Easy Chicken Enchilada Bake

April in Utah gives you one final snowstorm before it allows spring to stay. Tuesday it came, six inches, heavy and wet, gone by Thursday, but sufficient to flatten the tulips along the front walk and leave them looking personally offended. My tulips survived. I went out Friday morning and they had come back up, bent but upright, the way things in Utah learn to be eventually. I stood on the porch in my coat looking at them and thought: resilience does not require dignity. Sometimes you just get back up because staying down is not an option you have accepted.

I had my pre-workshop panic this week. Not a clinical panic, I am not minimizing those, but the specific 2 AM flavor of anxiety that arrives when you have committed to a thing and spent enough time thinking about it to catalogue every possible failure. What if no one comes. What if everyone comes and I lose my place. What if the bags leak. What if the chicken enchilada filling is off and twelve women go home and make bad enchiladas and blame the workshop. The enchilada concern is the least rational and therefore the most persistent.

I made the enchilada filling at four in the morning because it was the only way to stop thinking about it. Shredded rotisserie chicken, twelve dollars at Costco, four cups of meat. One can cream of chicken soup, one can green chiles, one cup sour cream, one cup shredded cheese, salt and pepper. Mix. Six freezer bags. Total cost seventeen dollars, two dollars eighty-three cents per meal for a family of four. Into the freezer by five-fifteen. Back to bed at five-twenty. The enchiladas exist now regardless of the anxiety, and they are correct.

Olivia found the new bags in the freezer before school. Mom, you made enchiladas. I said yes. She said: in the middle of the night? I said: I was thinking. She looked at me with the particular understanding of a ten-year-old who has been watching her mother for two years. Then she said: they are going to love the workshop. She picked up her backpack and went to school. I made breakfast for the others and felt, for the first time that week, genuinely calm.

Three and a half weeks to go. The handouts are printed. The freezer bags are ordered. The tulips are back up.

The filling I made at four in the morning was always meant to go into a bake just like this one — layered, saucy, forgiving, the kind of recipe that rewards you for keeping rotisserie chicken and a can of green chiles in the house at all times. I’ve made this Easy Chicken Enchilada Bake so many times now that it’s become part of the workshop handout, the one I pull out when someone asks where to start with freezer meals. It’s where I started. It’s the recipe that existed before the sun came up that Tuesday morning, and it was correct, and that was enough.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 45 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

4 cups shredded rotisserie chicken (about 1 full Costco rotisserie chicken)
1 can (10.5 oz) cream of chicken soup
1 can (4 oz) diced green chiles, drained
1 cup sour cream
1 cup shredded Mexican blend or cheddar cheese, divided
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
Salt and pepper to taste
8–10 small flour or corn tortillas
1 cup red or green enchilada sauce
Fresh cilantro and sliced green onions, for serving (optional)

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish with nonstick spray and set aside.
Make the filling. In a large bowl, combine the shredded chicken, cream of chicken soup, diced green chiles, sour cream, 3/4 cup of the shredded cheese, garlic powder, and cumin. Stir until fully combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Fill the tortillas. Spoon about 1/3 cup of filling down the center of each tortilla. Roll tightly and place seam-side down in the prepared baking dish. Repeat until all filling is used.
Add sauce and cheese. Pour the enchilada sauce evenly over the rolled tortillas. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup of shredded cheese over the top.
Bake. Cover the dish with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake an additional 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and bubbling at the edges.
Rest and serve. Let the bake rest for 5 minutes before serving. Top with fresh cilantro and sliced green onions if desired.

Freezer Meal Note: To freeze before baking, assemble through step 4, skip the sauce and cheese topping, and transfer filling into labeled zip-top freezer bags (about 2/3 cup filling per serving). Freeze flat for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, fill and roll fresh tortillas, add sauce and cheese, and bake as directed. Cost per freezer bag (4 servings): approximately $2.83.

Nutrition (per serving)

Easy Chicken Enchilada Bake — The Batch I Made at 4 AM So I Could Finally Sleep