Dairy Free Chicken Chilaquiles (Gluten Free)

When you’re looking for savory breakfast recipes, something becomes very clear. A lot of savory breakfast recipes are eggs, all the eggs. And while there is nothing wrong with eggs, I know from personal experience that you can overdo it with certain foods. Especially if you’re in the process of healing your gut.

I’ve gone through times when my body gave me some clear signs to lay off eggs every day for a while, and you might’ve gotten them too. What could those signs look like? Your taste buds could be over the taste and it could just not taste that great in your mouth. The taste could be fine, but your stomach could feel a little (or a lot off). You could also get skin flare-ups, if that’s a way your body reacts.

If you pause on eating a certain food for a while and you find you don’t have any of the above reactions anymore, that may be a food to chill on for a while or eat a little less of to see if it’s tied to the amount of times you eat it.

So if you know you have foods you can overdo it on, just keep an eye on the variety you’ve got, particularly with breakfast if eggs is also a food can you overdo. Chilaquiles are a Mexican breakfast/brunch dish that’s a sauce (red or green) with tortillas. Chicken, shrimp or eggs can be common additions to chilaquiles, as well as cheese.

Since we’re trying to take a break from eggs, I went with pulled chicken, and because I’m putting a pause on dairy, I added by Chipotle Cashew Cheese Sauce instead to make these Dairy Free Chicken Chilaquiles. If you don’t have a problem with dairy and want to add it and stick with more traditional flavors, go with a queso fresco or cotija.

I made these Dairy Free Chicken Chilaquiles with pre-made tortilla chips. There are recipes out there that call for using tortillas and making chips that way. This method is a little more time consuming and I get why it’s done that way. When you make the chips yourself, they can be sturdier and hold up to the sauce more and not get as soft over time.

And we’re all a bit stretched for time, I opted with store-bought chips. Look for thicker chips (which usually are not called restaurant style) that are not made with canola oil. Canola oil is a cheaper oil that can rancidify easily and can also rancidify in your body and lead to free radicals and inflammation, among other things.

This recipe is pretty straightforward: make the red sauce in a blender, make the cashew sauce in the blender, cook the chicken in the sauce, shred the chicken, then pour that over chips and you are done.

Depending on how many people you’re cooking for and their preferred portion size, this could last a few breakfasts, or most of the week if you’re cooking for one. As days pass and tortilla chips sit in the sauce, the chips will get a little soggier, and it’s still good.

If soggy chips make you rage and you’re planning on having this throughout the week, store the chilaquiles sauce and cashew cheese sauce in separate containers and assemble the whole dish the night before or morning of. It won’t get too soggy overnight.

You can make this your own by adding more or less chipotles to your sauce or adding other spices for heat, you can also add some thinly sliced radishes or pickled jalapenos for garnish, and you can add some greens to the sauce if you want to up the veggies in the dish. If you’re more sensitive to peppers, you can significantly reduce the amount of peppers in the red sauce and cashew cheese as well.