Salsa Chicken Enchiladas Recipe

Don’t miss these Salsa Chicken Enchiladas for your next Tex Mex crave. So easy to throw together for your next family meal.

Busy families will love skipping the vegetable chopping by using ready-made salsa.

• Why Salsa Chicken Enchiladas?
• Why Do My Tortillas Fall Apart?
• How to Soften Corn Tortillas in the Oven
• Recipe

Ingredients

I’ve kept this one simple. There are only a few ingredients and everything comes together quickly.

Using pre-made salsa means that you’ll not need to do a lot of chopping that usually goes along with making homemade enchiladas. The vegetables don’t require any prior cooking. It’s such a time saver.

I started off with two large boneless skinless chicken breasts that we had already boiled. We bought a big package of chicken breasts and, rather than freeze them individually, we decided to boil them and use them in recipes right away.

Why Salsa Chicken Enchiladas?

The key reason for making salsa chicken is the use of ready-made salsa. Think about it. All the tomatoes, onions and peppers are already chopped up and cooked. You just need to mix it in. Perfect for any meal of the week.

For the sauces, I’ve used Herdez Mild Salsa Casera and San Marcos Chipotle Salsa. Both of these were readily available for us.

The Herdez Salsa is like any other sort of salsa so you can substitute your favorite. It looks a lot like Pace salsa.

The Chipotle salsa is more of a smooth sauce. (“Chilpotle” isn’t the correct spelling, but this spelling could be necessary when trying to find the sauce.) You can substitute taco or enchilada sauce, if you’re unable to find chipotle sauce.

Have a browse at all 24Bite recipes to customize your own search.

Using Chipotle Sauce

Be aware that, since it has chipotle, it has a really nice smoky flavor that you won’t get with regular taco sauce. Try to find the chipotle sauce, if you can. The addition of the smoky flavor is incredible.

You may also find “chipotle in adobo.” It’s okay to substitute here, but you’ll need to chop it up well because it’s not a smooth sauce.

Make Your Own Chipotle Chiles

I found a fun YouTube video about How to Make Chipotle. I’ll be checking more into this later. It’s especially useful if you end up with a lot of jalapeños from the garden or Farmers Market.

Why Do My Tortillas Fall Apart?

You may ask “Why do my tortillas fall apart?” Corn tortillas are quite dry when you purchase them in a bag at the grocery store. There’s no telling how long it took to get them from the commerical oven to your home.

I’ve tried several methods of softening corn tortillas. When making enchiladas, I prefer to heat them in hot oil before rolling them.

Heating them in vegetable oil, about 1 to 1-½ minutes on each side makes them soft enough to go right into the enchilada pan, ready for filling.

Frying in oil tastes great of course but, I wanted to see whether I could achieve the same result with a lower calorie option.

Lower Calorie Option

For these enchiladas, I heated them in a non-stick skillet for 1 to 1-½ minutes for each side. The difference from the first option is that I didn’t add the oil.

It worked out well and softened the tortillas perfectly. I brushed some chipotle sauce on both sides to make sure that they were lightly coated with the smoky chipotle. It adds such a rich, unmistakable flavor!

Using this method, the tortillas are heated and roll easily without breaking. My favorite is still going to be frying in oil, though.

How to Prevent Enchiladas Falling Apart

One way to keep enchiladas from falling apart is to fry them first. This seals them and makes them pliable for rolling.

The other way is to not go overboard with sauce. If you add too much sauce, it’s going to soak into the tortilla. Your tortillas will be so soaked that they will break and fall apart.

For this enchilada recipe, you will note that I have only used seven ounces of smooth sauce for the entire recipe. If you like more sauce, add it when you’re plating the food rather than letting the enchiladas swim in it while heating in the oven.

Softening Corn Tortillas in the Oven

You can easily soften corn tortillas in the oven. You’ll need a little bit of water and some aluminum foil.

Preheat your oven to 400°.

Brush each tortilla, front and back with water. Stack them and cover the stack with aluminum foil. Heat in the oven for 10 minutes.

This method will give you tortillas that are so soft, they flop around and you can fold them in quarters without breaking them.

This is the kind of tortillas that you can eat on their own. Perhaps you want to sop up all the juices from your plate. Serve them right out of the oven with butter and you will want to make an entire meal from them. Yum!

If you’re going to eat them right out of the oven, though, be sure to make extra so you have enough to make these enchiladas! Ask me how I know.

Don’t be afraid to use corn tortillas. You really can make them soft and pliable. I’ve written more extensive details for softening corn tortillas.

More Great Recipes

Do you love chipotle peppers? Chipotle means smoked jalapeños. I like jalapeños all the time, but their smoked version is pretty incredible too. Try our Chipotle Barbacoa Beef for sweet, smoky flavor.

If you find that you also love that incredible smoky flavor of chipotle, try my Sweet and Spicy Chicken Thighs for a honey chipotle experience.

Another really interesting choice is Molé sauce. Molé is made with peanuts and chocolate. Yes, indeed. I really did say chocolate. Have a look at our Easy Chicken Tacos with Molé Sauce.

Be sure to leave room for dessert! Our Mexican Rice Pudding is the perfect meal completion. It’s cold, creamy and delicious.

Browse all our Mexican food recipes for more ideas.

Recipe

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