I Made The Schitt's Creek Enchiladas And Learned To "Fold In The Cheese"
Here's what you do: You just fold it in.
In Elite Daily's I Tried series, we put celebrities’ favorite products, recipes, and routines to the test to show you what living like your fave star is really like. In this piece, we try the enchilada recipe Moira and David struggled with on Schitt’s Creek.
Schitt’s Creek is full of iconic moments, but few come close to the hilarity of the Rose family’s most cataclysmic culinary fail. Ever since the chaotic scene of David and Moira struggling to make enchiladas hit the air, “fold in the cheese” has become a go-to in-joke among superfans of the show. Although the Roses couldn’t figure out what that meant, I just so happen to be in the know — not because I can cook (I’ve never made anything more complicated than a basic cookie recipe), but because I watch dozens of cooking videos on my phone on nights when I just can’t go to sleep. So, armed with the knowledge on how to fold in cheese, I tried my hand at making the infamous Schitt’s Creek enchiladas.
The first thing I had to do was find a recipe that seemed to match the type of enchiladas Moira was attempting to make. The dish comes from Season 2, Episode 2 of Schitt’s Creek, so I gave it a rewatch to gather as much intel as possible. The most important detail was the color: Most of the chicken enchilada recipes I found finished the dish with a red sauce, whether it was a store-bought red enchilada sauce or a homemade salsa rojo. But Moira’s enchiladas were noticeably not red at all; instead, her recipes seemed to call for a creamy white sauce. A quick Google search and a bit of scrolling finally brought me to a recipe that looked most similar to what Moira was attempting to replicate: the Creamy White Chicken Enchiladas from The Country Cook blog. The dish’s name seemed perfect, given that the only positive word Alexis could think to use to describe her mother and brother’s concoction at the end of the episode was “creamy.”
The Ingredients
The recipe didn’t require too many ingredients, but I did have to make some small substitutions. Here’s what The Country Cook’s recipe calls for:
- 2 cups shredded chicken
- 10 flour tortillas
- 2 cups shredded Monterey Jack or mozzarella cheese
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 4-oz. can of diced green chiles
- Adobo seasoning to taste
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instead of shredding a chicken breast or a rotisserie chicken on my own, I found some pre-shredded chicken at the grocery store. (In my personal headcanon, Moira and David would never shred their own chicken anyway, so this felt like the authentic choice.) The cheese was another element I took some liberties with. Instead of going for just Monterey Jack or mozzarella, I picked up a “Fiesta Blend” with a mix of Monterey Jack, cheddar, queso quesadilla, and asadero cheeses. The biggest deviation I had to make was the adobo seasoning, which I couldn’t track down on my trip to the grocery store. To get as close to the taste as possible, I looked up what spices are in adobo seasoning and bought a seasoning mix that seemed to be the most similar. The fajita seasoning mix I got contained cumin, chili pepper, oregano, onion, and garlic, all of which are also in adobo seasoning, so I figured it was a suitable replacement.
The Recipe
Determined to do a better job than Moira and David, I started by preheating my oven to 350 degrees and got to work. The first couple steps were simple enough — I just had to mix together the shredded chicken, cheese, and seasoning in a bowl with some salt and pepper. Then, I began rolling the filling up in my tortillas and lining up the enchiladas side-by-side in a baking dish. The recipe is meant to yield 10 enchiladas, but I may have gotten a bit overzealous with filling mine, because I only managed to fit seven in the dish.
Then it was time for the trickier part of the recipe. The creamy enchilada sauce is where David and Moira totally lost control of everything, so I wanted to be sure to get it right. First, I had to whisk melted butter and flour together in my saucepan. I felt a little proud of myself that I’d seen this method before in cooking videos and recognized it as a form of béchamel sauce. All of the best videos use this béchamel sauce method to make creamy and delicious-looking mac and cheese, but I never tried it myself due to sheer laziness. So, I was pretty excited when the white sauce started coming together once I added chicken broth, sour cream, and green chiles to my butter and flour mixture.
The Country Cook’s recipe actually doesn’t add cheese to this sauce, but I knew I had to make the addition if I wanted to truly live out the Schitt’s Creek experience. Plus, more cheese is always a good thing, right? As the sauce was coming together, I threw a large handful of shredded cheese into the saucepan and began the process that brought David and Moira’s efforts to a screeching halt: folding in the cheese. As the Roses learn later in the episode, all that really means is stirring from the bottom up to incorporate a solid ingredient into a sauce.
The cheese disappeared into the sauce very quickly, and I took a moment to bask in the glory of being a better cook than two out-of-touch former millionaires who had never been near a kitchen before. (Sadly, this is a huge win for me.)
I poured the cheesy sauce over the enchiladas, topped them with even more cheese (I may have a problem), and then popped them into the oven to bake for 25 minutes.
The Taste Test
Thankfully, my meal went over a lot better than the awkward family dinner the Roses had. The enchiladas came out crispy and golden brown, with cheesy sauce everywhere. I scooped a couple onto a plate and dug in.
What struck me most about the taste was the tangy spice, which I wasn’t really expecting given all the mild ingredients that went into making the sauce. The green chiles and fajita seasoning really pulled their weight, which was a very welcome surprise, because I was honestly kind of lamenting not being able to use a spicier red sauce.
As you could probably guess, this is the perfect dish for cheese lovers. The enchiladas are super cheesy and very filling. They’re also a bit messy, given all that white sauce, which also makes storing them for later not very ideal. Still, I put a few in my fridge to eat a day later, and while it was definitely a step down from fresh out of the oven, it still tasted pretty darn good after reheating in the microwave.
Final Thoughts
The main takeaway from this experience is that making enchiladas is *way* less difficult than Schitt’s Creek makes it seem. As someone with basically no cooking experience, I really related to David and Moira struggling in the kitchen, thinking that’s exactly how I’d react if I had to make enchiladas as well. It’s really nothing more than rolling some tortillas and pouring some sauce over them, though. Oh, and folding in the cheese, of course — can’t forget that.
