April 20, 2009

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas and Roasted Broccoli

Here is a recipe I picked up from the $5 Dinners website. This site is dedicated to cheap, family-friendly, healthy meals. All things that are right up my alley!!! I love this frugal-cooking website, and I check it daily to see what the author has up her sleeve. I think it is great that there are so many resources out there now for ways to live more economically. I really try to be a good steward of our household income, and sites like this definitely help!

I have a surplus of tortillas, so I thought I would give this recipe a go. Normally, my enchiladas are always made with red or green sauce. My friend, Claire has a couple similar versions to this dish, where she uses a creamy white sauce. Since I have all the ingredients on hand for this meal, and the method is a little different than my normal stand-by,I am excited to try these thrifty enchiladas. I am very interested to see how they turn out! Really, can you ever go wrong with that much cheese and sour cream??? I think not!

I think I will serve these with a side of beans (not sure what kind yet), salad, and a vegetable (probably roasted broccoli). It makes a good-sized batch, so there should be enough food for dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, and then some. Also, I need to modify the original recipe a wee bit. I am looking forward to dinner already!

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas
adapted from: $5 Dinners

Ingredients:
8 ounces of low fat sour cream
8 ounces of low fat Greek-style plain yogurt
1 diced medium onion
2 cloves fresh garlic
1 can of green chiles
1-2 cups of homemade chicken stock
1 Tablespoon of olive oil
2 cooked boneless/skinless chicken breasts, shredded (1 1/2 cups needed)
1/2 tsp garlic powder for sauce
1/2 tsp garlic powder for chicken
Salt and Pepper, to taste
tortillas (about 10)
1-2 cups shredded cheese
fresh, chopped cilantro and/or green onion tops; for garnish

Directions:
On a sheet pan coat chicken breasts in olive oil and sprinkle with 1/2 tsp of garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste. Turn chicken on pan to make sure all sides are coated with oil and seasonings. Broil on high for 7-9 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink in the middle. Pull chicken out of oven and let it rest for 5 minutes, or until it is cool enough to handle. Shred the chicken with two forks and set aside. Switch oven over from 'broil' to 'bake', and preheat to 350 degrees.

In a large skillet, saute the onions until soft and translucent. Add garlic and green chiles and cook for another minute or two. Remove mixture to a plate and set aside. Do not clean skillet.
In the same large skillet, whisk sour cream, yogurt, and 1 cup of chicken stock. Add more chicken stock until it comes to the consistency you want for your sauce. Add garlic powder and salt and pepper to taste. Save 1 cup of the sour cream sauce (remove it from the pan and save seperately, before adding the chicken and onion mixture). Stir shredded chicken and onion mixture into the sauce and let simmer about 10 minutes, allowing the flavors time to infuse.

Spoon sour cream chicken sauce into tortillas. Roll and place “seam down” into a baking dish. (Note: 10 enchiladas fit comfortably in a 9×13 dish.) Take the sour cream sauce that you removed and spread it over the tortillas. Sprinkle cheese over the top and bake about 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees. Before serving, garnish with cilantro and/or green onion tops. Enjoy!

Jen's Notes:
I don't have as much sour cream on hand as the original recipe calls for, so I am substituting plain low-fat Greek-style yogurt. I have made the yogurt/sour cream switcharoo in the past, and it has always worked out fine. Hopefully, this time will be no exception.





The Result:
These enchiladas were really yummy. We loved them! For me, they needed an extra spicy element. I ended up putting some really spicy salsa on them, to balance out the creaminess of the sauce. However, keep in mind that I am a spicy food freak. When I was pregnant with my son, I actually craved 'set-your-hair-on-fire' spicy food (now my son loves spicy food, too). The husband and boy loved them, as-is, and the creamy sauce was very flavorful on it's own. My yogurt substitution worked out perfectly, too!
I did improvise on some of the other aspects of the recipe, as well. I ended up adding a diced onion and two cloves of minced, fresh garlic. The onion was actually a mistake. I could have sworn I read that there were onions in the recipe. Turns out that there wasn't. Ugh. Once I realized my error, I thought "I might as well add some garlic, too". I don't know exactly how that is logical, but it worked.

Next, I noticed that my tortillas were not average-sized, run-of-the-mill tortillas. They were more of the size and shape of a manhole cover. These babies were so big, I only ended up making four total enchiladas...that were more like the size of four large burritos. The funny thing was that four burritos/enchiladas fit comfortably in the 9 x 13 pan. I skipped the beans, since the enchiladas ended up being so gynormous. Otherwise, we would have had way too much food! Our side dishes ended up being just salad and roasted broccoli. To finish it all off, I ended up garnishing our meal with some fresh chopped cilantro and chopped green onions. Yum!!! As I said, these were really good!

Now, I want to talk about the roasted broccoli for a second. Broccoli is probably our favorite veggie. We all love it, including my little guy. I usually buy frozen, steam it in the microwave, and call it an evening. Fresh broccoli finally went on sale, so I bought some for our dinner. Then, last night I roasted the fresh broccoli instead of using my frozen/steamed broccoli method. Let me tell you....roasted broccoli kicks steamed broccoli's butt! Oh man!!! I think the best part of our dinner (for me) was the broccoli! The roasted, toasty, blackened bits turned crunchy are caramelized. Seriously, it was awesome! Also, it is totally simple!!! I heart fresh, roasted broccoli. Here is what I did, for the record:

Roasted Broccoli

Ingredients:
2 heads of fresh broccoli, florets only
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup of olive oil

Directions:
Place cut broccoli florets on a cookie sheet. Drizzle oil over top of all broccoli. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss with clean hands, so all pieces are well coated. Roast in the oven for 25 minutes at 425 degrees. Enjoy!


See!!!! The broccoli is so incredibly easy!!!! Overall, this was a great meal and we really enjoyed it.

1 comment:

Sara said...

This looks great. I am making enchiladas on Friday night, now I am really excited for them!