Delicious chicken enchiladas recipe. If you like the spicy and hot Mexican food, you might don’t want to pass this one. It’s called chicken enchiladas. Enchiladas in Spanish literally means to add (or season with) chili. So chicken enchiladas could mean chicken covered with chili. Enchilada commonly known as a roll of corn tortilla filled with various fillings and is covered with chili sauce. There are various fillings for enchiladas such as chicken, beef, pork, cheese, seafood, vegetables, potato, etc.

Now they make enchiladas in different varieties and sauces. It’s quite tempting to taste tortilla dipped in mole sauce or in green chili sauce. You should try them sometime. But this chicken enchiladas recipe will use the basic chili sauce with tomato. This will be a delicious chicken enchilada with homemade sauce. There are a lot of chicken enchiladas recipes out there but this one is certainly one of the best. So let’s start the preparation for chicken enchiladas recipe.

Chicken Enchiladas Recipe Ingredients:

·        3 small cloves garlic, minced

·        1 small onion, finely chopped

·        Vegetable oil or olive oil

·        1 28 oz can of tomato sauce

·        2 tbsp red chili powder

·        1 tsp sugar

·        ½ - 1 cup of water

·        20 corn tortillas

·        Grapeseed oil or canola oil-high smoke point vegetable oil

·        6 chicken thighs

·        2 green onions

·        2 jalapeno peppers, chopped

·        1 block manchego cheese / mild cheddar cheese/Monterey Jack cheese

·        1 cup of sour cream (optional)

Chicken Enchiladas Recipe Method:

1.        Before getting your hand into the ingredients, preheat the oven to 350˚F. Although baking it is not the right method of authentic Mexican enchiladas, but this way will make it tastes better for me.

2.        Next is to prepare the sauce. Pour a large skillet with a little bit oil in medium heat and let it for about a minute. When hot enough put the onion in and stir fry until limp but don’t burn it. Then add garlic in it and stir for another a minute. Next, pour in the canned tomato sauce and stir until mixed. Add in chili powder to the mix one spoon at a time to get the taste that you want. Add more another spoon of chili powder when you like it to be spicier. Keep in mind that the chicken and the tortilla will absorb some of the chili taste so you can add more chili powder if you want the finished dish to be quite hot. Also, add in around a tablespoon of sugar to reduce the sour taste from the tomato because the chili taste should be dominant and not the tomato. Add in the jalapeno peppers. Add a little bit water just so it won’t easily burn when simmering. Turn down the heat and let it simmer. Remove from heat.

If you don’t have enough time to make this sauce, you can use canned enchilada sauce. But sometimes the taste might be too strong so you can heat it with water in medium and simmer it.

Alternative:

If you like real hot sauce, you can try making the authentic enchilada sauce. Boil red chilli in hot water for about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and strain it so the chilli will dry a little bit. Then blend them until just fine to make a chilli sauce. Add water to reach the desired consistency so the sauce will not be too thick. When finished, boil it in a pan and add garlic powder, salt, pepper, and cayenne powder. Stir and taste. Add more salt if or garlic powder if it doesn’t taste good enough for you.

3.        Boil the chicken thighs in water and set it aside when cooked to let it cool off. When it's cool enough you can start debone the chicken. You can discard the skin or other part you don’t like or you don’t want to eat. Place the chicken into a cutting board and cut it up into one inch chunks. After that, you can put it back to the pot where you boil it to keep it warm and close it, or just put it in a bowl and keep it cover with a lid so bacteria won’t grow.

4.        Next is to prepare the tortilla. Pour oil in a pan and heat it on medium. Dip a small part of tortilla in the sauce and then put it into the heated oil for about 30 seconds until it bubbles. The idea is to make the tortilla flexible enough so that it can be rolled easily, and thus don’t fry it for too long otherwise the texture will be crunchy.

If you want it to be low fat, there’s a tip to this. Pour in a small amount of oil in the pan. When it's hot enough, put one tortilla. After a second, put another tortilla on top to soak the excess oil. Then flip them together and add another tortilla. Do it over for about 5 tortillas. You can add more oil. With this way, tortilla will absorb less oil but also less spicy. You can choose which one you prefer.

5.        After that, you can start making enchiladas. Put the deboned chicken in a large bowl. Add in half of the grated cheese, chopped green onion and a quarter cup of chili sauce. Mix in together. When mixed, place about a one or two spoon of the mixture into the middle of tortilla. With your spoon, lay it around a little bit so the chicken covers more area of the tortilla but don’t make it too large, just a half round of the tortilla. Then roll it up. Put your finish tortilla into a large baking pan or a casserole dish. When you finish rolling up all the chicken enchiladas and putting them in the dish, pour the remaining chili sauce onto them. Pour the remaining cheese on top of the sauce.

6.        Now put it in the oven and bake it for about 10 minutes or until the cheese bubbles. When finished, put it out from the oven. Serve it with sliced lettuce dipped in vinegar and salt, slice of avocado, or sour cream. Put cilantro on top as garnish.