This deconstructed chicken enchilada casserole is more than “just another chicken dish.” After a busy day doing whatever it is you’ve been doing, it’s a sure bet you don’t want to stand in your kitchen for hours, chopping, stirring, doing whatever it takes to satisfy a hungry family (or a starved significant other!). Here’s a super-easy, tasty and versatile recipe that your family will demand time and time again. The only part of this recipe that has to be homemade is the sauce, which starts out as a roux and ends up pretty darn flavorful. You can pick up all of the ingredients in one quick grocery store trip, or you can use leftover chicken and whatever cheese you happen to have at hand. A maximum of 15 minutes for prep, pop it in the oven for 40 minutes, and in a tick over one hour, you have dinner. Or you could assemble the dish the night before, pop it in the fridge and then the next day, pop that sucker into the oven with zero effort.

Hello everyone! It’s time to come out of this COVID haze and get back to the business of eating. 

Believe me, just because I’ve not been in the kitchen as much as I’d liked to have been sure doesn’t mean life hasn’t totally stopped. 

Well, it kind of stopped. Clearly during the lockdown I wasn’t about to make quick trips into the grocery store to get just the right stuff I’d need for any recipe.  I confess to having used Instacart a time or five. It was super-convenient, but just not terribly conducive to experimenting with recipes. There were, of course, shortages or stuff one could just not get at all. (Seriously, why exactly was there a run on green pepper sauce? Makes as much sense as the unavailability of toilet paper.)

My husband began working as an EMT in the fall of last year. Obviously he is an essential worker and has has been out there on the front lines since day one of this pandemic. He comes home with plenty of interesting stories, and he’s  being exposed to the best and worst that human beings have to offer.  Thus far the novel Coronavirus hasn’t darkened our doorstep, and for that I’m grateful. 

How have you all been? Did you find something new to do while we were under lockdown? Did you survive helping your children with online school? 

Anyway, enough chatter for now. Here’s one thing I’m positive we had in common during the lockdown–we’ve still needed to feed ourselves and our families. Today’s recipe is a fun take on enchiladas without the stuffing and rolling. It’s a fun little recipe that you could have older children help by shredding the chicken used for filling or arranging the corn tortillas in the baking dish. Oh heck, if you have a middle school-aged kid at home, you could turn the meal over to that budding chef. You’re never too young to learn how to cook with sauces that start with a nice simple roux.

The finished product only looks like you’ve busted your butt. 

I cheated and bought a pre-shredded rotisserie chicken to streamline my work. You can certainly use leftover chicken (white or dark meat or a combination thereof). You can use canned chicken (pour off the liquid), or quickly sauté or bake chicken and dice it or shred it yourself. Don’t go overboard on the spices, though. This recipe doesn’t require elaborate flavors, they all somehow come together, though I am an addict of green pepper sauce, so I sprinkled a little on my own serving. 

There is flexibility in the amount of diced chiles as well. If your family likes it hot, add some jalapeños alongside the milder Anaheim chiles. If you don’t happen to have white cheddar cheese available, use regular cheddar. If you are disinclined to use black beans like I did, don’t. You can also use olives or green onions as garnish. I also like the taste of cilantro and like the way it zings up the flavor.

The recipe also calls for corn tortillas, but if you have everything you need on hand except for corn tortillas, don’t let that prevent you from making this dish. It turns out just fine with flour ones, the flavor profile in corn tortillas does contribute to the gentle spices used in this dish, so even the finickiest kid will devour this. I know this because I tested this dish with my neighbor’s family, including children aged 10, 8, and 2. This dish fed a family of five perfectly.

It’s also absolutely not necessary to do the very last step and put the dish under the broiler for just a few minutes if you are pressed for time. The first time I served this recipe no one remarked on the dish’s stark lack of contrasting colors. But I confess I like the way the browned cheese looks, and who doesn’t like to pick off a slab of ooey-gooey cheese from your dinner? 

I suppose you could still execute this recipe with leftover turkey, or ground turkey or chicken. If anyone makes an alternate choice, can you please post in the comments and let me know how it went?  

Believe it or not, I’ve made this dish again already as a MealTrain offering to a couple who is celebrating the birth of their first child. Because I wanted to dial the spicy factor down, instead of sprinkling the diced chiles in the layers, I put the chiles in a food processor, added about a half-cup of the completed sauce to the chiles, and blended until smooth. I put the chile-laden sauce back into the cooling pot of sauce, and stirred to combine. The only difference will be a slight greenish tint to the sauce, it cooks up just as yummy.

Thank you for stopping by. I’ve had plenty of time to think of lots of recipes that work for busy families and that will work for those social gatherings we all hope will resume soon.