Thursday, August 18, 2011

Wednesday meal - Enchiladas & Corn/Black Bean Salsa

So this is one of my regular, go-to meals.  We eat this ALL the time!!!  I originally got the recipe from my brother's wife (who I'm proud to say I introduced to him!).  She's a great cook and I'm glad she passed this along to me.

Get ready for the SIMPLEST version of enchiladas you've ever seen.  And I really don't think they lack in flavor because of it either!

The ingredients
For the Enchiladas:
  • 3-4 chicken breasts (I only did 2 tonight but it was a little sparse!)
  • 2 cups of shredded Mexican cheese
  • 1 15 oz can of Green Chile Enchilada sauce...see what I mean - easy!
  • 12 Corn tortillas 
  • Dash of paprika 
Really, you could leave it at that!  I also add in some chopped onion if I have it on hand.

For the Corn/Black Bean Salsa*: 
  • 2 parts Corn
  • 2 parts Black Bean
  • 1 part salsa
*you can do any quantity of this, I usually do 2 cups, 2 cups, 1 cup and have a good amount of leftovers
.....................

First, cook the chicken and shred...this is the most tedious part (and my least favorite because it takes a while!).  You've got a couple options - you can boil the chicken in a pot of water, then shred and add some salt and pepper; or you can bake the chicken...that's what I did today.  Great part about doing it this way is that you can start from frozen chicken breasts - great huh?!  Just pop them in the oven at 375 for 35-45 minutes till the juice runs clear.  Then shred. 

Here's my shredded chicken

And just a little bit of onion for some flavor! (I used probably an 8th of an onion)

Now set up an assembly line...tortillas, cheese, and the shredded chicken/onion mixture.  A little trick for you - take 4 tortillas at a time and put them in the microwave for 20 seconds.  This makes them a LOT more flexible to work with!

Do you see that precious baby on the fridge - yep I'm in love...can't bring myself to pull down Kinley's birth announcement even though she's 9 months old!  Oh how she has grown!!!
So here are my enchiladas all rolled up.  I fit 12 in a 9x12 pan

Then comes the sauce...there are PLENTY of enchilada recipe's out there where you can make your own sauce, but I find the cheap stuff is still pretty yummy!

Cover the enchiladas with every last drop in the can...

Then sprinkle on the rest of your cheese

Finally sprinkle just a bit of paprika on top - give it a great punch of flavor and color!

Into the oven at 375 for about 35-40 minutes - everything is already fully cooked, so you're really just heating things up and melting the cheese...watch to make sure the tortillas don't get too crispy.

When there is about 10 minutes left, you can mix up this yummy side dish (or dip for chips...works great either way!)
Corn & Black Bean Salsa - this is pretty simple - just dump everything in the saucepan and turn on low heat till it gets hot!





The final product!  The corn/black bean salsa is super yummy with tortilla chips too!

Enjoy!

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