I need some help with my chicken enchilada recipe.
I make the kind with the creamy green chile sauce, not the full-blown red enchiladas. The flavors are good and work well together. I marinate the chicken breasts in margarita mix, chopped jalapenos, and cilantro (I know, I know), and then grill and slice them. I don’t shred the chicken. Roll the chicken, some black beans, and some pepper jack cheese into tortillas, put in a pan (I usually get 6 - 8 in the pan), cover with the green chile sauce, drizzle with red enchilada sauce and bake till all bubbly. Serve with grated cheddar, shredded romaine, diced plum tomatoes, some black olives, and a little dollop of sour cream, maybe some jalapenos on the side, and you’re set.
The problem I have is the tortillas have no bite to them. They take on the texture of a soft lasagne noodle. I’d like them to hold up a bit better.
The wrinkle is this:
I can’t use corn tortillas; they have to be flour. The wife doesn’t like what she calls “raw” corn tortillas. She likes them fried for say, tacos, but that’s it.
Any suggestions? Could I roll and bake the enchiladas sans sauce, and then add that after the tortillas crisp up? If I fried them in oil for just a bit, would they stay flexible enough to roll?
Yikes, you HAVE to use flour? I don’t know that you will get the results you are looking for with flour tortillas.
My suggestion was going to be to lightly fry the tortilla before baking, so it is a little more taquito-esq, but you can’t really do that with flour tortillas.
Good luck to you.
ETA: I reported the other thread as a dupe, since I responded to this one and no one responded to the other yet.
Thanks, NAF1138. Yeah, I know. I figured this was going to be a bit of a lost cause. I was kinda hoping someone ran into this before and had a solution that I haven’t thought of yet.
Does your wife eat enchiladas in restaurants? Because the lightly fried bit is how they do it for most restaurant enchilladas. I personally prefer to bake the tortillas raw, but the light fry will get the corn tortillas firm but flexible. You could try it with flour tortillas I suppose.
The other option would be to do big burrito’s and finish them in the oven with enchilada sauce and cheese. It isn’t an enchilada, but it is similar and you can use the same ingrediants, just put the rice and beans into the roll rather than as a side dish.
How long are you cooking them for? How much sauce are you putting in? Have you tried more than one brand of tortilla?
We do similar enchies and don’t have a problem. Everything in the mix that NEEDS to be cooked is cooked prior to rolling, so they just need to be warmed up (and the cheese melted). It only takes about 20 mins in the oven for ours, at around 350-400.
We use the green chile sauce to warm the tortillas for rolling, so the sauce is hot before it goes in the oven.
We also don’t drown them in sauce. A cup or so of sauce for a packed 9x9 pan. Most of it gets used warming the tortillas (so it’s already in the baking pan) and what’s left is poured over the top.
We usually sprinkle cheese on top for about the last 5 minutes.
I think your idea of adding the sauce at the end would work, but I’d recommend trying our method of using the sauce to warm the tortillas. It lets the green sauce flavor combine into the food without being an overwhelming amount.
You could try frying the tortillas, but flour usually crisp with frying. OTOH, they’ll get soft again under certain circumstances. If you want to try this method, I think it’d be worth a shot. Maybe a light fry, followed by a short period wrapped in foil (to steam/soften them up a bit) if they’re too crunchy to roll well?
Yup. We heat up the sauce in a big, flat skillet, then dip the tortilla in for a moment to get it warm. They roll easier when they’re warm. It also covers the tortilla with a light coating of sauce.
Yeah, dipping the corn tortillas in either the green chile enchilada sauce or some oil and frying for a bit is how enchiladas are supposed to be done, at least, here in the land of green chile. Don’t you get big cracks in the tortillas if you try to roll them cold? The trouble with flour tortillas is that they’ll absorb too much of the sauce - this is why your tortillas were too soft, and probably the dish as a whole was too dry. Make 'em with corn and do the frying thing first, and your sauce will stay sauce.