Chicken Enchiladas con Salsa Chile Rojas (GF) – Culinary Seasons

The name translated means, Chicken Enchiladas with Chile Sauce, don’t let the name scare you from making this deep flavored smokey enchilada sauce. Enchilada translates to “season in chile”, this enchilada sauce can be made as spicy as you like by adjusting the type of chiles you use to lessening one single type to get the spice level you wish. You can add more tomato to give the sauce a milder flavor that may be more inline with what you may be accustomed to.

The sauce is Gluten Free and Vegetarian, I did not list Vegetarian in the title because there is chicken in the enchilada but you can make how you like.

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Many times when I cook at home, I try to utilize what I have in the pantry or the refrigerator. Plus when we go grocery shopping we look for deals and specials that are a good buy. This is how I picked up a big bag of California Dry Chile Pods, the store we usually frequent had a big markdown on a display of these chiles for 99¢ a bag. I figured that they miss ordered or got a special shipment from the manufacturer but I don’t question those things, if it is a deal I will figure out what to make.

Scoville Scale – If you can’t take the heat…..

I know many people don’t like too much spice and the dry chiles I used in this recipe are low on the Scoville scale (500-2500 SHU) compared to Jalapenos (2500-10000 SHU) or Serrano peppers (10000-25000 SHU). The Scoville scale was invented in 1912 by Wilbur Scoville, an American Pharmacologist, much of his testing was subjective as to what the level of heat was in peppers. He came up with a scale of Scoville Heat Units or SHU.

Today, there is a more scientific test available to determine the heat of capsicum called High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). This testing reliably determines the concentration of the capsicum to determine its severity and then gets placed on the appropriate level on the Scoville scale.

Every year people are trying to cross pollinate different peppers to create hotter and hotter peppers. There are even competitions where contestants eat as many hot peppers they can, usually starting with lower level hot peppers and increase in heat on each round until there is only one contestant left. When I watched one of these competitions, it is painful to watch but there seems to be at least one person who must not feel any pain who is declared the winner.

What do I do with the leftover Rotisserie Chicken?

This is a great recipe to use for leftover chicken, rotisserie, oven baked or grilled. Shred the chicken, mix with some pepper jack cheese, dip the tortilla in the enchilada sauce and roll it up. If you have leftover other items or just want to make cheese or vegetable enchiladas, no problem, just substitute out what you have.

Another favorite is a Wet Burrito, just as it sounds, utilize this sauce to pour over a burrito of chicken fajita filled tortilla or a carne asada burrito or whatever you like. Top with some cheese and put it under the broiler for a few minutes to melt the cheese and give some additional flavor to the sauce. Top with some sour cream, guacamole and pico de gallo, and don’t forget the chips!

How ever you use this red chile enchilada sauce, I hope you ENJOY the results!

* This recipe is easy to put together, it may take a bit of time to prepare the sauce but the end result is absolutely worth it. You can make a bigger batch and freeze what you don’t use.* You can adjust the heat of the sauce by reducing the number of chiles used but the chiles used in this recipe have an earthy flavor. * You can reduce or remove the Achiote sauce from the canned chipotle as there is some heat from that as well.

* Adding more tomatoes is an option as well to make the sauce more tomato than chile if you desire.