About This Blog

I like food. A lot. In this blog, I will divulge all my delicious recipes, giving you a full list of ingredients, step-by-step instructions, and notes to help you successfully make the dish. Feel free to try these at home, and let me know how it went in the comments for the dish! If you have any questions, I will answer them as quickly as possible. If you use my recipe and discuss it on your site, please link back to this blog. Happy eating!

Friday, June 12, 2015

Chicken Enchliada Stuffed Shells


I've been holding out on you guys. What a shame...
I made these fabulous stuffed shells ages and ages ago, but haven't posted about it. Why? Internet. Laziness. The desire to talk about other dishes. These are all excuses. But they are also the truth.
They are so so good, and I hope I'll be making them again sometime soon. But it's no secret: You should make these. They're definitely great for families. Have one? Make this dish for them!
I got the idea for these whilst recipe-hunting and stumbled upon Bev's fabulous recipe. I knew I just had to make these!
I did make some changes to her recipe design. For one, I used some of my own enchilada sauce, as well as some of the canned stuff. I also used fresh spinach instead of frozen spinach. Lastly, I didn't use a packaged taco seasoning, but used my own blend in unmeasured amounts, because that's how I roll.
So let's stop talking about these shells and get to making them! Here's how:

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil
2 chicken breasts
Roughly 20 jumbo shells, or however many fit in your baking dish, cooked and drained
About 1 cup fresh spinach, chopped small
3 chipotle peppers, in their adobo sauce, minced
1 (19 oz) can enchilada sauce
2 cups (or more) Mexi-blend shredded cheese
salt and pepper
A mixture of cumin, coriander, garlic and onion powder, paprika, and cayenne
cilantro leaves, for garnish

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.
Heat the oil in a large saute pan over medium-high. Season the chicken on both sides with the seasoning, and sear on one side for six minutes. Flip and sear the other side another five, or until the chicken is cooked through. Set aside to rest for five minutes, then roughly chop. You'll want to chop the chicken pretty small -- remember, the shells aren't that big!
In a large bowl, combine the chopped chicken, chopped spinach and minced chipotle peppers. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper.
Pour about 1/3 of a cup of the enchilada sauce along the bottom of your pan. Shift the pan around so the sauce coats the entire bottom of the pan.
Carefully stuff each cooked shell with the chicken mixture and arrange in the baking dish. Continue until all the shells are evenly stuffed and placed in the dish. Pour the remaining sauce over the shells.
Sprinkle the cheese over the top of the dish and bake for 30 minutes, or until the cheese is browned and bubbly.
Garnish with cilantro.

Notes:
You may not want to use cilantro if you have diners who think it tastes like soap (I learned that this is a genetic thing. How crazy!).
We had to use two dishes for this, because I didn't have a standard 9 X 13 inch pan and even though I plotted out the shells prior to cooking, I still ended up with extra. So... moral of the story is, you should probably just own a standard size baking pan.