MexiChickenMix (quick micro)

Highlights:

4 ingredients. 5 min max to make, 1 min to cook. Mix/cook/store/eat from same bowl. High protein low carb. Yummy. Uses pre-cooked chicken.

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I was experimenting with a few goals in mind:

1 - A use for cooked chicken, because we tend to crockpot two big bags of formerly-frozen chicken breasts at a time, so we have a big bowl of cooked chicken that needs to be eaten.

2 - Something that could be made QUICK AND EASY, in the microwave even, and with not many ingredients

3 - Something with enough protein and few enough carbs that eating it wouldn't make me have to do the hula around carbs the rest of my day.

4 - Something that I could make a bunch of, put in those 1/2cup/4oz Glad containers, and eat a few times a day -- so something that could be nuked as leftovers.

This worked out really great!

As it turns out, it's even good eaten at room temp and straight out of the fridge like a sort of mexi-flavored chicken salad. It's like chopped chicken in a sort of 'creamy' mix, not very creamy, but enough to full flavor every bite in the best way.

You can vary this recipe any way you like -- add spices, add fresh herbs, add more or less hot peppers, add onions. This is more a 'concept' recipe but it comes out really yummy!!

I planned it for 'single serving' but it actually came out like 2-3 each.

Old El Paso brand is available in most groceries; they make tons of stuff, including "enchilada sauce" in mild green, red, red medium, and red hot. It comes in cans, they are yellow with red titles and available in the mexican-food section of the store.

INGREDIENTS

1 oz cream cheese,

2 oz El Paso enchilada sauce, either mild green OR red

1-2 oz chopped FRESH chilis so they are crunchy, either green OR red
(you can substitute green chilis in the can, or onions for this, but it's really good with the fresh chilis)

2 oz grated cheese: pepperjack (for green) or cheddar (for red)

4-6oz small- to finely- chopped cooked chicken (I use mine from the fridge)

INSTRUCTIONS

You can mix and cook and store and eat this all from the same bowl. I used one of those deep rectangular 24oz Glad plastic bowls.

Put the cream cheese in your bowl and nuke it till it's supersoft.

Add the enchilada sauce

Add the chopped chilis and stir it all up well

Add the grated cheese (I only had slices for the pepperjack, so I just chopped them up well) and again mix it all together well.

Add the chopped chicken and stir it all up so the chicken is totally mixed into the rest of the ingredients.

Nuke it for 45-60 seconds, take it out and stir it well.

That's it! It's yummy!

This makes about 10-12oz of stuff depending on your ingredients. I used 4.25oz as the 'serving size' in my counts below -- that's 20-25g of protein and 3-4g of carbs depending on the version.

Tips:

If you add 6oz rather than 4oz meat, obviously the same weight of serving will have a little more protein and calories and a little less carbs. So vary it as you need. It's a little creamier the more 'other' stuff you add to the chicken. Chopping the chicken more finely also makes it a little creamier. Theoretically I bet you could even blender this and use it as a 'spread' on something.

Green chilis have a tad more carbs than red chilis, if you're buying and chopping fresh. However, red chilis tend to be hotter. I have a big garden with lots of stuff. For my green I used poblano and anaheim and a jalapeno. For my red I used thai, cayenne, and red jalapeno.

The 'crunch' of the fresh chopped veggies really added a lot to this! Made it kinda like chicken salad with fresh onions or something. If you add onions instead of chilis you add more carbs but keep some of the crunch. If you add canned green chilis instead of the fresh, you keep the flavor on the green chili version but lose all the crunch.

Nutrition Info

Like all the recipes I post, it depends on how you put it together! But here's the counts on the two versions I made in my experiment, with line-item counts in case that helps ya.

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GREEN VERSION

   cal     prot    carb    fiber
223.00    43.00       -        -     5 oz chicken
 18.59        -    2.79        -     2 oz mild green el paso 
                                          enchilada sauce
 99.00     2.00    1.00        -     1 oz cream cheese
109.00     7.00    1.00        -     2 oz pepper jack cheese
 23.00     1.13    5.36     0.90     2 oz green chilis, fresh, 
                                          chopped
472.59    53.13   10.15     0.90     TOTAL RECIPE MADE ~11.25 OZ

 42.01     4.72    0.90     0.08     per ounce
178.53    20.07    3.83     0.34     for a 4.25oz serving (~ 1/2c)

RED VERSION

   cal     prot    carb    fiber
275.00    52.00       -        -     6 oz chicken
 23.63     0.95    2.84        -     2 oz HOT red el paso red 
                                          enchilada sauce
 99.00     2.00    1.00        -     1 oz cream cheese
223.00    13.00    1.00        -     2 oz cheddar cheese
 14.00     0.66    3.12     0.50     1.25 oz hot red chilis, fresh, 
                                             chopped
634.63    68.61    7.96     0.50     TOTAL RECIPE MADE ~11.5 OUNCES

 55.19     5.97    0.69     0.04     per ounce
234.54    25.36    2.94     0.18     per 4.25oz serving (~ 1/2 c)

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The serving size (half a cup is around 4-4.5 oz) is reasonable because with 20-25 grams of protein this is pretty filling.