How To Make Easy Slow Cooker Chicken Enchiladas

If I could urge you to make one meal in your slow cooker this month, these chicken enchiladas would be it! We don’t eat enough enchiladas in my house, mostly because my brain equates rolling enchiladas with too much work for a weeknight, but these slow cooker enchiladas are layered, not rolled, and each layer is stacked with delicious flavor.

For this easy weeknight dinner, you’ll make a fragrant, possibly life-changing enchilada sauce (you can do this the night before), then cook some chicken in the sauce and layer this beautiful mess between tortillas and cheese in your slow cooker. You’ll come home to this fragrant casserole, full of tangy, spicy sauce, tender chicken, and oh-so-satisfying cheesy goodness. Let’s dig in.

There is a lot to love about chicken enchiladas in the slow cooker, but let’s start with the sauce. I realize that making enchilada sauce at home seems a bit silly when you can easily buy a can of reasonably good stuff at the grocery store. What you’re getting at the store is mostly flavored tomato purée, but this homemade version is full of vegetables!

These vegetables get puréed with the rest of the sauce, which ultimately makes these enchiladas easier to build and eat — no vegetables tearing up the tortillas or falling out in this recipe! But most importantly, this enchilada sauce is incredibly delicious and can be made days in advance.

Unlike its oven counterpart, there is no rolling in slow cooker enchiladas. Instead the sauce, chicken, and cheese are layered in the slow cooker, and the result is an enchilada-like casserole that isn’t mushy but has distinct layers and flavors in each bite.

• Make the enchilada sauce in advance. Over the weekend or the night before, I make the enchilada sauce and cook the chicken in it. Sometimes I even make double batch and freeze half. The flavor improves just a bit as it sits, and that way I’m not messing with an immersion blender before work in the morning.
• Cook the chicken in the enchilada sauce. Chop a few chicken breasts, dunk them into the still-warm enchilada sauce, and simmer for 10 minutes. Now you can store the chicken in the enchilada sauce or build the enchiladas in the slow cooker right away.
• Double up the tortillas in between layers. When it’s time to layer the tortillas, cheese, and enchilada sauce in the slow cooker, sprinkle the cheese between two tortillas as you layer them with the saucy chicken. This layer of cheese between the tortillas will prevent the sauce from turning the tortillas to mush even during the long, slow cooking.

These slow cooker chicken enchiladas cook on low heat for eight hours. Once done, the cheese and sauce will be bubbly and the chicken incredibly tender. You can scoop the enchiladas out right away and serve with cilantro, sour cream, or diced red onion.

I want to leave you with one last tip for this slow cooker enchilada: If you have any leftovers, cut them into portions once they’re cold from the fridge. Reheat them in a cast iron pan a little oil until super crispy. You could even serve these glorious leftovers with a fried egg — you’ll be so very glad you took the time to make that enchilada sauce!