Archive for: enchiladas

Turkey Enchiladas with Pumpkin Chipotle Sauce

These Turkey Enchiladas with Pumpkin Chipotle Sauce are a great way to put leftover Thanksgiving turkey to good use, but they’re just as good any time of the year. The easy-to-make enchiladas have a turkey filling and are covered with a homemade sauce that uses pumpkin puree and chipotle peppers for a spicy-sweet finish.

When preparing the enchiladas, I start with the sauce. I use canned pumpkin puree, tomato paste, a little garlic and minced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. I like my enchiladas to be on the spicy side, so I tend to add a little extra pepper to my sauce when I’m making it. Feel free to add a little more (or a little less) as needed when you’re making your sauce. Once the sauce is prepared, fill up slightly warmed corn tortillas with your shredded turkey and cover with the sauce before baking. I typically add a very small handful of cheese to my filling, but I put most of it on top of the dish so that it makes a nice golden topping.

I bake this dish as a casserole, placing my filled corn tortillas in a large baking dish and covering them with sauce. It is an easy way to prepare them, but I find that it also allows me to get an extra few servings out of the dish, which is always a plus if you either have a big crowd to serve or simply like leftovers. I primarily use mozzarella cheese, and I also add some fresh cohita cheese (there are actually many brands of slightly salty fresh Mexican cheeses that you can use in place of the cohita, in case you can’t find it) because it lends a nice saltiness to the mozzarella layer.

If you don’t have leftover turkey on hand, know that this recipe works very well with roasted chicken. It is easy enough to prepare for a weeknight dinner if you’re starting with a roast chicken from the supermarket, too.

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Homemade Chipotle Chicken Enchiladas

In addition to dessert, I do eat dinner once in a while and I generally like things to be nice and easy to make on any given weeknight. I’m a big fan of enchiladas, but they’re one of those dishes that I never really tried to make at home because they seemed like they’d be time consuming. Fortunately, they’re not at all difficult to make and the homemade versions taste better than many of the restaurant versions I’ve tried (and were at least as satisfying as some of the best I’ve had). I also like the fact that you can play around with the filling for these enchiladas to come up with a combination that suits your tasted, whether you like them meatier or cheesier.

I used chicken for these enchiladas. They start out with a spicy tomato-based sauce that is based on an Emeril Lagasse recipe that I like. I make it a little bit spicier, but feel free to go with the original if you like it mild. The sauce is cooked in a saucepan to thicken it a bit. For the filling, you can either poach some chicken, use leftover chicken or go out and buy an inexpensive rotisserie chicken to start. The meat is shredded and mixed with some of the sauce, then wrapped in corn tortillas and packed into a big 9×13-inch pan to be covered with cheese and more sauce, then baked until everything comes together.

This recipe makes a pretty big batch, but is easy to double if you need to feed a bigger crowd. Don’t worry about trying to halve it for smaller servings because it makes great leftovers. I serve this with guacamole and sour cream, and always put out some tortilla chips to scoop any of the filling that falls out onto the plate as you eat.
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