Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Chicken Flautas Fast and Easy!



I dine at Mexican restaurants on a weekly basis, we love to munch on chips and salsa and drink beer and wine, but I struggle with what to order. I have had veggie fajitas, salads (boring), veggie burritos, sometimes I have a little meat and order chicken tacos or chicken flautas, but the chicken is always over done and tasteless.
So I searched the internet for a good chicken flauta recipe, I found one when I came across The Culinary Chronicles recipe at TastyKitchen.com. I simplified the recipe a bit to meet my husbands picky-ness.
For the full version click here: spicy-chicken-flautas

Before we get started, this is what I was taught about Taquitos and Flautas: A taquito is made with a corn tortilla (meat rolled inside and fried). A flauta is made with flour tortilla (meat inside rolled and fried) It bothers me when you order a flauta and it shows up with corn tortilla! Corn is for Taquitos! We are making Flautas today, use flour tortillas!

For my short and sweet and to the point recipe and for really tasty chicken flautas just do this:

3 chicken breasts
olive oil
spices: garlic powder, cumin, cayenne, onion powder, salt and pepper.

1 cup jack cheese, 1 cup cheddar cheese grated.

6 to 10 flour tortillas - 8 inch size
canola or vegetable oil for frying (just about a 1/4 inch in the cast iron skillet bottom.)

Heat oven to 350. Coat the chicken breasts with a little olive oil, now sprinkle on the spices, nice and heavy, really coat the chicken, and rub it in, place on a foil lined cookie sheet and bake 40-45 minutes until temp reaches 165, take out of oven and let cool. I made homemade guacamole and Spanish rice while the chicken cooled, you really must have guacamole to dip the flautas in!

Once chicken has cooled, chop it up nice and small and take a taste, the chicken is very flavorful! Now mix in the cheese, now would be a nice time to add lime juice or a little chicken broth but I was all out. The chicken cheese mix worked great though.

Now you want to heat up the oil in a cast iron skillet over medium. Once oil is hot, lay a tortilla down on a plate, dump a couple spoonfuls of the chicken mix on and roll tight, secure with a toothpick and fry them in the oil until golden brown, set on a rack over paper towel lined cookie sheet to drain, then serve with rice and guacamole! Delish!
I forgot to photo mine, this is from meal plannig 101.
Mine looked like this, very tasty and light and flaky, don't use a ton of oil, you just need a little to fry them up!

1 comment:

My Garden Diaries said...

AH....YUM!!! I need to try this! We eat the same Mexican dishes over and over again! I know for a fact that the beans would just love to pick these up and dip them! And fast works good around these parts...HA! Thanks for sharing lady! I hope you are having a good week!!!