Anyone have a good red chicken enchilada recipe. I have made them for years
but always looking for alternates.
I'm not really pleased with the commercial red enchilada sauces out there. I
have also tried making my own enchilada sauce but don't easy access to a
real good chili powder. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks
Bg

Why don't you try putting a chili pepper through a blender.

Jean-Pierre Gauthier

Bob G wrote:
Anyone have a good red chicken enchilada recipe. I have made them for years
but always looking for alternates.
I'm not really pleased with the commercial red enchilada sauces out there. I
have also tried making my own enchilada sauce but don't easy access to a
real good chili powder. Any ideas would be appreciated.

You can buy various chiles that have been dried or you can buy canned
chiles, or fresh chiles. If your local market has a Mexican food
section, you'll see the plastic bags of dried chiles or the cans of
chiles. Of course the fresh chiles will be in the produce section.

It helps to know which ones are hotter than others. That's been
discussed in this NG earlier this year. Look up the posts on the
relative heat of chiles.

No matter which chile you select, or what the sauce is called, the
process is essentially the same. If you buy canned chiles, you can
drain and rinse and de-seed and de-vein them and fry them in a little
oil or lard on each side to make them turn tobacco brown.

Fresh chiles are split, de-seeded, de-veined, and fried in oil.

Soak the dried chiles overnight, then de-seed and de-vein them.

Tear the chiles up into smaller pieces so you can run them through your
blender with some of the soaking water.

Then mix in some garlic, maybe some tomatoes or tomatillos, depending
on what color you want the sauce to be, tomatoes makes it red,
tomatillos makes it greenish brown. Some people use tomato paste for a
bright red sauce. Some people use the heart of romaine lettuce for a
bright green sauce.

You can add chopped onion, cilantro, epazote, or hoja santa, whatever
you like.

Blend the mixture coarsely, then fry it for about 5 minutes stirring it
constantly. Then you can add enough water to make the sauce as thin as
you want and simmer it for 15 or 20 minutes.