Creamy Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas

I started making this enchilada recipe in college. My first year of college my mom gave me four Campbell’s cookbooks. For a girl just starting to cook on her own, these were perfect. Yummy, easy recipes with ingredients that were easy to find and very affordable. I didn’t use them too much until my third year of college when I moved into an apartment and got busy “being an adult.” Each recipe in the cookbooks stars at least one can of soup. It’s amazing the things you can do with condensed soup! I think I started to not use the cookbooks as much as I got older because adding a can of Cream of _______ Soup isn’t always a healthy recipe. However, I did find a dry/homemade/not-so-bad-for-you Cream of _______Soup recipe on Pinterest that I am planning on trying out in the future. If it actually works, some of those old Campbell’s recipes may start gracing my table again.

Once I found this chicken enchilada recipe, the one from Campbell’s started to fall off my meal planning list. I’m not sure what the reason was, but last week I remembered that husband and I really like this recipe and that I hadn’t made it in a while. So onto the shopping list the ingredients went.

I’m really happy that I went back to my college days for this recipe. Husband told me about four times how much he really likes these enchiladas. Now that I have much more confidence in the kitchen than I did in college, I decided to make a few adjustments to the recipe. I used my dad’s homemade salsa instead of Pace (Campbell’s recipes are packed with their name brand ingredients), cut back on the chicken and added a can of pinto beans to the chicken mixture. I had a bunch of cilantro in the fridge and I’m really wishing that I had added a handful to the chicken mixture as well. Because I like more cheese in my enchiladas I would also consider sprinkling about half a cup of cheese to the top of the enchiladas before putting them in the oven.

Enjoy!

1 can condensed Cream of Chicken Soup

½ cup sour cream
1 cup salsa
2 tsp. chili powder
1 ½ cups cooked chicken, chopped
15 oz. pinto beans
½ cup Monterey Jack, shredded
12 flour tortillas (6")

Stir the soup, sour cream, salsa and chili powder in a medium bowl.

Stir one cup salsa mixture, chicken, beans and cheese in a large bowl.

Using a ¼ cup measuring cup, spread the chicken mixture among the tortillas. Roll up the tortillas and place them seam side up in 11 x 8" shallow baking dish. Pour the remaining salsa mixture over the filled tortillas. Cover the baking dish.

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 40 min. or until the enchiladas are hot and bubbling.

Adapted from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/campbells-easy-chicken-and-cheese-enchiladas/

***The recipe found on the website is slightly different from the one in the cookbook so I have adjusted to the cookbook’s recipe. Since the cookbook was published over ten years ago I’m not surprise to see these changes. ***