So you have a bunch of left over tamale sauce...

Yesterday, I shared all of the work that goes in to making tamales. If you decide to make tamales based off my mother in law's recipe, you will find yourself with extra tamale sauce. You can dump it out (NO!), or save it for future use (YES!).

One year, I divided the extra sauce into gallon ziplock bags and froze them for future use. This year, we used the sauce in a matter of days.

Here are 2 ways to use fresh chili sauce.

1. Chicken Tortilla soup- It's a variation of the Applebee's tortilla soup.
I love a nice, thick chicken tortilla soup cooked in the crockpot. And this sauce would go nicely with the recipe. I wish I would have saved more sauce to try this out. Here are the ingredients.

• 1lb chicken, diced into small squares
• 1 large can crushed tomatoes
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups of the leftover chili sauce
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 can diced tomatoes with green chiles
• 1tbsp minced garlic
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 to 2  cups water, depending how thick you like soup
• 2 shakes of cumin
• 2 shakes of chili powder
• 1 shake of salt
• 1 shake of pepper
• 1 package frozen corn
• 1 tbsp chopped cilantro
• tortilla chips
• cheese of your choice

Pour in the chicken, crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, chili sauce, onion, garlic, chicken broth, corn, into the crockpot and mix well. Then add in all of your spices and cilantro. Mix well. Cover and cook on high for 3 hours or low on 6. Serve with crumbled chips and grated cheese on top.

2. Enchiladas

You can fill your enchiladas with chicken, sour cream, cheese, etc. You may need to thin out the sauce a little. Just add a bit of water and mix well. Bake them in the oven on 350 until the cheese is melted.