I made High Protein Enchiladas for a Busy Week.

0:00 I had a couple of busy days last week,

0:02 so I made these high protein suburban mom style enchiladas verde.

0:06 For a plate of two, you're looking at 670 calories and 70 grams of protein.

0:11 So, they are the perfect meal to prep ahead,

0:13 cook in the oven, and store in the fridge.

0:15 And this might be weird, but these enchiladas are so good,

0:18 I was sneaking bites from them cold straight

0:20 from the fridge without needing to heat them up.

0:23 So, in this video, I'm going to show you how I quickly prep the chicken,

0:26 the exact amounts I add to each tortilla,

0:29 and how to upgrade your store-bought enchilada sauce.

0:39 Okay, so I've got all the ingredients we need laid out in front of me.

0:42 And I think one of the most underrated

0:44 techniques for busy home cooks is upgrading store-bought ingredients,

0:48 which is exactly what we're going to be doing with our sauce.

0:51 So, I'm starting with a store-bought enchilada sauce,

0:54 but then boosting it with a couple

0:55 of roasted peppers and other fresh ingredients.

0:58 So, let me show you how to make it

0:59 and the ingredients that I'll be adding to it.

1:01 Then, I'll meet you back here and explain the difference in the flavor.

1:05 Okay, let's rip through the sauce.

1:07 So, to start, I've got one pablano and one

1:09 Anaheim pepper that I'm just placing on a baking sheet.

1:12 And to that, I give them a light drizzle of oil and a sprinkle of salt,

1:15 which I'm going to rub over the exterior,

1:17 which is going to help them roast a bit more evenly in the oven.

1:20 So, I slid those peppers underneath the broiler on low

1:23 and just let them start to roast for a few minutes.

1:26 You don't want to go too far away, but while that's going,

1:28 I grabbed out the blender and prep the other ingredients,

1:31 which is simply opening up the two cans of green enchilada

1:34 sauce and lopping off about a quarter of a red onion.

1:37 Now, back at the broiler, once I start to see some browning,

1:40 I just flip it over and then let it go for another minute or two

1:43 before completely pulling that out and tossing

1:45 them into a container to let them steam.

1:48 And this steaming step is going to help loosen

1:50 that skin so it peels off a bit easier.

1:52 And as you'll see just a minute or two later,

1:55 that outer skin should be noticeably wrinkly like this.

1:57 And then you can just go ahead and remove it.

2:00 Once that skin is removed, we're ready to finish the sauce in the blender.

2:04 So, first I added the two cans of store-bought enchilada sauce,

2:07 followed by the red onion, the roasted ablatto, the roasted Anaheim,

2:11 a handful of cilantro, as well as a small sprinkle of cumin

2:14 seeds before blending that all together until it's smooth.

2:18 And just like that, we should have a sauce

2:19 that should taste way more alive than straight from the can.

2:23 But let's actually give them a taste test.

2:25 So, right here, I have a little sample of the original sauce that I saved.

2:28 So, let's give it a taste and then see how

2:30 big of an upgrade the version that I made actually is.

2:35 This is good.

2:35 It's totally passable.

2:36 You can also just kind of tell it's like it's got that canned vibe to it.

2:40 Completely missing out on a lot of freshness,

2:42 which is what we added into this version.

2:46 So, let's give it a taste.

2:49 Right away, you get that top freshness from the bite of that red onion,

2:53 the cilantro in there,

2:54 and then you kind of get those rounded notes of the roasted

2:57 peppers as well as the cumin totally come through as well.

3:00 This is a good example where a lot of times cooking feels like it's framed

3:04 as you either have to go completely from scratch

3:06 or just store or order takeout or something.

3:09 But I think for most home cooks,

3:11 really the big value is trying to find these situations where you

3:14 can maybe upgrade a store-bought component to get a big upgrade in flavor,

3:20 which I think is what we did here.

3:22 So, now that we have our sauce done,

3:23 all we got to do is quickly make some garlic cumin chicken,

3:26 and then we'll go ahead and assemble our enchiladas.

3:29 So, I'll meet you back here when we're ready to assemble.

3:32 This is probably the easiest way that I know how

3:34 to cook a big batch of tender chicken pieces all at once.

3:37 So to start, I grabbed out the chicken breast.

3:39 And the key here is you want to slice

3:40 across the grain and as thinly as possible.

3:43 Just use a sharp knife and take your time.

3:46 These thin slices are going to cook really

3:47 fast and give us plenty of room for browning.

3:50 Then once everything is sliced, I set a bowl over a scale and added the chicken.

3:53 And for the salt, I did 1% by weight of the meat.

3:56 So 7 g in my case.

3:58 Then from there, I added an 8 g sprinkle of cumin

4:01 seed and an 8 g sprinkle of some dried minced garlic,

4:04 which I like for kind of its punchier texture.

4:06 Lastly, I finished with a 15 g drizzle of oil before mixing everything together,

4:10 and we are ready to cook.

4:12 So, at the stove, I preheated my griddle to 475° on both sides.

4:16 Then, just dump that chicken out and spread it out with a spatula

4:19 before we're going to leave it alone to cook hard on one side.

4:23 And while that's going, it's always good to take this minute or two to clean

4:26 up the chicken bowl and the cutting board from earlier.

4:29 Now, back at the stove,

4:30 you can see the chicken is over halfway cooked through on top,

4:33 which is the cue to kind of flip it.

4:34 And then just let it cook for another minute or two.

4:36 And that's it.

4:37 All the chicken is nicely seasoned and browned on one

4:40 side and ready to be filled into our tortillas.

4:44 Okay, so we've got our chicken and our sauce done.

4:46 And I will say this chicken alone just thinly sliced, cooks super fast.

4:50 Such a great item to quickly meal prep.

4:52 Use it for, you know, tacos obviously enchiladas like we're doing today,

4:56 but sandwiches, salads, anything like that.

4:58 Really, really good item.

5:00 Really tender and flavorful.

5:02 But anyway, now all we got to do is assemble.

5:03 So, I'm going to use some lower carb tortillas and then

5:06 I've got to figure out how much cheese we can use.

5:08 I will weigh everything out.

5:09 So, if you guys want to follow this exactly,

5:11 you can have an accurate calorie count.

5:13 So, let me assemble these and then I'll

5:15 meet you back here for our final taste test,

5:17 which is probably going to be later tonight.

5:19 To assemble, I first poured some of the enchilada

5:21 sauce into the bottom of my baking dish.

5:23 Then also sliced off pieces of Monterey Jack

5:26 that I'm going to place in the center of these.

5:27 And these each weighed about 18 g.

5:30 So to each tortilla, I start by adding 80 grams of the cooked chicken breast,

5:34 followed by a small spoonful of the enchilada sauce and that slice

5:38 of cheese right over the top before wrapping those up tight.

5:41 And then you just keep on going.

5:43 Add the chicken down, the spoonful of sauce, slice of cheese, and wrap it up.

5:47 And while I finish these, let me tell you about the Cookwell app.

5:51 So we launched the Cookwell app a couple of months ago,

5:53 and people have been wondering kind of what's

5:55 the difference between the app and the website.

5:57 So, I thought I would just show you how I

5:59 used the Cookwell app to make the recipe for this video.

6:02 So, I'm going to flip it up on screen for you guys.

6:05 And essentially what I did is I knew we had um an enchilada recipe,

6:10 but I wanted to make a high protein version.

6:12 So, I went to the recipe that we had.

6:14 We have the new one for this video currently on there.

6:16 So, that's at the bottom.

6:18 But, I clicked into it and then I can actually edit this.

6:20 And we're calling these kind of remixes.

6:22 So, what I did is just remove the chicken thighs

6:25 and kind of added chicken breast um to swap out,

6:29 you know, the higher protein version.

6:31 Then for what did I do?

6:33 Oh, yeah.

6:34 The Anaheim peppers I kind of changed to one.

6:37 And then I'm going to add in the storebought enchilada sauce as well.

6:46 Enchilada sauce.

6:49 And then I just left a note too

6:50 in the flour tortillas to buy the lowcalcarb version.

6:56 And then just kind of added this as a custom recipe.

7:00 Now again, where you can pick this up again

7:02 though is um when we get to our grocery shopping.

7:08 So I'm going to go into the profile now.

7:13 And again, now I have it double in here,

7:15 but I can click on the three dots and add this to my grocery list.

7:19 So, it's going to pop up the grocery list item,

7:20 and then I can quickly see kind of what I have.

7:22 So, garlic, salt, mayonnaise, I don't need any of that.

7:25 I know I need the chicken breast.

7:26 I know I need the Anahheim peppers and the pablano peppers.

7:28 All the other stuff is just um pantry items other than the enchilada sauce.

7:33 Then, I need those flour tortillas.

7:35 And when I filmed it, I think I needed Monterey Jack cheese.

7:38 So, these are now going to go into we'll pop it into a new list.

7:42 and call it done.

7:45 And then, as you can see, these items should now all be in my grocery list.

7:51 And they're kind of tagged with that little icon to show

7:54 when you are shopping what recipe user you use them for.

7:57 And then that's really it.

7:59 So, if we look back at my planner from Monday when I made this dish,

8:02 you can see I have the recipe in there.

8:04 And then I just left a little note,

8:06 kind of a little todo for myself for enchilada filming and grocery shopping.

8:09 So, that's just one example of all the functionality that's built

8:12 in the app that obviously you can't do from the website.

8:15 The website is purely just if you want to read

8:17 the recipe and make it and follow it exactly.

8:19 Um, but the Cookwell app is an entire home cooking system.

8:23 That's really what we're trying to build.

8:24 So, if you guys want to check this out,

8:25 it is linked down below in all the recent videos as well as all

8:28 the recipes we're making on this channel are now going to be loaded up in here.

8:31 But, as you can see,

8:32 there's a lot more functionality than just a website can offer.

8:35 So, now let's get back to finishing the enchiladas and doing our taste test.

8:40 Back at our enchiladas, once all the tortillas were rolled up,

8:42 I had seven in total,

8:44 and I placed them seamside down into the pan with the enchilada sauce.

8:47 I was able to fit five into this first pan,

8:50 then just cover it up with more sauce over the top.

8:53 You can use as much or as little as you want,

8:55 depending on your saucy preferences.

8:58 I also added another 30 g of cheese over the entire thing.

9:01 And then the other two I placed onto just

9:03 a mini sheet tray and did the same thing.

9:05 And now we have meals for the next couple of days.

9:08 So to bake these, just cover with aluminum foil and place

9:11 in a 375° oven for about 10 to 15 minutes.

9:14 Then for the last 5 minutes or so, I like to throw on the broiler to get

9:18 a little browning on the cheese and get that sauce bubbling.

9:21 And once they're cooked,

9:22 you can either let them cool and pop the whole thing in the fridge.

9:25 But if you are eating them fresh,

9:26 I like adding a little diced onion and fresh cilantro over the top.

9:30 And here you're going to see me reheating the tray

9:32 of two at like 7:30 at night for our taste test.

9:35 And once I cut into these, I mean, you can see it.

9:37 It's cheesy, chickeny.

9:39 That salsa verde is going to really pop.

9:42 It's one of those sneaky high protein meals.

9:45 So, let's give them a taste.

9:47 Okay, time to get into this.

10:03 This right here is pure just happiness for me.

10:06 I mean, what a great dish to come home to.

10:09 Super flavorful.

10:10 The sauce is just so good.

10:13 You get the chicken, the garlic, and the cumin comes really through.

10:16 Top with a little sour cream,

10:17 and I love that more bite of kind of the raw onion on top.

10:21 I mean, for being kind of a healthier,

10:23 high protein version, this absolutely hits the spot.

10:27 So, I'm going to crush the rest of this.

10:28 Recipe link will be down below,

10:29 as well as to the Cookwell app if you guys want to check that out.

10:32 But that's going to wrap it up for me in this one.

10:34 Let me know if you guys try this.

10:36 I will catch you all in the next one.

10:38 Peace, y'all.