Roasted Chicken Enchiladas Suizas Stacked Casserole

Whew that title is a mouthful… a delicious mouthful at least! We received tomatillos two weeks in a row from our CSA and felt inspired to make some yummy green-sauce enchiladas. I searched the interwebs and found this recipe. I liked the idea of “suizas” or Swiss cheese flavored enchiladas and though I typically shy away from Rachael Ray recipes this one seemed pretty fun to make and rather unique. Not only did the flavor profile intrigue me but also the idea of a “stacked casserole”. The whole rolling up the enchiladas into cigar shaped tubes can be very messy and painstaking so why not skip it? I made a few modifications to her recipe both while making it and afterwards (link at the end of the post).

Tomatillos are not green tomatoes. I don’t exactly know  what they are but they come with husks on them. Peel them and wash them and quarter them.

There is quite a bit of prep work involved in this recipe. First you want to roast your chicken.We used four bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts. Once shredded it came out to exactly 2 pounds of meat.

Next, it’s time to roast the peppers. Rachael’s recipe called for 4 poblano peppers. This was the only place I deviated from her recipe. I bought 2 poblano peppers and then used some seranos from our garden. This also added some spice, which we like. The first step is to roast the peppers until the skin is blackened.

Let these cool until you can handle them and use the plastic bag trick to peel and seed.

Meanwhile, saute some chopped jalapeno, onion and garlic until softened.

Now it’s time to make the sauce! Add the tomatillos, some cilantro, and the roasted peppers to the blender and process until a smooth sauce forms.

Add this to the jalapeno/onion/garlic mixture along with some cumin and honey and simmer. The original recipe also called for adding chicken stock to the sauce at this time. I added some- about 1/3 of what was in the recipe- and mine still came out too soupy/soggy. I’d omit it all together.

Now it’s time to prepare your casserole and start stacking. Begin with a layer of sauce, followed by tortillas, chicken, sour cream, more sauce and cheese. Repeat 2 times.

So a few notes here… the tortillas were from Reyna’s in the strip. Once again I was blown away by the local product. Wow. We vowed never to buy tortillas from the supermarket again after eating these! They were so good! The texture was chewy and the flavor so fresh. Totally worth it.

Also, sour cream before baking? Yes. This was awesome and I really liked it this way. It almost had a ricotta-like texture to it when it was baked. Nice and creamy.

I would also recommend doubling the cheese. I followed the recipe but would have preferred it to be cheesier.

I also topped ours with green onion- the recipe called for red onion- but I like the green onion flavor in this case.

Now, it’s time to bake it!

40  minutes later…

Time to serve it up. It’s always tricky to get it onto the plate in any kind of beautiful way…

first attempt:

second attempt (after spending the night in the fridge and re-heated the next night)

Overall, this was a nice spin on my traditional enchiladas. I liked the tanginess of the Swiss cheese and the addition of sour cream. I didn’t miss rolling up the messy tortillas and every bite was just as good.

Below is the link to the recipe with my modifications. I hope you enjoy this one!

-E

Recipe for Roasted Chicken Enchiladas Suizas Stacked Casserole