Super Easy and Quick Green Chile Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas/Lasagna

I have this love affair with sour cream.  I love it!  It makes everything taste so good.  You can use it to top things or you can use it to make your sauces delightful and decadent.  In this blog, I'll show you how to make it into a sauce with green chili and use it as a creamy enchilada sauce. Super easy and yum-o-la.

For the sauce:

1 tablespoon butter

3 tablespoon flour

2 cups of chicken stock

1 can of green chili

fresh jalapeno or serrano chili (optional)

1 cup of sour cream

For the filling:

1 any color bell pepper (I used red and yellow)

1 medium onion

shredded rotisserie chicken (I used Costco)

Monterey Jack Cheese or any white cheese 

seasoning salt and pepper

I start out by making the filling first.  I used one yellow, one red bell pepper and one medium onion.  I cut them into even sized strips.  You can dice them if you want. 

In a skillet or non-stick pan, saute your peppers and onions in some olive oil over medium heat.

I love Lawry's seasoning salt, but you can use regular salt.

Add black pepper

When the peppers and onion are soft, like this:

add your shredded chicken.

Turn off heat and stir your chicken and peppers.  Set aside.

In a sauce pan over medium heat, melt your butter.

Add 3 tablespoons of flour and cook for about a minute.  This is exactly like making a roux.

I used chicken broth that I made myself. You can check out the recipe here.  Or you can just use store bought.  Add 2 cups of broth into your butter flour roux a little bit at a time.  Make sure to whisk constantly.  I use a spoon.  You can use a fork or whisk.  Your choice.

Add a little bit to start.

Then a little more...

Until you end up with chicken gravy.

I add some more black pepper now  I love pepper.

Then I grabbed this small can of diced green chile and threw the entire can in.  Well...I opened it first and threw in the contents.  Not the actual can.

Dump it all in.  Juice and all.

And this part is optional, but I like to use additional chili.  I happened to have serrano.  It was super spicy so I just used half. How did I know it was super spicy?  I licked the end of the chili (the part you cut off and throw away).  I know.  Genius.

I finely diced it and

threw it all into my chicken gravy.  Simmer on low for about a minute. Then remove from heat.

Make sure your chicken green chili gravy is no longer boiling or bubbling.  Then add half a regular sized container of sour cream into your gravy.  It's super important that your sauce isn't boiling or bubbling when you add your sour cream.  If it is, the sour cream doesn't melt correctly and you end up with lumpy, curdled sauce.

Plop it in there!  Bam.

See?  It melts so nice.

Your green chile sauce looks like this.

Taste and if needed, add some seasoning salt.

I grabbed a 9x13 inch pan,

and poured in about a third of my sauce.  Spread it around with a spoon.  Lick the spoon.  

Just kidding (but not).

You can either use corn or flour tortillas.  I like them both but used corn.  There's something about the corn tortilla and the way it soaks up the yummy sauce. OR you can use half corn and half flour tortilla!  

For some reason, I totally suck at rolling enchiladas.  I can't get the enchiladas to stay closed.  And I also hate taking the time to dip them in hot oil, which helps in the rolling process but is just too much for me to do.  So...I just layer the tortillas and the filling and sauce and just make a layered enchilada lasagna.  

First I lay down 6 tortillas...

Then I spread about half the chicken and pepper filling on top of the tortillas.

I used Monterey Jack cheese.  You can use any cheese you want, but I prefer using a white cheese.  It seems to go better with the sauce.  If you have shredded cheese, add it on top of the filling.  I happened to have slices so I just ripped it up and placed on top.  Use as much or little cheese as you want.

Then I added another third of the sauce on top of the cheese.

Repeat the process...filling, cheese, sauce.  I topped with leftover sauce.

Then just for giggles, I added some Colby Jack cheese on top and baked at 350 for about 20 minutes or until it's all melted and bubbly.  Let it sit for a few minutes to firm up before cutting into.

I like to serve it with a a nice salad tossed in vinaigrette dressing.  I really do!  I'm not just saying that to make it sound healthy.  I like the salad with vinaigrette because it adds a nice balance to the creamy cheese and sauce....but you can also serve it with beans and rice because nobody will judge you.  Trust.

I should also add that you can use any veggies you want.  I really like it onions and mushrooms, but the Indian doesn't like mushrooms.  Oh sad.  You also don't even have to use meat.  You can just do veggies and cheese and its delicious too.  

Easy Brunch Bake

I'm one of those full breakfast kinda gals.  I think Continental Breakfast is really more like a snack.  I'll take eggs and bacon and toast and potatoes over a danish or pastry any day.

Most days, I'm totally fine with making the works.  Some days, not so much.  So I came up with this egg bake that has everything in it that I love.  Spicy home fries, spam, eggs and sourdough bread, and let's not forget the cheeeeeeeese.  All this in one casserole.  Um, sign me up!  You can also make this ahead of time for a potluck or brunch party.  Or just on a Sunday morning to pig out on after a long weekend.

The beauty of this baked casserole is that you can pretty much use whatever you want in it.  If you don't like spam, use cubed ham or sausage. You could even use shredded chicken or no meat at all.  Bump up the veggies and make it a veggie egg bake with broccoli and asparagus.  YUM!  It's all good.

For this bake, I used:
spam
leftover baked potatoes
onion
serrano chili
eggs
cheese
milk
seasoning salt
black pepper
sourdough bread (you can use any kind of bread you want)

You can use cold, leftover home fries if you have any.  Or you can just make some up.  I made some for this recipe, but I usually have some on hand.  I make homefries in bulk and just keep in the fridge to eat during the week (I'm serious about being a full breakfast kind of gal).

For the homefries:

I sauteed one small onion in olive oil over medium heat.  I used a lot of Lawry's seasoning and black pepper.

I like my potatoes spicy so I chopped one serrano chili.  You don't have to.  I add to onions.

I chopped up some spam.  You can use ham, sausage, chicken, or a combo of any of these.

Saute together.

I had 5 small already baked potatoes that were left over from something else.

You can microwave them if you don't have already cooked potatoes.  OR you could use frozen shredded hash browns if you wanted.  That works too. 

I chopped and threw in with the onions, chili and spam.

At this point, I add a few tablespoons of water to help with coating the potatoes.  Adding water helps coat the potatoes with all the yummy seasoning without adding more oil.

Everything is already cooked at this point, so I just mix around until the water gets absorbed and it looks like this:

Set aside.

I grabbed 3 slices of sourdough bread.  I used this kind:

I love sourdough.  You can use white, wheat, rye, french, shepherds, whateva!

I used a knife to cut into even cubes.

I used a glass baking dish, this one was a 11x7x2 rectangular pan. Spray with non-stick spray like Pam.

Add your cubed bread.

Spoon home fries over the bread.

Add shredded cheese.  Or no cheese. Or lots of cheese.  I used sharp cheddar. Feel free to pick any cheese you want.  Or don't want.  Whatever.

I whipped up 5 eggs with some milk.  I know the pic has 3, but 2 had rolled out of the picture. 

 Little suckers.

I added black pepper.  No salt because my potatoes are well seasoned.

Whipped with a fork.  Or spoon.  Or chopsticks.  Whatever you work best with.

Pour egg mixture over your bread, potato, cheese mix.

I baked on 375 for 30 minutes.

And it looked like this when it came out.  Don't worry about the white.  That's just the egg.

Side profile.

Let it sit for about a minute before you cut and serve.  Grab yourself a corner piece....those are the best.

I should mention that you can use more eggs if you want.  I don't like my casserole to be that egg-y.  I like the egg to be just sort of be on the bottom with just enough to set the casserole.  But feel free to use a dozen eggs to make this more quiche like.

You can serve with fruit, but remember it's got everything in there so you don't need toast or anything like that.  Enjoy your egg bake!

You could also just assemble it and refrigerate it if you're making it ahead of time and bake it later when you're ready for it.

Here's one I made using left over ranch rolls for the bottom, ham instead of bacon, and mushrooms leeks sauted with frozen hash browns:

I shredded the ham and topped over the bread.  I chose to do that because the ham was thin sliced for sandwiches and frying it up in the veggies would just dry it out.

I chose to use mushrooms and leeks for this version and when they were nice and sauteed, I poured in frozen hash browns.

Pour 'em in and mix 'em up...

Here it is all layered up, pre-cheese and egg.

Here it is all done: