Recipe Review: Enchilada Soup

Posted on February 4, 2015 at 6:00 am

By Kim Harshberger

Do you ever feel like your social network suddenly becomes obsessed with a recipe? It pops up on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter suddenly, and with gusto. It’s everywhere. At times it’s hard to know what exactly it is about posts that make them go wild, and I often wonder if the recipe is even any good. While it may get shared like crazy, it often appears that no one has actually cooked it.

So I challenged myself to find and cook one of these über popular recipes, and decide if it is deserving of the hype.

No sooner had I made that decision, than I found my target. This Chicken Enchilada Soup—from one of my favorite drool-worthy bloggers, Gimme Some Oven—popped up in my Pinterest feed. I knew I had seen it before and a quick search revealed that this recipe certainly fits the criteria for popular—the first pin I saw had 3657 repins on it, and the second had 7780!

I had been following this blog on Pinterest for quite some time and had even pinned several of the recipes, but not yet ever made one of them. Understandably, her recipes run rampant across Pinterest because they are just so dang pin-worthy. Take a quick perusal through her blog and you can’t deny her photos make you want to dive into your screen to gobble down her creations.

Okay, decision made. I cooked this up on a weekend and here is what I think.

Difficulty

Even if you are all thumbs in the kitchen, this recipe was as easy as it gets. After reviewing the instructions, I couldn’t see how even the most novice cook could fail at this one. Open some cans, mince some garlic, toss in some chicken breasts, and let ‘er rip in your crockpot for the day. There was no chopping or browning, and the only measuring involved was with a teaspoon.

Cost

I am giving this an emphatic thumb up for budget potential. I shopped as usual, buying organic ingredients, including the chicken, and I still paid less than $20 for this meal. Considering that this fed the four of us for dinner (and again for lunch), I still consider that to be a very affordable meal. I wasn’t trying to do this on the cheap, but with some savvy shopping, making the beans from scratch, or using your own stock, a person could easily make this meal for a lot less per serving.

Yumminess

All four thumbs were up from this family. It had the wonderful flavor of enchiladas that we enjoy, plus we relished topping ours with plenty of cheese, sour cream, crushed tortilla chips, and avocado. I do like that the recipe itself is also easily customizable to suite taste preferences and dietary needs. You could make it spicier, meatier, or meatless. It’s already gluten free and dairy free without the sour cream on top.

With three thumbs I deem this recipe worthy of the hype. I am glad that I gave it a chance and will be adding this to my regular rotation. Is there a popular recipe out there you want me to cook? Provide me a link in the comment and yours may be picked for my next recipe review.

Tags: cooking, food, Pinterest, recipe review, recipes