We’re all about celebrating holidays with good food and drinks, which is why we take any opportunity we can to put on our festive gear and whip up a delicious meal. These chicken enchiladas for Cinco de Mayo are no exception! Made with ingredients like salsa, black beans, and avocado, it’s hard not to fall head over heels in love with this recipe.
Traditionally, enchiladas are made with enchilada sauce. While this canned sauce is delicious, it’s often high in sodium and not that suitable for a clean meal or anyone looking to watch their sodium intake.
So instead of using enchilada sauce here, we’re using avocado, cheese, and crema as a scrumptious topping. In fact, the topping is so good that you will forget that there was never any enchilada sauce used in this recipe.
We also use much less cheese than the classic version of enchiladas. Some enchilada recipes call for three or more cups of cheese, but our recipe only utilizes one cup. We also don’t fry the tortillas, which makes our chicken enchiladas much skinnier than the original.
The filling for these chicken enchiladas is made in a slow-cooker, although a pressure cooker could work just as well, too. Regardless of which tool you use, the ingredients for the filling are all dumped into a pot and cooked together until the chicken is tender enough to come apart to shreds.
The filling is then placed inside the tortillas, rolled up and baked with cheese on top, then garnished with avocados and crema for a tantalizing finish. We’d say these chicken enchiladas definitely called for a fiesta!
Summary |
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Cook time: 20 minutes
Prep time: 3 hours
Idle time:
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Level
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Servings:
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Ingredients
- 1 lb. chicken breasts
- 1 can black beans drained and rinsed
- 1 can corn drained
- 16 oz. fresh, restaurant-style salsa (not the thick and chunky style)
- 3 tbsp. taco seasoning
- 12 small corn tortillas
- 1 cup shredded Mexican blend cheese
- 1 avocado peeled, pitted, and diced
- 1/4 cup crema
- fresh cilantro optional, to garnish
Instructions
- Add the chicken breasts, black beans, corn, salsa, and taco seasoning to your slow cooker. If your salsa is on the thicker side and doesn't contain much liquid, add 1/4 cup of water to the pot as well. Cook for 3 hours, or until the chicken easily shreds.
- Use 2 forks to shred the chicken and then combine everything in the pot together.
- Preheat the oven to 400°F. Warm up your tortillas by microwaving them for 25 seconds, warming up only 3 tortillas at a time.
- Add a few tablespoons of the filling to each tortilla, then roll the tortilla up. Grab a large baking dish, and place each filled tortilla in the dish with the seam-side facing down. Pack the filled tortillas into the dish tightly to prevent them from unraveling as they bake.
- Sprinkle the cheese all over the top of the rolled tortillas. Bake the enchiladas for 20 minutes until the cheese has melted.
- Before serving, drizzle crema all over the enchiladas, then top with the diced avocado and fresh cilantro.
Additional information
Recipe adapted from pinchofyum.com
