Baked Chicken Chimis

We started getting Penzey's Spices monthly catalog a few months ago. Among the tons of spices for sale, there are lots of tasty-looking recipes submitted by Penzey's customers.

One of them, in this month's catalog, was a recipe for baked chicken chimichangas. We made it for dinner Sunday night. They're pretty much crispy burritos. They turned out really well, but we made them a little too spicy. I was sweating by the end of the meal!

Baked Chicken Chimichangas

2.5 cups chicken, cooked, shredded (can substitute cooked ground beef or chopped steak)
2 tbs. vegetable/canola oil
1/2 cup chopped onion (1 small)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 4-oz. can chopped mild green chiles
1 tsp. medium hot chili powder
16 oz. salsa
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1.5 teas. ground cumin
salt, to taste
6 10-inch OR 12 6-inch flour tortillas
1 cup canned refried beans (we always use vegetarian refried beans)
2-4 tbs. vegetable/canola oil for basting
Optional: sour cream, guacamole/avocado, tomatoes
We also added: 1/2 a jalapeno, a few too many shakes of habanero pepper powder and some shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until tender. Stir in the green chilies, chili powder, salsa, cilantro, cumin and salt. Stir in the shredded chicken. Let cool.




Grease rimmed 15x10x1 baking pan with 2 tbs. oil. Working with one tortilla at a time, spoon a heaping tablespoon of beans down the center of each tortilla. Top with a scant (?) 1/2 cup of the chicken mixture (less if using the smaller tortillas) and some cheese. Fold up the bottom, top and sides of the tortilla; roll up as though you were making a burrito and secure with toothpicks if necessary. Place the chimis in the baking pan, seam down. Brush all sides with oil. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden, brown and crisp (we had to turn on the broiler for a while). Serve with toppings as desired.

They were really good, but super big! We used the 6 10-inch tortillas, and everything could have fit into 7 or 8 tortillas instead. We had ours with the rest of the refried beans and some random bulgur we had left over--it worked out well, because it cut the heat a bit!