We’re back! I feel like the two week hiatus between PW Wednesdays are like one long commercial break and we need an announcer in the background saying “stay tuned for what crazy (loaded with cream, butter and other fat) kind of dish will they will be making next!”
Well, the wait is over. We’ve got white chicken enchiladas on the menu today thanks to Tina.
Honestly, this dish was a bitch to make. Good thing it was tasty. Super tasty. Like really good even after sitting around for 6 hours tasty (welcome to the life of a food blogger forever chasing natural light and making husbands eat mushy food hours later). It’s one of those dishes that leaves your kitchen a disaster zone no matter how much you try to clean as you go.
Step 1: make and shred chicken (30 minutes in and of itself)
Step 2: roast peppers, suffocate them in a plastic bag, peel their skins off and chop them (another 45 minutes)
Step 3: make the filling and sauce (15 minutes or so)
Step 4: bake (25 minutes)
See what I mean? It’s a time consuming bitch.
I even made the chicken and roasted the peppers the day before I made this to save some time and it was still time consuming and transformed my kitchen into a hot mess.
Per usual, Ree’s ingredient quantities are totally overkill. To feed 8, it calls for no less than 1 1/2 cups heavy cream, 1 cup sour cream, 1/2 stick of butter and 2 1/2 cups of cheese.
Also per usual, I didn’t follow directions. It’s a recurring theme in my life.
I halved the recipe and then even further reduced certain items and/or substituted them entirely (mostly those fatty ones above). The result was a super spicy (I used serrano peppers in my mix which are a bit hotter than your typical jalapeno), perfectly creamy (without being overkill) and cheesy chicken enchilada. Besides my beloved carnitas, this is probably my favorite recipe we’ve done so far.
I’m learning to look at this book as more of a guideline than an actual recipe because it’s got some great ideas, it’s just that the execution is usually either off or not my cup of tea (read excessively fattening).
Although, one thing I’ve got to hand it to Ree on is making incredibly photogenic dishes. I swear her food just “pops” on the screen and usually makes me (like right now) wish I was eating it again even though it’s 11pm at night and I’m still stuffed from dinner.
Grab the recipe for these enchiladas here.
And for other tasty recounts click away below!
Julie- Table for Two
Megan- Wanna be a Country Cleaver
Rachel- Baked by Rachel
Missed some of the previous PW Wednesday posts? Search no more…
Breakfast Pizza
Carnitas Pizza
Mushroom Swiss Sliders
Fried Chicken Tacos
Gina Matsoukas is an AP syndicated writer. She is the founder, photographer and recipe developer of Running to the Kitchen — a food website focused on providing healthy, wholesome recipes using fresh and seasonal ingredients. Her work has been featured in numerous media outlets both digital and print, including MSN, Huffington post, Buzzfeed, Women’s Health and Food Network.
Love the whole wheat tortilla addition! You girlies really know a great dish!
Gotcha, that makes sense.
I’m with you 100%. Her recipes might be “Made for cowboys” but her typical reader ISN’T a cowboy so having a meal full of that kind of fat and horribleness isn’t my cup of tea :\ I almost always do what you do: See her recipe, then find a way to make it figure friendly, healthy and in my case, vegetarian. Not always successful but oh well. I gotta say Gina, I don’t even eat meat and these look delicious!
completely agree with you! this book is definitely more of a guideline and you basically create your own method. i like how it allows us to be creative though, like we’ll take the base recipe and run with it..love it. yours turned out great, and a lot healthier looking than mine haha
Wow… that’s a bold statement. Possibly your fav besides the carnitas? We should all rate the recipes at the end! And yes… way time consuming that’s for sure.
We should do one big recap of our ratings at the end, that would be fun to see all the differences!
Doesn’t seem like it is time consuming to me. Those times should overlap. Or are you expecting it to be done and baked in 30 minutes?
It’s not that I expected it to be done in 30 minutes, but more than an hour is excessive in my opinion for a weeknight meal. The steps can’t all be overlapped b/c making the sauce is very hands on and needs your full attention (making a roux, etc.) so if you are trying to shred chicken at the same time, you’d be screwed. Also, the peppers need attention to be roasted either on the grill or under the broiler to flip and roast consistently. Then they need 30 minutes in a sealed bag so you can be able to peel off the skins which in and of itself takes another 5-10 minutes to do + chopping. Personally, if I had tried to get the sauce and filling going while doing those other things, it would’ve been a disaster.
Sounds like you made some good changes–she must not eat all this food she makes either, because she would be so overweight! Love your pictures.
Even time consuming b*tches can taste pretty dang yummy and this doesn’t look like it disappoints!
It sounds like all of you had the same issues with the recipe and it does seem like an enormous amount of cream/cheese for one dish! The final product looks really really good though and I love your spicy additions.
What I like about cooking is that there are no rules and you can change it up however you like!! Your enchiladas look super yummy!!