Saturday, June 2, 2012

"Poolside" Chicken Enchilada Bake


So this is a mish-mash of recipes I had floating in my mind, again thanks to Pinterest.  First of all, I'd pinned a recipe for "Benchiladas" from one of my favorite food blogs, Annie's Eats.  She created it for her husband and in the mixture of chicken, it had both sour cream and ranch dressing.  I liked the idea of the ranch flavors, but did not have any bottled ranch dressing on hand.  Incidentally, you can visit her blog here at Annie's Eats  I would give you the link for the "Benchiladas", but really you should just check out her entire site because it's awesome!

OK, so then I kept seeing a recipe for Poolside Dip that sounded interesting.  I couldn't really find an original source for it, so I don't mean to be borrowing without giving credit.  My pin on my "Picnic" board just had a picture with the recipe typed right at the bottom.  It's a combo of ranch dressing mix, sour cream, cream cheese, red pepper, corn, jalapenos and olives, which sounded great to me!  This is where the "mash" happened... I put the dip filling together with the basic idea from Annie's recipe and now have what I call the "Poolside" Chicken Enchilada Bake!  There's nothing authentically Mexican about it, not even really the flavors.  It's unique but very tasty.  Try it and see if you agree...

"Poolside" Chicken Enchilada Bake
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
4 c. chicken broth
1 T. liquid smoke
16 oz. container sour cream (I don't think low-fat is a good choice in this case)
1 red pepper, diced small
1/2 c. kalamata olives, diced small
1/2 c. frozen corn
1 pkg. Hidden Valley Ranch Dip mix
8 flour (or corn, your preference) tortillas
1 can fire roasted diced tomatoes, partially drained
2 T. canned, diced green chiles (I had bought the whole 7 oz. can, but since I wanted my kids to eat it, I didn't want this to be too spicy)
dash of Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper
8 oz. pkg. Cheddar Monterey Jack cheese, shredded

Place chicken in a large pot and cover with the broth.  Season with the liquid smoke, salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer to poach the chicken.  While it's cooking, prepare the rest of the ingredients...
Mix together the sour cream and ranch dressing.  Divide it in half.
Into one half, stir the red peppers, olives and corn for the filling.
Into the other half, stir in the tomatoes, green chiles, Worcestershire sauce, and a little salt and pepper for the topping.
Shred the cheese.  Buy the pre-shredded if you must, but I personally think the block cheese tastes much better.
Take the chicken breasts out of the poaching liquid and let cool enough so that you can shred it.
Stir the shredded chicken into the filling mixture.
Divide the filling amongst the eight tortillas, roll and place seam-side down in an 8x13 glass baking dish.  Cover the enchiladas evenly with the sauce.  Then top with the shredded cheese.  Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbling and starting to brown a bit.  Serve with some extra sour cream to top.

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