Layered Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas {New Mexico Style}

If you know anything about New Mexico it should be that the people here are CRAZY for green chile.  You find green chile mentioned everywhere, it's probably on every single menu in all the restaurants all around.  There are tons of breakfast burrito joints around and they all feature green chile.  Subway even offers NM green chile for their subs.  

I thought the food here would be like all the other Mexican style food I'd had, and while it is similar, it's not the same. The Hatch Green Chile grown here is amazing. If we ever move from here we will have UPS ship us green chile. We are hooked! Amazon actually sells fresh roasted green chile that you can get shipped to your door.  

Now that you know we're crazy about green chile. Let me introduce you to this amazing Layered Green Chile Chicken Enchilada recipe. Perfect timing for Cinco de Mayo next week!  My neighbor is a sweet lady who has lived here most of her life, and she made us her enchiladas.  She told me she used to run a restaurant in Santa Fe - she's an amazing cook, especially of New Mexcian food! You better believe these enchiladas were good. Wow! So good!  I asked her for her recipe, she doesn't really follow one, she just whips it up. So she told me what she did and I made them and let her sample. She approved, so now I have a recipe that we LOVE.  We've served this to several guests.  There are some missionaries from our church that work in our area and whenever we invite them to dinner this is what they request.  

I love that theses are layered enchiladas, it saves a lot of time and hassle rolling up corn tortillas. I'm not a huge fan of corn tortillas usually, but I do love them in this dish. Especially if they are white corn tortillas. You can buy white or yellow - I always choose white. 

I've included some notes in this recipe for making your own enchilada sauce from scratch or using cream of chicken soup.  I'm not a cream of chicken soup fan - and so the recipe for the sauce it something I use in a lot of dishes that call for cream of chicken soup. And I hope the pictures below help you see how nicely these come together.

I hope you'll enjoy these! Leave me a comment letting me know how you like them! (see below for the printable version)

Xo,
Lu

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For making the sauce, you'll saute some onion and garlic in some butter or olive oil. You'll add some flour to make a roux. Then add milk and stir and let it simmer until it's thick. 

Then you'll add some diced (salted and drained) tomatoes, green chile, sour cream and shredded or diced chicken. 

 

You'll be left with this tasty sauce.

You'll grease a 9x13 pan and place it by your sauce, tortillas and cheese. 

  Then you'll spread a little sauce in the bottom of the pan.

 

And dip each tortillas in the sauce. 

Flip the tortilla to cover both sides.

Repeat this until you've covered the bottom of the pan with dipped tortillas.

Cover the dipped tortillas with some sauce.

And top it with some cheese. 

Repeat this at least 3 times, but you can use up as many tortillas as you want, making as many layers as you have sauce and cheese for. Bake it until bubbly. Enjoy! It's super yummy topped with guacamole, salsa, and cilantro.

Layered Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas

Yield: 9x13 size dish

Printable Version {Click Here}

Notes:

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You can make this using 2 cans cream of mushroom soup thinned with about ½-1 cup of milk.  If you prefer this way, cook the onion and garlic in butter, and then add the soup, milk, sour cream, tomatoes, and green chile.  

I like to dice and salt my tomatoes to get any excess liquid out. I set them in a fine mesh strainer over a bowl to drain while I prep the rest of the sauce and then stir them in at the end.

Ingredients:

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½-1 yellow onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

4 tablespoons butter or olive oil

6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 ½ cups milk

1 tablespoon chicken base (or 3 chicken bouillon cubes)

Salt and pepper to taste

½ - 1 cup sour cream

2 tomatoes, diced and salted (see note about draining) (roma or tomatoes on the vine work great)

1-2 small cans diced green chile, or 3-4 fire roasted NM green chiles, diced (with or without seeds - you can pick your spicy level)

2-3 cups shredded or diced chicken (rotisserie chicken works great here)

corn tortillas (I prefer white corn)

1 ½ - 2 cups grated cheese (preferably colby jack or monterey jack)

Directions:

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Dice tomatoes and salt and let them sit in a fine mesh strainer to get rid of all the excess liquid. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a stock pot or large sauce pan melt butter over medium heat and add onions, cook for 5-7 minutes until onions are translucent, add garlic and cook 30 seconds more.  Stir in flour with a wire whisk until incorporated and immediately pour in the milk.  Stir  until smooth.  Let it cook until it reaches a simmer, and then let it simmer for 3-5 minutes until it’s thickened significantly.  Once it’s thick - remove from heat and add green chiles, tomatoes (salted and drained (see note above), sour cream, and chicken. Stir until mixed well.  

Lightly grease a 9x13 casserole dish. Spread ⅓ - ½ cup of the chicken sauce mixture over the bottom of the pan.  Dip each tortillas into the sauce mixture just to wet it and lay as many as you need to cover the bottom of your pan. You can rip some in half if you want. Or they can overlap - it doesn’t matter.  

Once you have a layer of dipped tortillas, put about ⅓ of the remaining sauce over top of the tortillas and then sprinkle with about ½ cup of grated cheese (you can make this as cheesy or non-cheesy as you prefer).  Repeat this step until you have at least 3 layers. You can do more if you have more sauce and tortillas.  The final layer will need to be sauce and grated cheese.  

Bake in the preheated oven for about 20-30 minutes until it’s hot and bubbly and these cheese is starting to brown. Let it cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.

It tastes really good topped with salsa, guacamole and cilantro.  

Recipe Source:

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Adapted from a recipe from a friend in New Mexico, I altered her recipe to make it with my own sauce vs cream of chicken soup.