Guys, these White Chicken Enchiladas have to be one of my all-time favorite enchilada recipes EVER — and they’ve been a HUGE reader favorite for years, too.
They’re cheesy, saucy, and downright divine, with that creamy white sauce that tastes like something you’d order at your favorite little Mexican spot. The best part? They come together easily enough to work for a midweek dinner rotation, but they’re absolutely worthy of serving to company.
If you love this creamy enchilada vibe, you might also want to try Creamy Seafood Shrimp Enchiladas — they’re rich and totally crave-worthy. Want something more traditional? My Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas have been in our family’s regular dinner rotation for more than a decade! And for an easier weeknight shortcut, our Green Chicken Enchilada Casserole fits the bill perfectly.
Looking for more dinner inspiration? Browse my Chicken Dinner Recipe collection for more easy chicken meals and family favorites.
Let’s make these!
What I Love About This Recipe
- Smothered in a rich, tangy, homemade sauce
- Quick to prepare
- Loaded with cheesy goodness!
- No Canned Soup
How To Make White Chicken Enchiladas Recipe
My decadently cheesy enchiladas recipe whips up in less than 45 minutes! A double win — delicious and quick.
- In a bowl, combine chicken and 1 cup of Monterey Jack cheese.
- Fill tortillas with this mixture and roll each one up.
- Arrange the tortillas in the prepared pan.
- Melt butter in a skillet. Sprinkle flour and cook for a minute.
- Remove the skillet from the heat and add chicken broth. Place back on the heat until the sauce thickens.
- Add sour cream and chilies, stir until the sauce is smooth.
- Pour the sauce over the enchiladas. Add the remaining cheese on top.
- Bake.
- Top with green onions and serve.
***See the full instructions below.
Best Chicken To Use For This Recipe
This is a great recipe to use a rotisserie chicken in. It greatly speeds up the prep time and it’s infused with great seasoning.
If you’d prefer, you can use homemade poached chicken or any leftover grilled chicken you happen to have. You can use a combo of white and dark meat or just white or just dark meat per your family’s preference.
White Chicken Enchiladas Recipe Ingredients + Notes
- Diced chiles – Our recipe calls for mild chilies. If your family likes spicy food, you can substitute hotter chilies instead. Another tasty option is fire-roasted chilies. They should be on the shelf near the other canned peppers at your grocery store.
- Chicken – You can cook the chicken according to your favorite method, such as roasting or poaching the breasts. If you’re pressed for time, using a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken from your grocer is a great time-saving shortcut. Honestly, 9 times out of 10, that’s what I use.
- Shredded cheese – We love the flavor of Monterey Jack in this dish. It also helps keep the sauce white! If you have a different cheese on hand, feel free to substitute your favorite shredded cheese in this recipe. My son loves when I use Pepper Jack instead of the plain Monterey because it adds another layer of flavor and spice. It might be too spicy for little kiddos though.
- Sour cream – We strongly recommend using full-fat sour cream in this recipe. It’s an important factor in the richness of the sauce. Also, low-fat sour cream tends to separate and get runny when heated. You might end up with gloppy enchiladas!
- Green onions – Don’t have any green onions? A sprinkle of chopped cilantro on top will add a bright flavor, too.
- Tortillas – The recipe calls for using flour tortillas, but if you prefer, you can switch them with corn tortillas. I used fajita sized tortillas.
- Seasoning – I didn’t need to add any salt or pepper to this recipe. The chicken broth I used was very flavorful and had a lot of salt already in it. The chicken was also well seasoned and obviously, the cheese had a good amount of salt.
Tools For This Recipe
- A 9×13 baking pan
- A stovetop skillet
- Mixing bowls
- A whisk: The whisk is important! This helps you get the creamiest, dreamiest sauce imaginable.
How To Shred Cooked Chicken
The quickest and easiest way to shred chicken is to use a handheld mixer or a stand-up mixer. Here’s how:
- Place boneless, cooked chicken in a mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand-up mixer.
- Set the mixer on low and mix.
- Et Viola! Perfect shredded chicken in a fraction on the time!!
Storing + Freezing + Meake Ahead
- How Long Can You Keep This In The Fridge? If you have leftover enchiladas, store them in an airtight container to keep them from drying out. Store in the fridge for 3-4 days for optimal freshness.
- Can You Freeze This? Sour cream can tend to get runny and/or chunky in the freezer. Freezing them will change the texture of the sauce. We suggest freezing the stuffed and rolled enchiladas without the sauce. Then make the white sauce on the day you plan to reheat it and eat it.
- Make-Ahead Tips: If you meal prep at the beginning of the week, these can easily be prepared several days in advance. Store the stuffed and rolled enchiladas in a covered baking dish. Keep the white sauce separate until you plan to cook the enchiladas. This will cut down on soggy tortillas.
- If you’re making the sauce in advance, it may get a bit too thick when it’s cooled and reheated. This is easy to fix. Add whole milk or chicken stock, one tablespoon at a time, during reheating to achieve your desired thickness. Be sure to stir or whisk thoroughly to maintain the creaminess of the sauce.
- Food Safety: If you’d like more info on food safety check out this link.
Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada Serving Recommendations
What better way to serve my chicken enchiladas than with a whole Mexican feast? My favorite things to serve with this are my Mexican Rice, charro beans, jalapeno cornbread, Mexican corn salad, and my Southwest salad (my family’s favorite salad! They always eat their veggies when I serve this). All the flavors in the dishes complement each other perfectly and I have a meal on the table that everyone is happy with.
How about some dessert? We like this with our margarita cake (totally nonalchoholic!), pineapple upside down cake, pig pickin cake, or pineapple sheet cake.
If you want to pair this with cocktails, try our pink margarita, pineapple margarita, or our old-fashioned mocktail, lime rickey!
More Delicious Mexican-Inspired Recipes
Tried This Recipe?
Leave a review, I love hearing your feedback! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
White Chicken Enchiladas
Ingredients
- 8-10 small flour tortillas
- 3 cups cooked chicken shredded or chopped
- 3 cups Monterey jack cheese shredded-divided
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 (4-ounce) can diced green chilies mild
- 2-3 tablespoons green onions sliced
Instructions
- Spray a 9x13-inch baking dish with cooking spray and set aside. Preheat oven to 350ºF (177ºC).
- In a small bowl, combine chicken (3 cups) and 1 cup of Monterey Jack cheese. Fill tortillas (8-10) with this mixture and roll each one up then place seam side down in the prepared pan.
- Melt the butter (3 tablespoons) in a skillet. Sprinkle flour (3 tablespoons) over melted butter and whisk to combine. Cook for 1 minute to remove the flour taste. Remove the skillet from heat and whisk in broth (2 cups). Place back on the heat and cook until the mixture has thickened and is bubbly. Cool sauce for 3-5 minutes. (Don't skip this step- if the sauce is too hot and you add the sour cream it will curdle it-yuck!). Add sour cream (1 cup) and chilies (1 can) and stir until the sauce is smooth and the sour cream is completely dissolved.
- Pour sauce over enchiladas and add remaining cheese over top. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until the enchiladas are heated through and the sauce is bubbly. Turn on the broiler and broil until the top is nicely golden. Top with chopped green onions (2-3 tablespoons) and serve.
Fans Also Made:
Nutrition
Reader Interactions
Comments
Trackbacks
-
[…] gonnawantseconds.com […]
-
[…] to avoid using skinless, as most of the flavor is extracted from the skin. Leave a Comment. Chicken Enchiladas with Sour Cream White Sauce – Gonna Want Seconds. Wow…………….these enchiladas! Really! These enchiladas!!! I love Mexican food. Everyone in […]
-
[…] gonnawantseconds.com – Get the recipe […]
-
[…] gonnawantseconds.com – Get the recipe […]
Just made this recipe for my family, even my daughter who is a picky eater loves it!
Yay! So happy to hear it Kristin 🙂
This may seem like a silly question, but im new to this whole cooking actual meals thing lol just to clarify, the chicken is pre-cooked correct?
Hi Mikayla. Great question, yes the chicken is precooked 🙂
I am planning to make this tonight but what temperature does the oven need to be set to?
Hi Autumn. 350 🙂
So good used hot green chilies and a mixture of pepper jack and Monterey jack cheese yummy!
Hi Gina. Yum! Great changes!
Wow the best ever so darn good loved it yummy!!!????
Hi Rachel. I’m so glad you enjoyed it 😉
I made this last night exactly as written and my family loved it. Definitely will be making this again. Thanks for the recipe.
You’re so welcome Sandy! So glad you enjoyed!
OMG these are definitely the best sour cream enchiladas I’ve ever had! I did use the hotter Chili’s we like a little bit of heat. But everything else was exactly the same as your recipe! Thank you so much for this wonderful go to dinner
Thanks Kim, I am so happy to hear that you enjoyed the recipe!
These really are delicious. My wife and I made them for lunch. She shredded the chicken and filled the tortillas while I made the cream sauce. To reduce the carb count we used low carb tortillas and soy flour. Our chicken was leftovers from your Buttermilk Roasted Chicken recipe. Amazing!!
I may never order chicken enchiladas at a restaurant again.
Hey John! Wow, that’s so great to hear! Glad to hear both the recipes worked out well for you! 🙂
Can anyone guess if these would be “freezable”?
Hi Mitzi. I haven’t tried freezing this recipe. Has anyone else out there in the blogosphere tried freezing it?
I made these and froze them before cooking. I nervously sent these and a homemade red enchilada sauce version with my boyfriend to a family winter cabin snowy weekend. They were flipping out at how amazing they were. They red sauce were much more difficult to make with several more ingredients and did not compare to the white. With that reaction after them being frozen is a pretty good sign. ????????????????
Hi Brandi! I haven’t tried freezing them before. So glad they worked out so well! Thanks so much for sharing your experience with all of us 🙂
Yes and they are just as as good.
I made these for dinner tonight but I used low carb tortillas, light sour cream, and flaxseed spread to make it a bit healthier. They turned out amazing!!! Thanks for sharing
Hey Christina. Thanks for sharing your adaptations. They sound delicious 🙂
Omg!!!! These were absolutely delicious, my husband asked me to put these into the dinner rotation on a regular basis. Thanks for sharing your recipe.
So glad they were a hit in your home too! Thanks for sharing Lisa!
I made these enchiladas over the weekend and they were delicious. I used corn tortillas, because my husband and I prefer them for enchiladas. I also always use rotisserie chicken when I make enchiladas. It just makes things so much easier!
Hi Natasha. So glad the enchiladas were a hit in your home too. I totally agree, the rotisserie chicken is a wonderful and tasty convenience!
Have made this a couple times now and we love it! The only change I make is I do the small corn tortillas to cut way down on sodium and cut calories some and I put less cheese. I use ro*tel) and any time a recipe calls for sour cream I always put cream cheese instead because my husband hates sour cream and if he tastes it he will not eat it lol! But it is awesome with cream cheese!! Great recipe making it again tonight!?
Woot! So happy to hear you and your hubby loved it! ? Happy cooking!
Just made your recipe tonight 4/12/15. It was a hit! My oldest son has Celiac’s so I made a small dish with corn tortillas and used gluten free flour for the sauce. I also added one extra can of green chilies for extra flavor. I will be making this again. Thanks for sharing.
So glad you liked it Karen! Great ideas for making this GF! Thanks for sharing 🙂
These were great. My whole family liked them. Thanks for sharing the recipe.
Thanks Kelli! So glad you and your family enjoyed them!
Oh my gosh, these sound delicious…I usually make mine with green sauce…can’t wait to try these. Thanks for sharing the recipe.
Hi Marigene. I sure hope you give these a try. We LOVE them 😉
This recipe is amazing! I made it tonight for the family and everyone loved it.
So glad you liked the recipe Carla 😉
Made this last night. It was so delicious. I have been looking for an enchilada recipe that didn’t use soup, this is perfect. I used corn tortillas since that is the way we do it in West Texas. Thanks a bunch.
Ellen, so glad you liked the recipe. Thanks so much for your feedback!
This recipe has become a family favorite. Recipe cones out perfect everytime. I have to triple the recipe Every time because my kids love it…
Simply delicious!!!
Hey Kristy. Yay! I love to hear how much your kids like these enchiladas! Thank you so much for leaving a comment and sharing this with everyone! <3