Chicken Verde Taquitos

My goal: to con­vince you that mak­ing these tooth­some lit­tle tacos is no more dif­fi­cult than going to the store, buy­ing a box of frozen, and pre-heating the oven.  If I could just make you believe that all you need to do is make the chicken fill­ing in advance, leav­ing the rolling and fry­ing for right before din­ner time, then maybe, just maybe, you’d fry up about 40 of these babies and feed them to your fam­ily. Or an army. Or maybe feed­ing your fam­ily is like feed­ing an army. Or maybe you just appre­ci­ate left­overs. (Believe me, even re-heated in the microwave these beat the heck out of fast-food fare.)

Serve these with all the tra­di­tional condi­ments and maybe a mess of pinto beans and/or mex­i­can rice.  Don’t for­get the salsa. Mango, maybe? A side of roasted corn with a chile-queso fresco spread and a light dessert and bev­er­age, and you have a per­fect menu for a large group of people.

Makes 36–48 taquitos

these can be frozen just after rolling and fried while still frozen.

3 cups cooked, shred­ded chicken

2 tea­spoons cumin

1 tea­spoon chili powder

1/2 tea­spoon salt

1/2 tea­spoon pepper

2 gar­lic cloves, minced

1 bunch green onion, chopped

1 medium jalapeno, chooped–seeds and mem­branes removed

1/3 cup chopped cilantro

1 (16 oz) jar salsa verde– Herdez brand is my preference

4 cups shred­ded Mon­terey Jack or Colby Jack Cheese

36–48 small corn tor­tillas (depends on how much fill­ing you like in each taquito)

Veg­etable oil for frying

In a large bowl, mix together the chicken, spices, gar­lic, green onion, and jalapeno. Add the cilantro, salsa verde. Stir well. Grad­u­ally add the cheese, sprin­kling it over the mix­ture while stir­ring to keep it from form­ing clumps in the mix­ture. Set aside.

Heat a pan with 2–3 inches veg­etable oil to 350–375 degrees F.

Mean­while, heat a saute pan to medium high. You will use this pan to soften the corn tortillas.

When oil is heated, roll and cook the taquitos assembly-line style:

1. place a tor­tilla in the hot saute pan (dry)** and let heat 5–10 sec­onds, then flip. Heat 5–10 more sec­onds, then remove to a flat surface.

2.Add another tor­tilla to the pan.

3. Place about 3 table­spoons full of chicken fill­ing in a line  just south of the mid­dle on the tortillia.

4. Flip tor­tillia in saute pan.

5. Roll and secure filled tor­tilla with a tooth­pick inserted hor­i­zon­tally into the loose edge of taquito. Like tak­ing a stitch. Work care­fully so you don’t tear the tor­tilla. I like to insert the tooth­pick like this because it holds the tor­tilla closed and takes up less room in the pan. Just don’t for­get to remove it before serving.

6. Place taquito in hot oil.

7. Remove soft­ened tor­tilla from saute pan.

Repeat steps 2–7 as many times as needed, pulling the taquitos out of the oil as needed and plac­ing in a warm oven on a cookie sheet lined with a stack of paper tow­els to allow taquitos to drain.

Serve imme­di­ately with desired condi­ments: sour cream or crema, pico, gua­camole, limes, crum­bled queso fresco, etc.

**the dry saute pan to soften the tor­tillas works well for me, just make sure your tor­tillas are pretty fresh. If you have prob­lems, you can soften them in a tiny bit of hot oil in the same pan. I just find it messier and actu­ally harder to roll.**

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