Ranch Enchiladas

A few years ago I figured out how Applebees makes their sauce for their "Fiesta Lime Chicken" -which I love. It's just ranch dressing mixed with salsa. Sounds gross but it's really good.

So the other night I made my version of Applebees Chicken (marinate boneless skinless chicken breasts in Tequila and lime juice for 1/2 hour - pan sear just to brown, put in a pan, cover with the ranch-salsa sauce and shredded Mexican cheese that you can buy in the store. Yes, I buy those bags of shredded cheese. I HATE shredding cheese!
Bake at 350 about 35 minutes. )

So I had some leftover corn tortillas (why can you not buy less than about 50 of them?) and leftover sauce so I thought - why not enchiladas?

I got about a lb of chuck beef and rubbed it with kosher salt, ancho chili powder, cumin, and pepper -threw it in the crockpot with some water and sliced onion and about 2 TB of molasses.

I learned this trick from my Mom and we are not Mexican but if you try to roll up corn tortillas they will break so I just fry them in just a little olive oil until they have brown spots and they are nice and soft and easy to roll. Put a little beef and that store bought Mexican cheese in, roll in up and put a bunch in a pan. First pour a little of the juice from the beef all over the enchiladas, the ranch-salsa sauce, then more of that cheese. I like to sprinkle ancho powder and Mexican Oregano on top because it looks pretty. Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes. It's very good!

You can also make this with shredded chicken, just cheese, or even hamburger if you don't have time to fiddle with the shredded stuff. Sometimes I will just cook up pork roasts, beef roast, and chicken and freeze it so I have shredded stuff. It's all good with barbecue sauce for sandwiches. Made pork barbecue sandwiches for my daughter's graduation party and it was quite a hit.