Talk About Tasty! Mexican Chicken Bake Special

Hey guys, Dave here from Easy Country Cooking and Cooking Chair. Well, here we are mid-week again, and I'm in the mood for chicken, but not just any old chicken. I want something Mexican. So I decided to go for an easy Mexican chicken bake. It came out absolutely spectacular, easy to make. You can make it in a matter of, I don't know, 30-35 minutes, and you are going to love it. So let's get started with the ingredients. Okay, so first off we got our salsa. You can't have anything Mexican without salsa. Then we got some cooking oil, of course. Well, some olive oil, some salt, pepper, and a black beans drain. And for our seasoning, I've got a teaspoon of cumin, teaspoon of garlic powder, a teaspoon of onion powder, and a heaping teaspoon of chili powder, some sour cream, or some tortilla chips, some cheddar cheese, and most of all, some chicken breast that I've cut in half. Okay, guys, so I got about two fair-sized breasts here, and I cut these in half just so they fry a little easier and they're easy to work with. So let's season these up with a bit of salt. I don't know, about a teaspoon, something like that. It's up to you how salty you want them. Then some ground black pepper, and if you know me at all, you know I am a pepper lover. So I'm going to use quite a bit of this. You could even use white pepper. I call that ooey pepper because it's good and hot. You don't have to use as much of it. And a couple of teaspoons of pepper, I guess. And of course, some garlic powder. You know me and my garlic. I have garlic in everything. And of course, I'm going to flip these over and season them on the other side. Now, guys, I picked these chicken breasts up on sale, and they were 13 bucks for three of them on sale. To me, that's still a lot, but you know, let me know bleep and a bop in the comment section below what chicken is worth in your neck of the woods. But still, 13 bucks, that's a lot of money for three breasts. I don't know. Anyway, besides the price of chicken down south, I'm going to add some oil to the pan, cast iron pan here, over medium high heat. Now we'll go ahead and throw that chicken in. You want this pan, I'd say, over about medium high heat here. Not too hot, not too cool. Here's a good sized pan. You don't want to overcrowd here. Now, guys, you could have poached the chicken and then shredded it. But I decided to fry it up and then I'm going to cube it up just because you've got to be really careful with chicken. You don't want it undercooked, but you don't want it overcooked. And sometimes when you poach it, it gets a bit overcooked and ends up stringing and stuff like that. So I want a nice, juicy chicken in my Mexican, my Mexican bake here. So we'll let this fry up. I don't know, for about a few minutes on each side, just until, just until it's done. Just until it's done. Okay, after a few minutes, we're just about halfway done here. And you can see it by that white color just coming up halfway through the chicken. So we'll give this a flip over. It's a nice color on that one side. And we'll just let this fry away on the other side for a few minutes. And while we're frying up here, guys, I just wondered, did you watch last week's video on the cowboy stew? It was so good. And I think it was a really good video. See, if you haven't watched it, maybe take a few minutes and flip back and watch that. But it was a chunky chuck wagon cowboy stew over the open fire. Good video and a fantastic dish. Alrighty, my friends, we are looking pretty good here. So I'm just going to remove this chicken and set it aside on the cutting board because we are going to chop it up. Wish you were here to smell it. It is smelling good. So I'm just going to let this rest for a few minutes and we're going to start on our salsa sauce. Alrighty then, to begin our process, I'm going to add the beans, the black beans to a can or to a bowl here. This is about 15 ounces of black beans, drained and rinsed. And we'll follow this up with a cup of sour cream. And this is whole sour cream. It's not the light ones. It's about, I don't know, about five percent fat, something like that. Another cup of salsa. And this is a medium salsa. You know, you can use hot or mild, whatever you like. And the cheese here, guys, what I did is I went with an old cheddar and then I followed with some extra old, but you can use whatever you like, mild or Monterey Jack, Tex-Mex, whatever. This is my preference here. Just go ahead and add that in. Make sure we get all the cheese here. And a chopped up jalapeno just for some heat. Again, totally optional. If you want to add it, go ahead. If you don't, you know how much, how little, it's up to you. Now, remember the seasoning we talked about? We're just going to go ahead and dump that in. Look at that. Doesn't that look good? I haven't even mixed it yet because that chicken has been resting. And so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go ahead and slice this. Something like that. And then we're going to just cut it into bite sized chunks. Again, you know, entirely up to you. This is kind of my preference here. And I should mention too, guys, like you can always buy the cooked chicken or the rotisserie chicken. If you want to really make this quickly, you want to fry the chicken up. But, you know, I just kind of prefer to fry my own chicken up. Okey dokey, we're all sliced up here. So I'm going to go in with that chicken. Grab the old spatula and we will mix everything together. Now to me, guys, that's starting to look Mexican like. Okay, guys, I'm going to use cast iron again to build this. You can use a casserole dish, whatever you like. Kind of switched out pans from my picture. But, you know, of course, you're going to use the same pan that you fried the chicken with. So what I got here are some tortilla chips. And these are just, you know, the restaurant style, plain. You can get the flavor, whatever you like. So I'm going to grab some of these up and we're going to break them up, you know, just enough to kind of cover the bottom here type of thing. You don't want them too small, not too big. Again, it's up to you. But like I say, you have to cover the bottom. I suppose everybody has their own style. All right, after some meticulous or not so meticulous work, I've got a combination of big and small here. So I am going to scoop up some of that chicken mixture and just lay it over the top. Something like this. Now remember, this is going into the oven. So you have that oven preheated to 350. I should have mentioned that for you. Now we're going to go over, of course, with another layer of tortillas. Kind of like building a lasagna here. Now you can only add one layer if you want, depending on the size of your pan. Mine's going to be a bit overloaded here, but that's fine. I'm going to go with two layers. Sleeper. Now another layer of that chicken mixture. I think this is going to be good guys. Now you probably guessed it, my friends, this is totally optional, but I'm going to go over the top with some gooey, well it will be gooey, mozzarella. Like I say guys, don't be afraid to alter the ingredients according to your liking. Like I said, Monterey Jack, more salsa, hot salsa, more jalapenos, less jalapenos, whatever you like. That's what cooking is all about, isn't it? All righty then, we are going into a 350 degree preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes until everything heats through and that mozzarella melts down. All right guys, after 25 minutes, we are done. I think we're looking pretty darn good here. Just look at that. That cheese has melted down nicely. That chicken is ever so good. Oh, oh. Now of course, I'm going to garnish this up with some cilantro. You can use parsley or you don't even have to garnish it, but I just like that green effect. And I think some green onions too. I don't know guys, this is looking pretty darn good to me. And there you have it guys, our easy Mexican chicken bake. It's ready in no time. I know I said 30 minutes, a little more than 30 minutes, maybe 45, something like that, but it is going to be fantastic. All right guys, let's dig in here and grab some of this up. Make sure I get some of that chicken. Oh, just look at that. This looks so, so good. And the smell is just absolutely, I don't know, what would you say, intoxicating? It's really good. Yum. All right guys, time to dig in and down the old hatch. Absolutely fantastic. You've got that heat from the jalapeno. I thought it would be a lot, but it's not too much. That seasoning, like the cumin and everything else, the chili powder, it tastes really, really Mexican. The beans, it's just a delightful combination. You're going to love this. I think it would be a great party treat, great for any time, actually. Midweek meal, whatever you like. You're going to love this. Definitely make it up. And if you do, leave us a comment because I love to read them. Most of all, give us a like, it helps the channel out and subscribe. Thanks for watching guys. Make sure you watch more of our videos. Stay safe. And of course, we'll see in the next video, but I am going to have more of this. It is just so good. I don't want to double dip here, but it is so good.