2008 November | Chickens in the Road

I love enchiladas. And fajitas and burritos and chimichangas and nachos and– Okay, I practically worship Mexican food. But I was born in Texas and spent more than half my life there, so I have an excuse for the salsa running through my veins. My kids love Mexican food, too, and this is one of our longtime favorite ways to make enchiladas around here. I copied it down 20 years ago at a college friend’s kitchen table in Lubbock, Texas, and have been playing with it ever since. It’s a really versatile recipe and I make it different ways at different times, depending on what I have onhand, but here is the standard version.

How to make Sour Cream Enchiladas:

12 corn tortillas
oil
2 cans cream of chicken soup
8 ounces sour cream
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups chicken, cut up
1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese (divided)
1/2 cup sliced jalapenos
1/2 cup chopped onions

Fry tortillas for about 30 seconds per side in a small amount of oil on medium-high heat.

I’m using white corn tortillas here. You can use yellow corn tortillas. It doesn’t matter. If you are really fussy about the taste of corn tortillas and don’t like them, you can even use flour tortillas. If you use flour tortillas, you can skip the frying step. The point is to soften up the corn tortillas so they don’t cause you any trouble when you’re folding them. Trust me, you don’t want to have any trouble with your tortillas. I’ve had tortillas before that were trouble. Drove too fast, stayed out late, drank too much. You don’t want to go there. (Sometimes you should just pay no attention to me whatsoever.)

Drain fried tortillas on paper towels.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine soup, sour cream, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and chicken.

Stir it up into a big goopy mess. Notice I’m not actually using chicken here. I substituted turkey for the chicken because it’s just after Thanksgiving and Mexican food is a great way to make leftover Thanksgiving turkey feel new. (I hope you remembered to use your turkey carcass to make Turkey Noodle Soup. Did you?) Sometimes I use turkey in casseroles and I don’t even tell the kids it’s not chicken. They never notice and I’m sneaky that way. (Turkey can be substituted in just about any recipe calling for cut up chicken with no problem. And since there are so many more recipes for chicken than for turkey, this is really helpful right after Thanksgiving.) In this recipe, you can also substitute any other cream soup for the cream of chicken soup and use other types of meat. For example, another great combination that works here is cream of mushroom soup and shredded or ground beef. Cream of celery soup and pork. You can even make this dish all vegetarian–use your favorite sauteed veggies in place of meat. If you don’t like jalapenos, skip the jalapenos and use chopped sweet peppers instead. I have also made this recipe with light sour cream and with fat-free sour cream and it works just fine. Once you’ve got the basic sour cream enchilada recipe down, you can do anything you want with it.

Stir in 1 cup of the shredded cheddar. (Depending on how you decide to vary the recipe, any other type of shredded cheese you prefer will do.)

Spoon a couple tablespoons down the middle of each tortilla. (You will not use all of the sour cream mixture in the tortillas.)

Fold up.

Place seam-side down in a greased 9×11 casserole pan.

Spread the remaining sour cream mixture over the top of the enchiladas.

Top with the remaining 1/2 cup cheese and the jalapenos and onions. You can use less onion or no onion. I leave one end of the pan with no onion because I have an onion-hater in the family. Sometimes I put chopped tomatoes on top, too, or even just pour some salsa on top.

Bake at 350-degrees, uncovered, for 30 minutes.

Muy bien!

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