REVING UP A CAN OF PROGRESSO CHEESY CHICKEN SOUP

                                  On this beautiful May morning, I was organizing my food pantry and trying to figure out a quick dinner.  During our cold days this past February, I had purchased 2 cans of Progresso Cheesy Chicken Enchilada soup.  It is a wonderful canned soup and great for those cold nights when the girls come home from softball and tennis practices.  They need to have something to warm up their core after  being outside.

I had a can of El Paso Enchilada sauce also in the pantry.

 Normal recipes usually call for adding a can of Cream of Chicken or Cream of Mushroom soup to use as a base in a recipe.  Why couldn't I use a stand alone soup and do the same thing?  I pulled the 2 cans of soup off the shelf, looked at them and thought to myself, 'well, it's going to be 89 degrees out there today and they are not going to want hot soup but.......

I have many great memories of Mom cooking in the kitchen.  Occasionally she would say, 'I need to whomp it up'.  In Roth-speak that meant, this dish needs some major enhancing to make it more palatable to the taste.  To this day I use the same expression.  When I will say the same thing, the girls giggle a lot.  Mom had a way of making the food presentation and meals always worthy of guests.  I know that this is where my joy of being in the kitchen comes from.  Ok, so back to the soup.

I have the advantage of going to the Internet and googling 'what can you do with a can of cheesy chicken enchilada soup?'  This following recipe comes from the Betty Crocker website.  I took the basics and threw a few more ingredients in to 'whomp it up'.



Total Time 55 min

Servings 5

Ingredients

1

can (18.5 oz) Progresso™ Traditional Chicken and Cheese Enchilada Soup

1

can (10 oz) Old El Paso™ hot or mild enchilada sauce

2

cups shredded cooked chicken

2

cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese (8 oz)

10

corn tortillas (6 inches)

2

medium green onions, thinly sliced

Directions

• 1 Heat oven to 350°F. In medium bowl, stir together soup and enchilada sauce. Spread 1 cup soup mixture in ungreased 11x7-inch baking dish.
• 2 In large bowl, mix 1 cup soup mixture with chicken and 1 cup of the cheese; reserve remaining soup mixture. On microwavable plate, stack tortillas and cover with paper towel; heat on High 1 minute to soften. Place 1/4 cup chicken mixture along middle of each tortilla. Roll up and place seam sides down in baking dish with sauce.
• 3 Pour remaining soup mixture over enchiladas. Sprinkle with remaining 1 cup cheese. Sprinkle green onions on top. Bake about 30 minutes or until cheese is melted and sauce is bubbly around edges.

Since I had 2 cans of the Progresso soup, I added 1 large can of El Paso mild enchilada sauce, an extra handful of cheese, some frozen chopped white onions and green peppers that I always stow away in my freezer.  To give it more kick, I added 1/2 teaspoon of chili powder for heat.

Since I had so much more liquid that the original recipe, I scooped out about 1 1/2 cups of the sauce before I added the chicken to the bottom of the glass casserole dish.  Once I added the chicken to the sauce, it still was rather soupy.  So as I filled the warmed up flour tortillas(my family likes these over the corn shells), I would take a large scoop of the cheesy chicken sauce and drain a bit of the liquid out before placing it in the shell to wrap it.  My recipe made 10 hearty enchiladas in the dish.

I poured the remaining sauce on top making sure to cover every bit of rolled flour tortilla.  After adding another layer of cheese, I opened up the pantry again and found a bag of Fritos.  I took a handful out and placed them in a sandwich bag and smashed them.  These were sprinkled over the cheese.  I thought that that extra bit of crunch would give a bit more texture. 

I can never go wrong with a Mexican dish to please my crowd.

I was right. It was a huge hit.  This one will go in the recipe file.