Easy Chicken Enchiladas

In the mood for Mexican but don't feel like making it all from scratch?

I'm a die-hard, make-it-from-scratch kind of gal but there are some days when you want a nice meal and you are willing to cut a few corners. Here is my short-cut, easy to make Chicken enchiladas.

Keeping a well-stocked kitchen is essential. I have tons of spices at home that I could have thrown together my own seasoning for the chicken but I knew I would be sharing this recipe so I chose to make it easier.

This recipe will make a hearty two servings or add plenty of side dishes and you can get four servings out of it. (we will most likely have leftovers)

Start out with 2 boneless chicken breasts. Perdue was on sale and let me just say that buying quality shows when you open the package. There was very little chicken "gunk" to remove.

I diced the chicken pretty small and added it to a pot with 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil.

Then I slowly allowed the chicken to cook, stirring occasionally until the pink was gone.

Here comes the simple part. Instead of playing with my own combinations of cumin, chili powder, cayenne and garlic I opened 1 package of Old El Paso LOW SODIUM taco seasoning. It was on sale for just 99 cents so I figured- why not? Normally I don't use pre-packaged anything but I wanted to make it simple.

I added it to the chicken along with about 1/4 cup of water and let it simmer.

Meanwhile I cooked a box of Goya Mexican rice. Again, another rarity for me but hey, there was no time to steam brown rice and chop vegetables, etc.

I allowed the chicken to cook for about 25 minutes and then I shut it off.

I took two small flour tortillas and put some home-shredded extra sharp cheddar on the center of a tortilla, loaded it with half the chicken, topped it with a bit more cheese and folded it over.

Then I took a deep-dish pie plate and prepared my sauce.

I had some plain tomato sauce leftover in the refrigerator. I added 1/4 cup of water to it (there was only about 3/4 cup) and added some spice. 2 teaspoons cumin, 1 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon garlic powder and 1/2 teaspoon chili powder.

I simply stirred it together and poured half of it into the bottom of the pie pan.

Then I placed the chicken tortillas into the pan.

I "sealed" the top with 3 pieces of cheddar.

Then I poured over the remaining sauce.



I would normally bake this in the oven for about 20 minutes (a pre-heated 350 degree oven) but it is way too hot today to turn the oven on.

Instead I will microwave it just to heat and melt the cheese.

I'm serving this with some buttered corn and rice. A nice chopped salad would go great as well but no lettuce in the house today.

As I suspected, the finished product is a lot! It made two hearty enchiladas but with the side of rice and corn, we split one in half and were very satisfied.