One of my favorite recipes from childhood, this chicken and cheese enchilada dish is one that I would run to the table to super excited about, not only because it was a super delicious for dinner, but made amazing leftovers the next day!
The Chicken has so much flavor and the peppers give it a nice spiciness to it. If this doesn’t get the family pumped for dinner nothing will!
Prep
The Sauce
I could go into how to make your own enchilada sauce from scratch, but I considering the chicken is enough prep work in itself I figured i’d save that for another day. My favorite enchilada mix is mixing these two cans together
Las Palmas
El Pato
I could go on and on about how much I love El Pato (I’ll probably do a post on the many uses of this sauce down the road) but doing a 1:4 ratio of el pato to las palmas gives a nice flavor for enchilada sauce!
The Chicken
This recipe’s shredded chicken is a little different than in the Nacho recipe. I tried to speed this up a bit by cooking a little higher temp in a pot. If you rather do this in a crock pot in the morning, then by all means go for it! Set the temp to low and the chicken will be ready by dinner time. This will make this dish more practical for weekdays!
This is also another great recipe to utilize a Whole Chicken, or a cheaper frying pack.
Getting a Station Ready
To keep prep work easy for rolling enchiladas, I like to get a station prepared so that i can easily go from sauce, to dish without reaching everywhere and making a huge mess, which is a major issue with me in the kitchen btw.
Since I’m right-handed, I like to move from right to left from sauce to dish, then keeping the fillings close to the dish. That towel isn’t for decoration, you’re going to need it!
On To The Recipe
Spicy Chicken Enchiladas
Ingredients
Shredded Chicken
- 1 Whole frying chicken quartered and skinned
- 2 tbsp chili powder
- 1 tbsp paprika
- 2 medium bay leaves
- 2 tbsp cumin
- 1 tsp cayanne pepper
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1/2 medium yellow onion chopped
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 4-6 dried japanese peppers
- 3 cups chicken stock
- 3 cups water
Enchilada Stuff
- 8 oz chederella cheese grated
- 4 oz can sliced black olives
- 12 corn tortillas
- 28 oz can enchilada sauce mild
- 8 oz el pato tomato sauce
- 1/2 cup green onion chopped
condiments
- 8 oz sour cream
- 8 oz guacamole
- 8 oz pico de gallo
Instructions
- Chop up the onion and garlic
- In a large pot, heat up 2 tbsp of oil oil and brown the onion, garlic and peppers.
- Add your chicken, and spices
- Then brown everything for about 2 minutes.
- Pour in the water, chicken stock and add the bay leaves. If it doesn't cover the chicken add more water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer for about 4 hours.
- remove the chicken and place in a bowl. with a fork shred the chicken, it should fall apart easily. Remove any bones and cartilage while doing this.
- I like to take a ladle full of the broth from the both and mix it in to add in some flavor to chicken. Taste the chicken at this time. Add more salt to taste.
- Chicken is done!
- On low heat, pour in about 3/4 cup enchilada to 1/4 cup el pato mixture in a medium sized pan.
- With your station ready, preheat the oven to 350° F.
- Take a tortilla and submerse it in the enchilada sauce mixture for about 15-30 seconds. You'll know its ready by how pliable it is.
- In a 9x13 glass baking dish, plass the tortilla in and add some chicken across like a burrito
- Then add the cheese
- Roll it up and place against the dish
- Keep repeating this process, as the dish gets filled up, i'll just stack the new tortilla on top of the already rolled up enchiladas so I don't need to use an extra plate.
- Cram as many as you can get in there, I usually get about 12, stacking like this.
- Smother with the remaining enchilada sauce can. for good measure i like to add whats remaining in the pan, then use the cans.
- Top with the rest of the cheese, add the olive and green onions.
- Place int he oven for about 15-20 minutes. Serve with guac, sour cream and salsa. And of course, goes great with some re-fried beans and Spanish rice. Enjoy!
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