Monday, August 15, 2016

OVEN BAKED MAKE-AHEAD QUESADILLAS

I love to make dinners ahead of time.  One of the main reasons is that by the time afternoon comes, I need to take a power nap for me.  When I wake early in the morning, I do my exercises and then head off to the kitchen to do prep for that night's dinner. 

Today, I'm going to show you my quesadilla recipe that I make during softball season.  I actually even bake them, cool them and put them in the fridge.  To reheat, I put a Teflon skillet on the stove and cook them on both sides to reheat.  I haven't tried them on the grill, but I think this would work. 

Let's get started.  I usually buy a big family pack of skinned chicken breasts.  Once home, I wash them under cold water and drain them on paper towels. Then I slice the breasts in half and take each half and cut then slices until all the chicken is trimmed. 

Place all of the chicken in a bowl and toss in one package of dry fajita mix.  Mix around with your hands until all your chicken is covered.

Take out a cookie sheet, line it with foil(I tried parchment and as much as I love it, almost caught fire under the broiler.)  Then use your spray Pam or whatever you have on hand, and coat the bottom of the cookie sheet.  Then lay all of your chicken flat with no pieces overlapping on the cookie sheet.

Broil until cooked. This doesn't take real long.  Remove from the oven.  Most of the pieces will be cooked, but the thicker one might need to be flipped over.  Make sure you remove the thinner cooked pieces from the cookie sheet before returning to the oven.  There is nothing worse than dried overcooked chicken.

Let cool and then take another cookie sheet and lay parchment in the bottom.  Take all of the pieces and lay them beside each other without touching and put in the freezer.  Once frozen, removed the chicken slices and place in a zip lock freezer bag.  Return to the  freezer.



You can buy pre-packaged
Tyson fajita chicken in the grocery section for about $6.98 for 22 ounces.  If I buy a family pack of breasts at $1.99 a lb., I could buy 3 lbs. and make my own for about the same price.

Once removed from the freezer, bag up the fajita chicken and place back into the freezer until you are ready to assemble the quesadillas.

With the chicken prepared this way you can make 1 or 10 by taking out the amount of chicken you need.  This really saves a huge step in making them for dinner.

When ready to assemble, take out your grated cheeses.  I use pepper jack and Colby-jack.  The girls don't like them as spicy so I use Colby-jack on theirs and Mr. Thrifty and I have the pepper jack.


The last two ingredients are the small flour tortillas and chopped jalapenos in the can.

Start by lining a cookie sheet with foil.  Lay out 6 tortillas.  Spray Pam on all the top surfaces. 


Flip the tortillas and begin assembling them.



Ready for the oven.



Bake at 375 with the convection oven 10 minutes on each side.

Regular oven, bake at 400 for 10 minutes each side.

Serve with salsa and sour cream.



Leftovers can be put in the fridge.  To reheat them, lay in a small fry pan and cook on both sides about 5 minutes.  The girls love to reheat them and they taste the same.

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Qué delicioso!!!!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment