Chicken Enchiladas Verdes

Elise's recipe calls for making the salsa from scratch. Fun and yum, but I am mom-of-a-toddler-fying every recipe I touch these days, so I followed her tip about using salsa verde from a jar. I took out the salsa ingredients and step to make the salsa here, but you can find it on her site by following the link at the bottom of this post. Even though this bakes in one dish, it still requires individual assembly of each enchilada roll. Well worth it, but I'm serious about simplicity these days and we're lucky this one got made.

Ingredients

• 4 chicken thighs, bone-in, skins removed (about 1 3/4 lbs)
• 1 jar, salsa verde
  
• Salt
• 1 bunch cilantro, rinsed and chopped, stems included
• High smoke point cooking oil such as canola oil, peanut oil or grapeseed oil
• 12 corn tortillas
• 3 Tbsp sour cream
• 1/2 cup crumbled Mexican Cotija or Queso Fresco cheese

Method

1 Put chicken thighs in a medium sized saucepan and just cover with water. Add one clove of garlic that has been cut in half, 1/4 of an onion, and 1 teaspoon of salt to the water. Bring to a boil, reduce to a low simmer, and cook, covered, for 20 minutes, until the chicken is just cooked through. Remove chicken thighs to a separate bowl and let cool enough to touch.

2 While the chicken is cooking...pour sauce into a skillet, bring to a simmer and let simmer for 5 minutes. Then remove from heat.

3 Remove the cooked chicken meat from the bones. Shred the meat with a fork or knife. Put the chicken in a bowl and add 1/3 to a 1/2 cup of the tomatillo sauce to the chicken. Taste the chicken; if it needs salt, add a little.

4 Heat a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan on medium high heat. Add a tortilla to the pan and use a metal spatula to flip it to the other side. Place another tortilla on top of this one (to soak up the excess oil) and flip again. When the tortillas are heated through, remove them to a plate lined with paper towel. Add a little more oil to the pan, and add another couple tortillas. Continue to heat through and soften all of the tortillas. Note that if you are using just made homemade tortillas you can skip this step because the tortillas are already hot, softened, and ready to eat.

4 Warm the oven to 200°F. Dip a tortilla in the salsa verde tomatillo sauce and place it on an oven-proof serving dish. Scoop a spoonful of chicken into the center of the tortilla and roll up the tortilla. Place on the serving dish and repeat with all of the tortillas. Put into the warm oven to keep the enchiladas warm while you finish the sauce.

5 Heat the salsa verde sauce again until simmering, then remove from heat. Stir in the sour cream until well blended. Remove the warming enchiladas from the oven and pour salsa verde sauce over all of them. Top with chopped onion, cheese, and cilantro.

Serve immediately. Serve with extra garnishes of onion, cheese, and cilantro on the side. Serves 4 to 6.

See Elise's version at Simply Recipes:
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/007321chicken_enchiladas_verdes.php