I love all kinds of enchiladas! You can fill them with anything like cheese, chicken, ground beef, veggies, beans, but what makes them comfort food for me are the tortillas smothered in sauce. I like to use recipes that are flexible and adaptable because I’m just not the type of person who makes a list before I get groceries. Sometimes I am missing an ingredient but I only realize it once I’m half done preparing a dish so I have to figure something out to make it work. These Enchiladas are endlessly adaptable. Go ahead and substitute flour for corn tortillas, ground beef for chicken filling. No taco mix? Use some of your favorite Mexican spices from your pantry. They will still be delicious! These are definitely not the enchiladas my Mexican mom used to make but they do remind me of my childhood because they taste similar to the ones we used to eat at Luby’s Cafeteria, in Texas, after church on Sunday’s.
Ingredients for Sauce:
- 1 Can of Campbell’s cheese sauce
- sub with cream of chicken
- 3/4 Cup of chicken stock
- sub with chicken bullion dissolved in hot water.
- 1 Packet of taco seasoning
- sub for a mix of 2T chili powder, 1T paprika, 1tsp salt, 1tsp cumin, 1stp onion powder, 1tsp, garlic, 1/2tsp oregano
- 4T Chili powder
- for spicy enchiladas use dark chili powder (+1tsp cayenne for extra spicy), for mild enchiladas use California chili powder. Most non specific chili powders are somewhere in between on the spicy scale.
- 1T Paprika
Tortillas:
- 10 corn tortillas, lightly fried in neutral oil
- corn oil, veggie oil, peanut oil, or avocado oil would all work fine
- make sure the oil is hot enough. About 350 degrees or when a small piece of tortilla bubbles and floats up to the surface quickly.
- You can sub flour tortillas and skip the frying
Ingredients for the filling:
- 1 1/2 Cups Chopped and Shredded Rotisserie/Baked Chicken
- a mix of white and dark is best
- 1/2 Cup Shredded cheese, Mexican blend or Colby
- replace the cheese with any mild and melty shredded cheese
Method:
Warm your oven to 350 degrees.
Mix the ingredients for the sauce in a medium bowl. Spread ~1/3 of the sauce onto the bottom of a 13X9 baking dish.
Mix the chicken and cheese. Taste the mixture and add some salt/season all/garlic salt if you think it’s a little bland.
Spread a generous tablespoon of sauce on a tortilla, add the filling and roll. Then, place it in the baking dish seal side down.
Top with the rolled enchiladas with the rest of the sauce. Make sure that every tortilla is smothered in sauce to avoid burnt or dried out edges. Top with some extra shredded cheese (about 1/4 cup – 1/2 cup depending on how cheesy you want them) before placing the dish in the oven for 25min or until the cheese is melted and the enchiladas are warmed through. Everything in the dish is already cooked so you are really just looking for the sauce to darken a bit and the cheese to melt and get gooey. Serves 5.
PureYum 