It’s a beloved family recipe.

My best friend, Kasey Krall, and I have a lot in common: We both love a good belly laugh, old Disney movies, the Backstreet Boys—and each other’s families. In truth, the Kralls are my second family. Kasey’s mama, Lori, even jokes that I’m her “favorite daughter from another mother.”

Over the past 15 years, many of their family’s traditions, including those in the culinary realm, have become my own. Every November, we celebrate Kasey’s birthday with Popeye’s chicken (spicy only) and her dad’s homemade Appalachian–style pepperoni rolls. And no winter is complete without a plate (or two) of Lori’s famous Chicken à la King.

A Legendary Chicken à la King Recipe

Many traditional recipes for Chicken à la King—an American-born dish that gained popularity in the 1950s and ’60s—feature a wine- or sherry-enriched cream sauce studded with diced chicken and a selection of veggies (peas, mushrooms, red peppers, and onions are popular additions). The thick sauce is served over rice, pasta, mashed potatoes, or biscuits for a hearty meal.

Lori’s family has roots in Holyoke, a tiny town (population 2,300) on Colorado’s Great Plains, but her parents moved to Denver, where she and her two sisters were raised. They grew up eating their mother’s Chicken à la King, a family recipe. It calls for only four-ingredients: cream of chicken soup, diced canned chicken, pimientos, and some sort of carbohydrate-rich side to spoon the sauce over. The simplified version of the classic recipe was likely created by someone in their Hofmeister family to save time in the kitchen and satisfy as many appetites as possible on a tight budget.

Lori (left) and her mother, pictured in the Krall Family Cookbook

“We'd just eat it over toasted Wonder Bread sliced diagonally long before Pillsbury biscuits were invented," Lori says. “It’s an old Holyoke recipe.”

As Lori attended college, started a career, then raised three daughters of her own in Denver, she carried the recipe with her—and passed it down with love. The first time I had the Chicken à la King was when Kasey and I shared a 1,000-square-foot apartment in our early 20s in Boulder, Colorado.

To be honest, I had low expectations as I watched my BFF simmer the cream of chicken soup with the canned chicken and pimientos and ladle the hot liquid over baked refrigerator biscuits. But every spoonful of biscuit soaked in silky, salty sauce tasted like a tight squeeze from a mama, particularly as a poor college student whose diet often consisted of ramen and pizza.

Lori’s Chicken à la King Recipe

1 can cream of chicken soup
1 small can boned chicken (drained)
2 tablespoons chopped pimientos
Toast or biscuits (for serving)

Cook in a saucepan until hot. Serve over toast or biscuits. Also good with mashed potatoes.

Lori’s Advice for Making Chicken à la King

While Lori respects other home cooks, she urges them not to alter the recipe. It’s just that special.

“You can’t change a thing!” she says. “No, you can’t add peas—you have to use pimientos. No, you can’t use rotisserie chicken. It has to be canned.”

I can’t stop you from making the Chicken à la King recipe your own by swapping in shredded chicken breasts for the canned meat or adding onions and mushrooms to the sauce (just don’t tell Lori). But as I’ve learned from making my own modifications, nothing beats the sweet simplicity of the original.