Evonne’s Chicken Enchiladas

This is a basic recipe that I threw together with great results. I make these A LOT, and even made them for a wedding.

Difficulty: Easy

Servings: varies

Prep Time: 1 hour + crock pot time   Cook Time: 30 mins aprox  

Ingredients

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (trim off all fat)
green enchilada sauce (maybe 2 big cans, but buy an extra or 2 just in case)
black olives
purple onion
cilantro
frozen corn (or niblets drained)
shredded cheese (lots)
tortillas

Directions

The night before you want to assemble (or early the day of):
Put chicken in crock pot and cover it with enchilada sauce.. maybe half a big can… (you want all the meat covered so it doesn’t get crispy, and if you want it to cook faster cutting the chicken up will speed things along). Cook until the chicken shreds easily with a fork. Let cool (at this point you can put it in a covered bowl in the fridge for the night or a few hours until you’re ready to put them together). Chop onion and cilantro, slice olives, toss into bowl with chicken (the chicken should still have the juice it cooked in in the bowl), add corn, and cheese (leave some cheese for on top before baking, I sometimes will leave a little olives or cilantro too to be pretty). All of this is to your personal taste, but even if you don’t like an ingredient, don’t leave it out.. just don’t add as much.. the flavor blend on this is amazing. I like my bowl to look like a big bowl of confetti.. with all the colors. Toss/stir until evenly blended, add more sauce if the mixture seems dry. You don’t want to see sauce pooling around the edges of the pile of mix, but you do want to see it.. kind of like… casserole consistency.

At this point you’re ready to assemble the enchiladas… (You will have a BIG bowl of stuff, way more than you’ll need for one dinner, i’ll tell you want to do with the rest after.. lol.. )

Corn tortillas need to be heated on the griddle or frying pan so they roll without breaking (you can do this in the microwave too, I actually do mine right on the stove burner because I like a little bit of char to them… only a few seconds per side, I’m not sure of time in the microwave). I put a paper towel on the plate, pile the tortillas on it as I heat them, then when I start rolling I flip the pile over… I don’t know… just what I do… Put some stuffing about 1″ from the edge closest to you all the way across tortilla. Fold the edge close to you over stuffing and roll.. semi tight… it will take a few times to figure out how much stuffing.. if they’re thin you can get more in the pan, but you have to eat more. Place enchilada in pan with the seam down (easy cleanup–line pan with foil or spray with Pam first). Fill the pan. After you’re done rolling, pour enough sauce over top to cover and add some cheese and anything else.

Bake at 350-degrees till the cheese bubbles. Serve with sour cream and guacamole if you like.

Once you have your mix, you can freeze the extra mix in a baggie, or if you’re not sick of them by this point, you can go ahead and roll them… if you line a cookie sheet with foil and put them on that, then freeze till they’re solid, you can put them individually into a baggie or Rubbermaid and freeze that way. Easy to take out and pop in the microwave for individual snacks. Or I will line the pans I cook them in with foil and freeze then lift the foil out and put a whole pan in my vacuum seal bags. One year for Christmas I put extra sauce in a ziploc, and put the ziploc on top of the enchiladas in the pan and vacuumed the pan too and gave them to family for Christmas. All they did was defrost in the fridge overnight open the baggie of extra sauce and add their own extra cheese… was a HUGE hit. This is easy to do ahead and while you’ve got the crock pot going you can throw extra chicken in there and have a few extra meals in the freezer. Also VERY easy to multiply for parties.

Categories: Crock Pot, Crowd-Size, Freezing, Main Dish, Poultry

Tags: Mexican

Submitted by: evonne on August 27, 2010