Ritz Cracker Chicken Casserole

The second anniversary of the diagnosis — September 20, 2016. Two years since the doctor said "Stage II" and my life broke in half. I don't observe this date. I don't memorialize it. I make it ordinary. I go to work. I come home. I cook dinner. I read to my children. I walk the dog. I live, aggressively and deliberately, a completely ordinary life on the day that could have ended it all. This is my defiance. This is my victory parade: a Tuesday. A regular, unremarkable Tuesday.

My birthday is the 18th. Thirty-five. I am planning a dinner at my house — Brett and Claire, Jen and her kids, Carol. A proper dinner party, the first I've hosted that's not a holiday or a barbecue but just a dinner, cooked by me, served at my table, for people I chose. The menu: roast beef (Dad's favorite, in his honor), roasted root vegetables, a green salad, and Mom's apple pie. Ranch food and home cooking and a table full of people who are here because they want to be, not because they have to be.

Lily is adjusting to kindergarten with the ease of a social butterfly entering a larger flower garden. She has already been to two birthday parties, been invited to three playdates, and been reprimanded once for "talking during quiet time," which Mrs. Cho reported with a smile that suggested it wasn't really a reprimand so much as an acknowledgment that Lily Wilder does not do quiet.

Mason's second-grade class is doing a unit on Idaho history, and Mason has become obsessed with the Oregon Trail. He asked me if our ancestors came on the Oregon Trail and I said, "I don't think so — the Dawsons came to Idaho in the 1920s for ranching." He was disappointed. I said, "But your great-grandparents built a ranch from nothing in the middle of nowhere." He said, "Is that as hard as the Oregon Trail?" I said, "Harder. They didn't have a trail. They just had dirt and cattle and stubbornness." He accepted this. Stubbornness is a concept Mason understands intimately.

I made chicken pot pie this week — the from-scratch kind, butter crust, homemade filling. It's a fall food that bridges the gap between summer's lightness and winter's heaviness, warm and golden and comforting. Mason helped make the crust — cutting butter into flour with a pastry cutter, his small hands working the dough — and I watched him and thought about the Dawson women in their kitchens, making crusts and filling pies and feeding families for a hundred years, and here is my son, seven years old, a boy, breaking the gender pattern, learning the family tradition, cutting butter into flour and becoming, without knowing it, the next link in the chain.

The pot pie we made this week was the kind of cooking that slows time down — Mason at the counter, pastry cutter in hand, flour on his shirt — and I wanted to hold onto that feeling. This Ritz Cracker Chicken Casserole gives you that same soul-deep comfort with a golden, buttery topping that Mason could help crush and scatter without any fuss, the kind of recipe that lets little hands feel useful and lets the whole kitchen smell like everything is going to be okay.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

3 cups cooked chicken, shredded
1 can (10.5 oz) cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Salt to taste
1 sleeve (about 35) Ritz crackers, crushed
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Instructions

Preheat. Heat your oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish with butter or cooking spray.
Make the filling. In a large bowl, stir together the shredded chicken, cream of chicken soup, sour cream, chicken broth, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, and salt until fully combined.
Fill the dish. Spread the chicken mixture evenly into the prepared baking dish.
Make the topping. In a separate small bowl, mix the crushed Ritz crackers with the melted butter until every crumb is coated. Scatter the buttered cracker mixture evenly over the top of the filling.
Bake. Bake uncovered for 30–35 minutes, until the filling is bubbling around the edges and the cracker topping is deep golden brown.
Rest and serve. Let the casserole rest for 5 minutes before serving. Pairs beautifully with roasted green beans or a simple green salad.

Nutrition (per serving)

Ritz Cracker Chicken Casserole — The Crust That Carries a Tradition Forward