Chicken Spaghetti Casserole — My Grandmother’s Recipe, the Last Saturday of Freshman Year

The last week of freshman year. The last bell rang on Friday afternoon at three-fifteen and a year I am willing to call the longest year of my life so far ended in a hallway full of girls hugging each other and signing yearbooks I did not get because yearbooks were forty-three dollars and we had other places for forty-three dollars to go. I rode the bus home. I came in the back door. I dropped my backpack in my room. I stood in the kitchen for about two minutes, looking at the stove, and then I went into my room and I took out the recipe I have been carrying around in my notebook for three months, and I started planning Saturday night.

I want to tell you about that recipe. It is my grandmother’s chicken spaghetti casserole. My grandmother is Carol Williams, my mama’s mama, and she has been gone twelve years. I was two years old when she died, so I have to take everybody else’s word for it that she was the best cook in our family, but the way Mama and Aunt Tammy and the cousins talk about her cooking, you would think she invented the kitchen. There is a small box in the back of Mama’s closet with about thirty index cards in Grandma Carol’s handwriting, recipes she copied out for Mama in the year before she got sick, and the chicken spaghetti is in there. Mama lets me read those cards but she does not let me take them out of the box, because they are the closest thing to her mother she has left.

The chicken spaghetti is the family Sunday-dinner recipe. It is the dish that, in the Williams-Moreland history of our family, signaled everything is okay tonight. Grandma Carol made it for every family Sunday dinner growing up. Mama makes it once or twice a year, when the budget can hold it, and the days she makes it are days I remember even when I shouldn’t be old enough to. The smell of it cooking is one of the smells my brain has filed under safe. There are not many smells in that file.

I have wanted to make it for myself for a long time. I have not, partly because the recipe needs a few ingredients we do not always have on hand — a block of Velveeta is $4.99, two cans of cream of mushroom soup is $1.78, a whole chicken or a pack of chicken breasts is $7.50 — and partly because I have been afraid of getting it wrong. Some recipes you can mess up and try again next week. Some recipes you cannot. This is a some-recipes-you-cannot recipe.

I asked Mama on Friday night if I could make it Saturday for the end-of-school dinner. She looked at me for a long second the way you look at somebody who has just asked you for the keys to your only car. She did not say yes right away. She said, Kaylee, that’s my mama’s recipe. And I said, I know, Mama. And she said, are you ready. And I said, I think so. I want you to walk me through it.

And she said, baby, I will walk you through it.

Saturday afternoon, four-thirty, she came in the back door from her shift and she did not even change out of her work polo. She stood in the kitchen with me for an hour and walked me through it. Step by step. The way her own mama walked her through it twenty-five years ago in a different kitchen in this same town, the way every recipe in our family that matters has been passed: woman to woman, in the kitchen, while it’s being made.

I want to tell you what I learned, because the recipe in the magazine and the recipe my mother taught me are not the same recipe in the parts that matter most. The magazine version says cook the spaghetti according to package directions. Mama’s version, which is Grandma Carol’s version, says cook the spaghetti in the chicken broth, not in plain water. That is the secret. You boil a whole chicken (or in our case, two pounds of chicken thighs because they were $1.99 a pound on the markdown rack) with a quartered onion and a bay leaf and a teaspoon of salt for forty minutes, and you save every drop of the broth, and you cook the spaghetti right in that broth. The noodles take on the chicken flavor while they cook. The flavor goes into the noodle, not just on top of it. That is the difference between this recipe and every other chicken spaghetti recipe on the internet, and I would not have known if Mama had not been standing next to me telling me.

The other thing she taught me was the roux. The sauce starts with onion sweated in butter, then flour stirred in, and you have to stir the flour in the butter for at least a minute and a half before you add anything else. The flour has to cook out, baby, or your sauce will taste pasty. Stir it on medium-low. Wait for the smell to change. The raw flour smell goes away and a different smell takes its place, a slightly nutty smell, and that is the moment to start adding the milk. A quarter-cup at a time, whisking, the way Mama showed me. Then the saved chicken broth. Then two cans of cream of mushroom soup. Then a block of Velveeta cubed up small, off the heat, stirred in until it melts. A teaspoon of garlic powder. A pinch of cayenne. The whole sauce comes together in maybe ten minutes.

I combined the cooked spaghetti, the shredded chicken, and the sauce in our 9x13 pan. I topped it with about a half cup of mexican blend cheese. I baked it at 350 for twenty-five minutes. The smell that came out of that oven hit Cody on the front porch before he was even all the way in the door. He came in. He stopped in the kitchen doorway. He said, that’s grandma’s, and I said, yeah, and Mama said, she made it, all of it, and Cody looked at me with something that I have not seen in his face since Daddy left.

And the three of us sat at the table for dinner together. The three of us at the same table, at the same time, with the same dish in the middle. I cannot tell you the last time that happened. I have lost count. Mama ate two helpings. Cody ate three. Mama did not say much during the meal — she does not, when she is feeling something big — and when she put her fork down and pushed her plate away she said, very quietly, Kaylee, this is your grandmother’s recipe, and you made it right. She would be proud of you.

And Cody, low, into his plate: this is real good, Kay.

Six words from my brother in two weeks. I am keeping count. I am keeping count of every word. The dinner was $9.40 total — the most expensive meal I have ever cooked, by a lot, and worth every penny because it bought me a Saturday night with both of the people I belong to, around the same table, eating the same food, at the same time. That is not a thing money can buy on its own. The recipe was the bridge. The recipe was the thing money is for.

The chicken spaghetti casserole recipe is below, the way the magazine prints it. The version I made is essentially the same, except cook your spaghetti in the chicken broth instead of in plain water. That’s the family secret. That’s the part Grandma Carol taught Mama and Mama taught me last Saturday afternoon in her work polo. If you make this, do that one swap. The casserole tastes like a dish that has been in a family for two generations because it is. It bridges the people at the table to the people who were at the table before them. Not every recipe does that. This one does.

Mama’s Chicken Spaghetti Casserole

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 12 oz spaghetti noodles, broken in half
• 2 lbs chicken leg quarters (or about 3 cups shredded cooked chicken)
• 1 can (10 oz) Rotel diced tomatoes and green chiles, undrained
• 1 can (10.5 oz) cream of chicken soup
• 8 oz Velveeta, cubed
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese, for topping

Instructions

1. Cook the chicken. If starting with raw leg quarters, bake at 400°F for 40–45 minutes until cooked through. Let cool slightly, then pull all the meat off the bone and shred it with two forks. Discard skin and bones.
2. Boil the pasta. Cook spaghetti in a large pot of salted boiling water until just al dente, about 8 minutes. Drain and set aside.
3. Preheat oven. Set oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
4. Make the sauce. In the same large pot over medium-low heat, combine the Rotel, cream of chicken soup, chicken broth, and Velveeta cubes. Stir frequently until Velveeta is fully melted and the sauce is smooth and creamy, about 5 minutes. Season with garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper.
5. Combine. Add the shredded chicken and cooked spaghetti to the pot with the sauce. Stir well until everything is evenly coated.
6. Assemble. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish and spread it out evenly. Top with shredded cheddar cheese.
7. Bake. Bake uncovered at 350°F for 30–35 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the edges are bubbling. Let sit 5 minutes before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 480 | Protein: 34g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 44g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 890mg