Red chile enchiladas with chicken and melted cheese (Enchiladas rojas de pollo con queso derretido) from Mexican Everyday: Easy, Full-Flavored, Tradition-Packed (page 222) by Rick Bayless and Deann Groen Bayless

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Notes about this recipe

  • Eat Your Books

    Can substitute canned tomatoes for fire-roasted canned tomatoes, and quesadilla cheese, asadero cheese, Monterey Jack cheese, or cheddar cheese for Chihuahua cheese. See recipe for serving suggestions and variations.

  • molly17659 on June 11, 2026

    Good recipe. Easy sauce and IMO this recipe makes enough sauce for two batches of enchiladas. Also, the chicken to tortilla ratio is way off. Overall a nice recipe but not my favorite enchiladas

  • cameron_9ui0sv on May 05, 2026

    Proportions are off for sure. I packed two cups of chicken and even with very small portions of chicken, I only filled 7.5 tortillas. The sauce portion is pretty excessive as well. I simmered the sauce in the initial step for well over 7 minutes and it never got to the consistency of tomato paste. Regardless, the final product was tasty!

  • jennifer_vszvd1 on March 05, 2026

    Proportions seemed a bit off. The amount of chicken per enchilada is very small. I also only used half the sauce and froze the rest. These were tasty, but took quite a while to come together.

  • kkmatti on July 20, 2025

    This has become my new enchiladas go-to recipe. Had to cook this much longer than indicated to brown the cheese. Don’t skip the sliced onions & cilantro on top - they add some lovely texture to this dish. I served this with refried beans & Mexican crema.

  • stockholm28 on December 31, 2023

    These were good and using fire-roasted tomatoes and rotisserie chicken certainly streamlines the prep. I thought it was strange that the recipe didn’t soak the guajillos after toasting, so I boiled water and then soaked the chilies for 30 minutes before blending with the tomatoes. I put everything through a strainer which was a bit of a pain, but yielded a nice smooth sauce.

  • Soulkitchenjen on November 26, 2023

    They’re…fine. 8 oz is not enough chicken to fill 12 tortilla. I ended up needed both chicken breasts from a rotisserie chicken. The sauce needs more spice. I don’t think I’d make them again

  • chawkins on October 31, 2020

    Delicious sauce, I used 3 guajilos which weighted to a total of one ounce and about 30 oz of fresh tomatoes from the garden. I did not peel nor seed the tomatoes, the Blendtec did a good job, there was no need to strain even though I did.

  • averythingcooks on July 26, 2020

    I only made the sauce this time (and used a different book/recipe for the filling). This is a delicious & rich sauce - 1 cut it in 1/2 using 1 dried guaillo & 1 dried New Mexico chili. I also have little patties of chili paste made from various dried chilis in the freezer - I think these little flavour gems would also work in this sauce.

  • blintz on May 26, 2020

    This is a wonderful sauce for enchiladas. I used 6 Guajillo chiles and because I only had a food processor, I tried to strain out the bits of skin, but it was going to take too long, so I ignored that direction and it was just fine.

  • ashallen on October 16, 2019

    Great recipe for classic chicken enchiladas with red chile sauce - my husband loooooves these. We use ancho chiles and baked chicken thighs for the cooked chicken. Recipe calls for 8 oz cooked chicken - we've used anywhere from 8-14 oz. I lightly toast cumin seed and grind it fresh. Semi-dry mozzarella has worked OK when other cheeses weren't on hand. With anchos, I find that some of the immature (and very tough!) seeds survive the blender, even when I use the Vitamix, so I usually strain the sauce. Be careful when reducing the sauce - it wants to spatter!

  • mgwalter on January 10, 2016

    Looked awesome going into the oven, but was really dry coming out. Will try again and use more liquid as the tortillas sure soaked it up. Felt it needed something acidic in it, but at a loss for what that might be. I agree with the previous notes - the sauce is really, really good, and might be even better mounted with some butter. :)

  • nicolepellegrini on June 19, 2015

    Loved it. The sauce (I made with guajillos) was so addictive and tasty that I could have just eaten it all up with a spoon. I actually made these using shredded pork from a leftover pork loin and pork stock, instead of chicken, worked perfectly fine.

  • CRCarroll6 on January 03, 2015

    Made this sauce a couple of times. Fantastic! I throw the works into the Vitamix and call it good rather than straining.

  • JKDLady on April 30, 2014

    I use this as a sauce for my boys' enchiladas. They prefer a red, non-spicy sauce. I use 2 T medium chile powder. This also is fast to make!

  • Breadcrumbs on June 04, 2011

    This dish is absolutely delicious! I use the riff which subs chipotles in adobo for the guajillos. After trial and error, we've landed on 1 chipotle as the sauce was super-hot w three and still too hot w 2! We sandwich this between 2 tortillas as our are quite small. Just fabulous, rave reviews always.

  • LaPomme on February 14, 2011

    This recipe yields a wonderful, spicy enchilada sauce. I used the dried chiles and went through the step of straining the sauce. Straining probably added 10 minutes or more to the prep time.

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