I added sautéed onions in with the green chili mixture, and topped the casserole with melted Gordo's Mild Cheese Dip instead of the sliced cheese. I also topped with crushed up ranch quest chips right before serving. Yum!
John Bridgman says
Turned out great. The (Herdez) salsa was a bit runny but the cottage cheese was not, and I cooked/shredded chicken breasts. The mix was a bit too dry if anything so I added a bit of sour cream I needed to use up and the result was perfect. I had planned to add some cooked frozen green beans to bulk it up but decided not to, and it's a good thing I did - the mix was a perfect fit in my 2 quart / 8x12 baking dish. Used grated cheese on top. Thanks very much for the recipe !!
C. Good says
I really liked this inspire of the fact that I forgot the taco seasoning. It was really good and I will make it again. It has made it to one of my top Keto recipes.