Enchiladas

We began making enchiladas after moving to Virginia from Arizona (1992). We couldn’t find a single good mexican restaurant in the D.C. area, so we began cooking our own fare. You can use any kind of meat. We often will grill some chicken breasts, but we’ve used chicken leg quarters as well. One of our favorite batches was using some turkey we had smoked. You can use any kind of cheese, too, but we’ve found just using ‘cheddar’ is too heavy.

You can use store-bought enchilada sauce as well, but home-made is very easy and tastes much better. This batch makes a lot, so half it if you’re only feeding a couple people, or you’ll be eating enchiladas all week.

Enchilada sauce.

• 2 cups chicken broth
• 4 Tbs Chili Powder
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 2 heaping tsp. garlic powder (with no salt added)
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1/3 tsp. sugar
• 5 Tbs corn starch
• 2 Tbs cayenne pepper
• dried mexican peppers to taste
• 4 Tbs Cholulu hot sauce (we like the citrus-y Cholulu flavor, this is optional)
• 1 Tbs paprika
• 1 tsp ground chipolte (again, optional, but we like the hint of chipolte)
• Dusting of crushed red peppers

Pour it all in a pot. Mix. Make sure your broth is still cool when you put in the starch. You may want a thicker sauce, but don’t add the starch to the heated sauce to think it up, disolve it first in some water. Looking at this list you may think it’s nuts to buy $30 in groceries to make the sauce when you can buy a can for a buck fifty. BUT, everything in the list (for us) is stuff we already have in our pantry. It would be possible to buy a canned sauce and add some of the above to make it more interesting.

We put the dried peppers in our Magic Bullet® and grind them up. A coffee/spice grinder works well too. We do love our Magic Bullet and use it so often, it’s usually on our counter somewhere.

Cook this over a medium-low heat. We usually start at least an hour before enchilada assembly so the flavors have a chance to meld. Don’t boil. Stir to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Stuffing Stuff

We experiment on occasion, but the list below is our stock enchilada stuffing mix. We put most stuff in a bowl or it’s own can with a spoon in it and make a ‘production line’. Pre-heat your oven to 350°.

• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 can of diced green chili peppers
• 1 bag of mexican 4 cheese (Craft makes a good one) 8 oz is OK, but 16 oz is better.
• 1 can of black beans
• 1 pile of chicken/pork/beef/whatever, or make it vegie and leave out the meat
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 medium size can of sliced black olives (untraditional, but it gives it a signature taste we love)
• 2 packages of medium-sized tortillas. One package is 10 count, but not enough to do  two trays, so we buy a couple and use the rest for wraps later in the week. I’ve heard once you make home-made tortillas, you never go back, but we have yet to do that.

Put a plate on the table, plop down a tortilla. Smear on the sour cream, a table-spoon or so of all of the above ingredients. The goal is to try to run out of everything at the same time. Roll up the tortilla and place in a glass baking dish ((9″x12″ or whatever you have). You should be able to fill up one of those, and at least a second 9″x9″ glass baking dish. We put a thin coat of vegie oil down to keep things from sticking, but it’s not required.

Pour your sauce on top. Get everything wet. Tuck in the ends so they don’t stick up and get dry.

Top lightly with remaining cheese. If you bought the 8 oz bag, you’ll be low. If you bought the 16 oz bag, you’ll have enough to use with the leftover tortillas later to make cheese crips.

Cook until it’s bubbly, about 30 minutes. Let sit for about 10 minutes and serve.

If you even come close to our results, you’ll have a great meal. We rate our nightly dinners on a pretty strict “who likes it” scale. With our family of four, this is a solid four out of four. And going light on the cheese (not a big component) it’s actualy a healty meal.