Chicken Enchiladas

Michael Eisenwasser

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Shredded chicken enchiladas with a scratch red sauce built on canned tomato, chili powder, and garlic-infused oil — no commercial enchilada sauce, since every jar and can on the shelf starts with onion and garlic.

Prep 25 min

Cook 30 min

Serves 6

Gluten-free

Ingredients

Red Enchilada Sauce (makes about 2 cups)

• 2 tablespoons garlic-infused olive oil
• 1/4 cup scallion greens, thinly sliced (dark green part only)
• 3 tablespoons chili powder (check label for onion/garlic powder; Gourmend and Fody are clean, or use pure ground ancho)
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 can (14.5 oz / 400 g) diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 1/2 cups low-FODMAP chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

Filling

• 3 cups (about 450 g) cooked shredded chicken (rotisserie works, or poach two breasts)
• 1 tablespoon garlic-infused olive oil
• 2 tablespoons scallion greens, thinly sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 100 g (about 3/4 cup) shredded lactose-free Monterey Jack or cheddar

Assembly

• 12 small (6-inch) corn tortillas (Mission yellow corn or similar 100% corn)
• 140 g (about 1 1/4 cups) shredded lactose-free Monterey Jack or cheddar, for topping
• 1/2 cup lactose-free sour cream, for serving
• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
• 1 tablespoon scallion greens, thinly sliced
• Lime wedges, for squeezing

Instructions

Make the Red Sauce

1. Heat the garlic-infused oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the scallion greens and cook for 1 minute until softened.
2. Stir in the chili powder, cumin, oregano, paprika, salt, and pepper. Toast for 30 seconds, stirring constantly, until the spices are fragrant.
3. Add the tomato paste and cook for another minute, stirring, until it darkens slightly.
4. Pour in the drained diced tomatoes and the chicken broth. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.
5. Blend with an immersion blender until smooth (or transfer carefully to a blender). Stir in the lime juice and taste for salt. You should have about 2 cups.

Make the Filling

1. Heat the garlic-infused oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the scallion greens and cook for 1 minute.
2. Add the shredded chicken, cumin, and salt. Stir to coat.
3. Pour in 1/2 cup of the red sauce and stir until the chicken is evenly moistened. Remove from heat and fold in the 100 g of shredded cheese.

Assemble

1. Heat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Spread about 1/2 cup of the red sauce across the bottom of a 9×13-inch baking dish.
2. Warm the tortillas to make them pliable: wrap the stack in a damp kitchen towel and microwave for 45 seconds, or toast each one for about 15 seconds per side in a dry skillet.
3. Working one at a time, lay a tortilla flat, spoon about 1/4 cup of the chicken filling down the center, roll tightly, and place seam-side down in the baking dish. Repeat with the remaining 11 tortillas, lining them up snugly.
4. Pour the remaining red sauce evenly over the top, covering the edges of every tortilla so they don't dry out.
5. Scatter the 140 g of shredded cheese across the top.

Bake

1. Bake uncovered for 18 to 20 minutes, until the cheese is fully melted and the sauce bubbles at the edges.
2. Rest for 5 minutes before serving — the sauce thickens as it cools.
3. Plate two enchiladas per serve. Top each plate with a spoon of lactose-free sour cream, a scatter of cilantro and scallion greens, and a squeeze of lime.

Tips & Substitutions

• Don't use canned or jarred enchilada sauce. Nearly every commercial red enchilada sauce on the shelf — Old El Paso, Las Palmas, Hatch, Frontera, Siete — lists onion and/or garlic in the first few ingredients. Fructans cook into the liquid and can't be strained out. Always check the label, but the scratch sauce above takes 15 minutes and is the most reliable way to keep this dish low-FODMAP.
• Watch your chili powder label. Most supermarket house brands (McCormick, Kroger, Great Value) blend in onion and garlic powder. Gourmend, Fody, and pure ground single-chile powders (ancho, New Mexico, guajillo) are clean. If yours has onion/garlic, leave it out and bump the paprika and cumin up by 1 teaspoon each.
• Stick with 100% corn tortillas. Flour tortillas are wheat-based and push you into fructans at a two-tortilla serve. Some supermarket corn tortillas are blended with wheat — check the ingredient list for wheat flour. Mission yellow corn and most taqueria-style corn tortillas are pure corn.
• Poach chicken breasts if you don't have rotisserie. Simmer two boneless skinless breasts in the low-FODMAP chicken broth for 15 minutes, then shred with two forks. The poaching liquid can go straight into the red sauce in place of plain broth for extra flavor. If you do use rotisserie, check the seasoning label — most grocery chains rub the birds with onion and garlic powder.
• Lactose-free cheese melts the same. Cabot and Organic Valley both make lactose-free cheddar and Monterey Jack that shred and melt exactly like regular. If you tolerate hard cheeses, aged cheddar and parmesan are naturally very low in lactose and work here too.
• For a vegetarian version, swap in crumbled firm tofu or canned lentils. Use firm tofu (not silken — silken is higher-FODMAP at much smaller serves) at a moderate portion per plate, or canned lentils at 1/4 cup (46 g) rinsed. Brown either one in the garlic-infused oil with the same seasoning and use in place of chicken.

Why This Works

The sauce is the whole ballgame. In a standard enchilada recipe, the single biggest FODMAP load comes from the red sauce — onion and garlic are the first two ingredients in nearly every commercial version. Building your own from canned tomato, chili powder, and garlic-infused oil removes both without losing the roasted, smoky flavor that defines a red sauce.

Garlic-infused oil carries the allium flavor. Fructans aren't oil-soluble, so infusing oil with garlic pulls the flavor compounds into the fat while the FODMAPs stay behind in the discarded solids. That's how the sauce and the filling both taste distinctly garlicky without any FODMAP load.

Tomato amounts stay inside Monash serves. Canned diced tomatoes are low-FODMAP at 1/2 cup (100 g) per serve; tomato paste at 2 tablespoons per serve. The sauce uses a full can across six serves, which works out to about 65 g of diced tomato per plate, plus roughly 1/2 tablespoon of tomato paste — well under both caps.

Corn, not wheat, for the tortillas. Plain corn tortillas are low-FODMAP at 2 small per serve. Wheat flour tortillas put you into fructans at a single-tortilla serve, so the shell choice matters more than anything else on the plate.

Lactose-free dairy for the cheese and sour cream. Aged hard cheeses like cheddar and parmesan are naturally very low in lactose; Monterey Jack varies more, so the lactose-free version is the safer pick. Lactose-free sour cream (Green Valley, Lactaid) tastes and behaves identically to regular.

Storage

Refrigerate leftover baked enchiladas in a sealed container for up to 3 days. Reheat individual portions in the microwave for 90 seconds, or cover the whole dish with foil and warm at 350°F (175°C) for about 15 minutes. The red sauce keeps separately in a jar for 5 days in the fridge, or 3 months frozen in a flat freezer bag. Unbaked assembled enchiladas freeze well too — wrap the dish tightly and bake from frozen at 375°F (190°C) for about 50 minutes, covered for the first 30.

Not sure about an ingredient? FODMAP Tracker includes a database of 1,000+ foods with FODMAP ratings to help you cook with confidence.