These chicken enchiladas are made with a flavorful tomatillo salsa verde sauce! This is a fantastic recipe for catering to a hungry crowd, whether it’s a Friday movie night, a pot luck party, or just a weeknight dinner with your family.
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Raise your hand if you love enchiladas!
These chicken enchiladas with salsa verde are one of my personal favorites! They’re filled with shredded chicken and smothered in a light, flavorful tomatillo salsa.
What are tomatillos?
Have you ever cooked with tomatillos? With their green paper covers they look like small lanterns.
Sometimes people confuse them with green tomatoes (don’t help that their Spanish name is “tomate verde”); They are a nightshade family like aubergines and peppers and are therefore distant relatives of tomatoes, but the taste is quite different.
Prepare authentic Enchilada Salsa Verde (Green Sauce).
For these chicken enchiladas, we’ll cook the tomatillos for the sauce, but you could also lightly fry or pan-fry them. (Here is a recipe for this method.)
How to make Enchiladas Verdes
To make these enchiladas, we’ll start by poaching and shredding chicken thighs for the filling; The deeper flavor of the dark meat stands up to the chili tomatillo sauce much better than chicken breast.
We make the salsa verde by cooking tomatillos and mashing them with chilies, onions, garlic, cilantro and lime juice. You can also use pre-made bottled salsa verde.
Next, we fry yellow corn tortillas to soften them and bring out their flavor.
Then all you have to do is roll up the tortillas with some shredded chicken inside them tossed in salsa and line the rolled tortillas in a baking dish. Top with salsa verde and bake! That’s it. Sprinkle with plenty of toppings – cotija cheese, red onion, cilantro, and sour cream for serving.
More enchilada recipes to try!
- Red Chili Chicken Enchiladas
- Texas Stacked Corn and Black Bean Enchiladas
- Creamy Cheesy Turkey Enchiladas
- Classic enchiladas
- Black bean enchiladas from Turkey
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Check out this Salsa Verde Chicken Enchiladas recipe
Salsa Verde Chicken Enchiladas
A shortcut for this recipe is to use pre-made bottled salsa verde, which should be available at any market that carries Mexican groceries. Use 3 cups. You can also use rotisserie chicken instead of poaching your own.
Wrapped tortillas vary in thickness and quality. Thicker corn tortillas hold up better than thin ones, which can tend to fall apart.
ingredients
- For the chicken:
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1 1/3 pounds skinless, boneless, or bone-in chicken thighs (1 3/4 pounds bone-in)
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2 garlic cloves, halved
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1/4 medium onion
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2 teaspoons sea salt
- For the tomato salsa:
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1 1/2 lbs tomatillos, papery hulls removed, rinsed
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2 serrano chillies, cut off at the top to reveal the inside and remove the stems
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2 cloves of garlic
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1/2 cup chopped white or yellow onion
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1/2 cup chopped cilantro, stems included
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1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
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1 teaspoon sea salt
- For the enchiladas:
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1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, corn oil, or peanut oil
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12 corn tortillas (use firm yellow corn tortillas)
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1/4 cup sour cream
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1/2 cup crumbled Mexican cotija or queso fresco cheese
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1/3 cup chopped red onion for garnish
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1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro, including stems for garnish
method
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Poaching Chicken Thighs:
Place chicken thighs in a medium saucepan and just cover with water. Add the halved garlic, 1/4 of an onion and 2 teaspoons of salt to the water.
Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to very low to keep heat just below simmer and cook, covered, 10 to 15 minutes, or until chicken is just cooked through. (Here’s the step-by-step guide to poaching chicken.)
Place the chicken thighs in a separate bowl and allow to cool enough to handle.
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Cooking tomatillos:
While the chicken is cooking, place the tomatillos and serrano chiles in a separate saucepan and cover with water. Boil, reduce over low heat. Simmer until the tomatillos are cooked through and have changed color but are not mushy, about 5 minutes. Remove from stove.
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Make the salsa verde:
Use a slotted spoon to add tomatillos and serrano chiles to a blender. In blender, add 1/4 cup of the tomatillo cooking liquid along with 2 cloves garlic, 1/2 cup chopped onion, 1 tablespoon lime juice and about 1/2 cup chopped cilantro. Add a teaspoon of salt.
Blend for 15 to 30 seconds until combined. taste for heat. If not hot enough, add another chili pepper (it doesn’t need to be cooked). Add more salt to taste if needed.
You should have about 3 cups of salsa.
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Shred chicken, toss with salsa verde:
Remove the cooked chicken from the bones (if using bone-in thighs).
Shred the meat with a fork or knife. Place the chicken in a bowl and add 1/2 cup of the tomato sauce to the chicken. try the chicken; If it needs salt, add a little.
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Soften the tortillas:
Heat a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Place a tortilla in the pan and let it sizzle for about 10 seconds. Use a metal spatula to turn it to the other side. Let it sizzle for a few seconds. Place another tortilla on top (to soak up excess oil) and turn again.
You can go ahead and stack corn tortillas on top of the tortillas that appear to have excess oil. This way the new tortillas will absorb some of the excess fat from the other tortillas.
When the tortillas are warmed through, place them on a plate lined with kitchen paper. Add more oil to the pan as needed and continue to heat and soften all the tortillas.
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Roll up tortillas with chicken:
Preheat oven to 250°F. Place a spoonful of chicken in the center of the tortilla and roll up the tortilla. Place the rolled tortilla, seam-side down, in a baking dish and repeat with all the tortillas.
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Cover with foil and heat in the oven:
Cover the rolled tortillas with foil and keep warm at 250°F for 10 minutes.
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Heat salsa and smother the rolled tortillas with it:
Place the remaining tomatillo salsa in a small saucepan and heat over medium-high heat until simmering. Remove reheated rolled tortillas from the oven and smother them with the salsa.
Pour some of the sauce between the rolled up tortillas, letting it spill onto the bottom of the pan.
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Add sour cream and garnish:
Sprinkle with crumbled Cotija cheese, chopped red onion and chopped fresh cilantro.
Dilute the sour cream with a tablespoon of water and drizzle over the enchiladas. (Don’t skip the sour cream! It’s important to balance the salsa verde’s pungent acidity.)
Serve immediately.
