Enchiladas

A while ago while grocery shopping I picked up some enchilada sauce. I love Mexican food and we frequently make tacos, so I figured that enchiladas would be a good alternative to our standard taco dish. I was so right. Steve had been wanting these for like weeks, and I finally got around to making them. We’d had kind of a lull in cooking. In part because we’d been really bad about planning our meals and taking things out for dinner. And after inspecting the directions I realized I needed more sauce. And then we didn’t have tortillas one night. But one Sunday I decided we needed to make these. And I’d just been to the store so I had some non-frozen meat and all necessary ingredients with which to make them.

I loosely followed the directions on the back of the Ortega Enchilada Sauce can. But I added diced green chilies and onions because I had them. I also seasoned my meat while I was cooking it because that’s what I do for tacos (a little garlic powder, a little onion powder, and some ancho chili powder).

onions and green chilies

I put the onions and green chilies (with a little juice for some extra flavor) in the pan to cook down a bit before adding the meat, add meat and season to taste.

add the meat

After the meat was cooked I added shredded cheddar cheese and about ¾ of a cup (which equaled out to be about 3/4 of the can) of the enchilada sauce. Next time I’d add a whole can. I mixed that all together – heat off – and the cheese got a little melty which was nice but next time I might add a little bit of the Tostitos Cheese because I like it and I think it’d be good. The directions said 1 cup of cheese, but I just threw in some until it looked like enough.

add sauce

After that I filled up 8 tortilla shells with my mixture and put them in a pan. My pan wasn’t big enough for 8 in one, so I did 3 in one small pan and 5 in a larger pan. (Which worked out because we ate 3 for dinner and then I had 1 for lunch the next day and it was still enough for another meal that week. Pretty awesome.)

fill shells then cover with sauce and cheese

After all the shells were stuffed and placed in the pan I covered them with the remaining sauce (which was about 1 1/4 cans…but next time I’d make that 2 full cans) and then topped it with more cheese. Pre-heat the oven to 350 and bake for 20 minutes.

20 minutes in the oven and TA-DA!

It was a fairly easy recipe to make and I’ll definitely make it again and trying some new/different things. But this one was definitely a husband pleaser. He was definitely glad to have finally gotten his enchiladas.