The Best Enchiladas You’ll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality)

Today, I'm making enchiladas verdes con pollo,

which is my mother's recipe.

Hi, Mom. I love you.

I hope you're watching this.

Please don't kill me if I messed up your recipe. [laughs]

[upbeat music]

[light music]

Two ingredients of my filling

for my enchiladas are chicken and corn.

Chicken is gonna add the flavor of chicken,

the texture of the meat,

and also, the corn is gonna add some sweetness to it

that will help to kill some of the spiciness

from the enchilada.

I'm using the two meats, the white meat and the dark meat.

I feel like the dark meat is always moist,

it's always juicy, it's always flavorful.

I also use the white part for texture, for flavor too.

You have to do two 'cause one completes the other one,

just like marriage.

I'm only add the spine of the chicken.

We call that guacal de pollo.

This has a lot of flavor.

Chicken wings also, it's the best part of the chicken

to make broth.

When people make chicken enchiladas,

I feel like 80% of the enchiladas, they're dry.

Why, because they're using roasted chicken,

leftover chicken, and they're only using

the white part of the chicken, which is the breast.

I'm using basically the entire chicken.

All the bones is going to make my stock very rich

on chicken flavor.

And I'm gonna do some aromatics, onion, some garlic,

some bay leaves, celery. [celery snaps]

Mm.

Celery smells good.

And then corn.

So I'm gonna add the entire corn in the husk.

The kernels of the corn,

they will be nice, sweet, and moist.

So when you eat them, they will kind of a splash of flavor

of corn and sweetness.

[mellow music]

So this has been cooking for 45 minutes.

If you take a look at the dark meat,

it's actually falling out of the bone.

That's the sign that you're looking for.

One of the biggest mistakes that people do

when making these enchiladas

is that they overcook the chicken breast.

You don't overcook the chicken breast

because otherwise it will be really dry.

But I'm removing the corn.

Look at this corn.

It looks beautiful.

This, the spine, the chicken spine, el guacal,

man, that adds so much flavor.

Now I'm gonna strain this broth

because I'm gonna be using this broth

for my tomatillo sauce.

I want the chicken flavor to be in that sauce.

Look how moist my chicken looks.

Now I'm gonna shred the chicken.

I let my chicken cool down a little bit, not a lot.

You don't want your chicken to be too cold

because if it gets too cold, it gets dry

and it's harder to shred it.

And when you shred it, right,

you don't want to shred it too thin

and you don't want big chunks.

You gonna go medium size.

When you eat your enchilada,

you kinda want to feel the chicken.

You don't wanna feel like you're eating,

you know, puree chicken or something like that.

This chicken looks phenomenal.

It looks nice and moist.

Who likes dry chicken? Nobody.

Nobody likes dry chicken.

So I'm gonna remove the husk out of my corn

so I can take the kernels and add it to my chicken.

This is not traditional.

This is me adding my touch.

Now when you cut this, don't cut straight.

Cut by feeling the center of the corn.

If you cut straight, you don't get all the corns.

Now if you cut it straight, look, there's a lot of waste.

See here?

No waste, waste.

Now I wanna make sure that all the corn kernels get separate

because I wanna make sure that every single bite

of enchilada has corn and it has that sweetness.

It's another way to balance the spiciness.

And when you try this, you will thank me.

You'll be like, Ah!

Now I know why I pay $28 for chicken enchiladas.

Now I have to prepare my tomatillo sauce.

[light music]

Choosing the right tomatillo.

The greener the better

because it has the bitterness that we're looking for.

When it's too yellow,

it's a little bit more overripe and sweeter.

We don't need sweetness in here

'cause I already have the corn.

Now I'm using two types of peppers.

I'm using jalapeno

because I want that pepper taste without being too spicy.

My friend serrano over here, which is really spicy.

This is my favorite.

I'm gonna add two.

Some ajo

and some white onion.

You have to be careful

because if you let your salsa boil too much,

what's gonna happen is the skin of the tomatillo

is gonna break and the taste even bitter.

So I wanna make sure they,

you know, lose the color a little bit,

turn a little brown, and that's it.

So I'm gonna let these bad boys boil

until they change the color.

When they change the color, I'm going to remove them

and put them into the blender.

For the serrano peppers, I'm only adding one.

I'm gonna have one on the side

just in case if it needs more heat.

But if it doesn't, you're good.

If you add two and you blend it, there's no going back.

You can't take away the heat.

Caldo de pollo.

A little bit of cilantro.

The cilantro, I use the entire stems

because there's a lot of flavor there.

And now we're going to puree with a little bit of salt.

Something that I can always tell a cook

or somebody who is cooking is try things as you go

'cause you can always adjust as you go.

But if you plate it and you didn't taste it before,

you're screwed.

[blender whizzes]

Alright.

There we go.

Let's turn the volume up.

It has enough heat.

The consistency, it's there.

I know you can see it, but it's very liquidy.

Why, because I'm gonna cook it one more time.

Simmer it for like 10, 15 minutes

until the color change a little more

until all the flavors integrate together.

The consistency is not thick of the sauce and it's not thin.

The sauce stays on the spatula, that's a good sign

because we know that it's going to stay on the enchilada.

So this is the consistency that we want,

not too thick, not to loose, perfección.

This is the color that my grandma used to do it

and my mom.

So this sauce, I'm gonna be adding in two ways.

I'm going to be adding to the filling

and also, I'm gonna pour it on top of the tortillas.

So this is 50% of the dish.

So my sauce is ready and I'm gonna move into the next step,

which is the tortillas.

[light music]

Making enchiladas, the tortilla,

it needs to be a store-bought tortilla.

Don't use homemade tortillas

because I feel like it will be a mushy enchilada.

I'm just gonna do neutral oil.

And we wanna make sure that we fry it both sides.

And the reason why we fry the tortilla

is because we want the tortilla to be very flexible

and strong, so the oil will help to achieve that.

See?

They're big, that's good sign.

How do you know the tortilla is done?

When the tortilla gets a little more fluffy

and more flexible, like this.

These won't give you any hard time filling it up.

But I would say like around probably two minutes,

one minute on each side.

But you have to keep turning because otherwise it will burn.

So these tortillas are ready for my enchiladas.

[light music]

I'm gonna stuff the enchiladas

and what I want to do is I want to keep my stuffing here

with sauce and cheese just to keep it nice and warm,

and then I'm going to fill up this tortilla,

roll it up, and put it right here.

People do, this is what they do.

They grab a tortilla, they fill it up with chicken,

with cheese, let's see the cheese, and then with sauce.

So number one, the first side and this side

is not gonna have enough chicken

or enough corn or enough cheese.

Same thing with the sauce,

is they always put it in the middle.

Doing it this way,

the whole enchilada will have the texture,

the amount of chicken that we want,

and the sweetness of the corn.

We have to heat up our chicken.

Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to add some sauce.

Adding the sauce in this step

is gonna help to keep it nice and moist.

One thing that I always tell my cooks,

throw the cheese when you're ready to fill up the enchilada.

Don't throw the cheese before

'cause we wanna make sure you have a nice cheesy enchilada.

This is nice and hot.

Now I'm gonna do the cheese.

So the cheese that I put inside my enchilada

was queso quesadilla, very similar to Monterey Jack,

on the family of mozzarella, stringy Scamorza cheese.

It's delicious.

I'm gonna mix it just a little bit

'cause I want to keep the cheese whole without melting it.

So now I'm gonna grab some of this filling.

I'm gonna put it right here.

Rolling them up.

Make sure when you roll them up,

you pull it, like, toward you

to make sure that the tortilla is nice and tight.

And always where the tortilla ends,

you wanna put it on the bottom of your plate.

I'm gonna do it one more time.

If you press the tortilla towards you,

you will have an even enchilada.

So it has to be the same thickness.

See?

[light music]

Right now, we wanna make sure we cover all the enchiladas

with the sauce and then we're gonna do the toppings.

We wanna make sure that all the enchiladas

get the same amount of flow of sauce.

We gotta make sure that you don't have way too much sauce.

But honestly, this sauce is so good

that I will drink this sauce in a smoothie.

The sauce is not running, staying on the enchilada.

That's a really good sign.

Now we're just gonna do the toppings.

I'm gonna do the crema first.

Adding a cold item to to here is going to give you that,

a really delicious sensation on your mouth

when you're eating warm and cold.

And now I'm gonna do the lettuce.

A little bit of lettuce

because I don't need a lot of lettuce as you can tell.

And then we are gonna do a little bit of queso fresco.

Queso fresco mean it's just, it's salty, it's crumbly,

makes the food looks really good.

Look at this.

Feel like I'm building a Mexican Christmas tree.

And now, I'm going to do some red onions

because color and also texture.

This is how my mom lays her enchiladas.

The avocado.

It's delicious, it's fresh.

This has so much textures, so many colors

that it's very pretty.

Now we're gonna do a little bit more queso fresco.

These are the queen of the enchiladas.

And a little bit of cilantro leaves.

Cilantro leaves is just to add a little more aroma.

And you know, to remark the fact

that there is cilantro on the tomatillo sauce.

There's so many kinds of enchiladas in Mexico,

but I think this is the perfect balance

of sauce and ingredients.

This is what perfection of enchilada looks like.

Also, the fact that chicken is filled

with mozzarella, corn, and also sauce,

so I know that every single bite will be delicious.

When you eat enchilada, you gotta make sure

that you got every single ingredient into one bite.

[soft mellow music]

They're super juicy,

spicy when you first try it because of the sauce

because that's the first thing that you try, the spicy.

But then as you're chewing, you get the splashes

of sweetness from the corn, the cheesiness,

and the savory from the chicken.

And then the queso fresco and crema kills that spice.

It's still a little bit spicy,

but it's a beautiful spice

that you can actually enjoy without burning you.

This is what family is all about.

This is what Mexican cuisine is all about.

It's very full of colors, spiciness,

so much ingredient that Mexico is right here.

It's a simple presentation,

but full of flavors, colors, passion, and love.

My enchiladas.

[light music]