This tetrazzini is the kind of casserole that tastes like everyone’s childhood. It’s about as creamy as a casserole can get, is full of hearty chicken and chewy linguine, and has just enough cheese to keep things cozy. It’s not something my mom ever made — or really anything like it — and yet I took one bite and it felt like home. Maybe that’s because it just tastes like comfort.

It’s a great use for leftover chicken if you happen to have some hanging out in your fridge. You’ll need three cups, which is about what you can pull off of a rotisserie chicken. You’ll also need linguine, cream of chicken soup (more on that in a minute), cream cheese, a hefty portion of garlic, mozzarella, cheddar, and a few spices/herbs.

So that cream of chicken soup. It’s not something I use often, but it does give you an incredibly creamy casserole. That being said, if you want to make your own instead, you can use our Cream Soup Substitute recipe, which is basically a bechamel with some broth mixed in and does the trick nicely.

This is really easy to throw together. Basically, you’re going to cook the pasta and while it’s boiling, you’ll mix together the sauce ingredients (the cream cheese, sour cream, spices, soup, and the like) together with half of the cheeses and the chicken. Then, you stir in the cooked pasta, transfer it to a baking dish, top it with the remaining cheese, and bake.

Bake until it’s got a nice cheese crust on the top that’s irresistibly golden brown and bubbly, but the inside is as creamy a casserole as you’ve ever seen.

Potlucks, weeknight family dinner… this tetrazzini works pretty much anywhere. It’s crowd-pleasing comfort food through and through.