KENT'S ENCHILADA CHICKEN PAILLARD
4 large or 8 small boneless chicken breasts (about 3 pounds total)
Salt and pepper, to taste
2-3 tablespoons oil, divided
2 red bell peppers, coarsely chopped (about 6 ounces after trimming) *
1 large onion, julienned (about 8 ounces after trimming)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup Red Enchilada Sauce
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
8 ounces shredded cheddar cheese, divided
Pound the chicken breasts until very thin. If using large chicken breasts, cut them in half. Meanwhile, heat about 1 tablespoon oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Brown the chicken in hot oil just to brown the outside well; transfer to a greased 9x13" baking pan. You'll need to cook the chicken in batches, adding a little more oil for each batch.
In the same skillet, heat another tablespoon of oil. Add the peppers and onions and cook until just tender, adding the garlic during the last minute or so; season lightly with salt and pepper. Remove the peppers from the skillet to a bowl.
Put the enchilada sauce and cream cheese in the same skillet over low heat. Whisk until the cream cheese is blended into the sauce. Add 4 ounces of the cheddar cheese; cook and stir until the cheese has melted. Pour the sauce over the chicken and top with the pepper mixture. Sprinkle the remaining 4 ounces of cheddar cheese over the top. Bake at 350º for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.
Makes 6-8 servings
* The store where I bought my peppers only had one decent-looking red pepper so I bought one red one and one yellow one. They were also a little smaller than I would have liked. They each weighed about 5 1/4 ounces before trimming.
Per 1/6 Recipe: 577 Calories; 30g Fat; 65g Protein; 9g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 7g Net Carbs
Per 1/8 Recipe: 433 Calories; 23g Fat; 48g Protein; 7g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 5g Net Carbs
This recipe is based on one of Kent Altena's cooking videos. Click here to watch the video. This is just as delicious as I thought it would be. The sauce is what makes it so good. Mixing cream cheese into the enchilada sauce makes it extra tasty. It's so good that I plan to come up with other ways to use the sauce.
I've changed the cooking method a bit so that only one skillet is needed and also to keep the chicken from overcooking. Kent made the cheese sauce with the chicken still in the pan and I thought it would be easier to do with the chicken out of the way. I used 4 very large chicken breasts (3/4 pound each). I pounded them flat and then cut them each in half. I didn't split mine horizontally like Kent did. I just cut them into two sections each. Because my chicken breasts were much larger than the ones that Kent used, I increased the sauce ingredients a bit. Kent used about 1/2-3/4 cup of enchilada sauce (his can of Old El Paso enchilada was 10 ounces and he used half of it). I used a full cup plus an extra ounce of cream cheese. A couple other things that I changed were to use a lower oven temperature and to add the garlic to the pepper and onion mixture instead of the sauce. My enchilada sauce already had a lot of garlic in it. Click the photos to see close-ups.
