In the mood for mexican food

I had this HUGE craving for Mexican food last night.  Since I had corn, beans, salsa, cheese, & tortillas in the house I thought a nice casserole would be easy if I just bought the chicken.  Then I started thinking about the enchiladas my sister-in-law made while they were visiting last month & thought maybe I could try that too.  We ended up with 5 different (slight) variations of the same dish just to see which was better.

The first pan, the casserole, had the basic recipe below minus the sour cream, enchilada sauce, tortillas and added crushed tortilla chips to the top.  Half had rice mixed in & the other half had none.  The second pan I made 3 different enchiladas, going by memory on how Stacy made it, one with the basic recipe plus cheese, one with sour cream, and one with sour cream and rice.  And the winner was..........enchiladas with sour cream no rice!  Though all of it tasted good & was promptly finished off at lunch today.

Don't you just love the strained expression on my face holding the pans up... "take the picture now hun before I drop this on my foot".

With this recipe measuring can basically be thrown out the window, its hard to mess up.  This is a fun recipe to play around with and experiment (as evident by my crushed tortilla chips version).  Substitute turkey, ground beef, kidney beans, or whatever you have laying around.  It can also be made lower calorie by not putting in sour cream and using low fat tortillas (or just going with my plain Casserole version.

Mexican Casserole Enchiladas

Ingredients:

• oil for cooking the chicken
• 3-4 chicken breasts
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 1/2 package taco seasoning mix or a batch of the recipe on previous post
• 1 can black beans, drained
• 1 can sweet corn, not drained
• 3/4 cup salsa
• About 1/2 cup sour cream
  
• 1 can enchilada sauce
  
• 1-2 cups shredded mexican style cheese
• 6 large tortillas

1. In a large pan saute the chicken with 3-4 Tbsp oil on medium/ med high heat till chicken is cooked through.  Remove pan from heat and cut chicken into chunks.  Drain any liquid from pan and saute crushed garlic for 1 minute on medium heat.   Add chicken and toss with taco seasoning.  Add drained can of beans, undrained can of corn, and salsa. Cover & simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  If it looks like it is getting dry add a little water.

 

2. With a slotted spoon, scoop mixture in a separate bowl and add sour cream and cheese.  Mix thoroughly.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray 9x13 inch baking pan with cooking spray.

4. Pour the enchilada sauce in a large plate.  Take one tortilla and coat both sides of it.  Scoop several spoonfuls of the chicken mixture into coated tortilla, roll tortilla up folding bottom ends under, and place in baking dish seam side down. Repeat. (if you don't have a huge mess right now you are not doing it right :)

5. Sprinkle top with lots of cheese and bake for 15 minutes until cheese is melted.

 

Craving is now satisfied :)