BEEF ENCHILADAS

My arbitrary food inspirations have really been kicking in at odd times recently. This past Sunday, I opened up the pantry, saw a can of refried beans, and decided that I wanted to try to make beef enchiladas. I know, really random, right?

Ingredients
(Makes 8 enchiladas)
~ 1 package of 8 corn tortillas
~ 1 lb. ground beef
~ 1 small onion, minced
~ 2 cloves garlic, minced
~ Salt & pepper to taste
~ Chili powder to taste
~ 3 cups of shredded cheddar cheese (I had a full package of mozzarella lying around, so I used that)
~ 8 oz. jar of enchilada sauce (I used the Ortega mild)

Process
Go ahead and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. After that, the next thing that needs to be done is to make the beef mixture that goes into the tortillas, so to prep for that go ahead and cut up the onions and the garlic. After that’s done, fire up the stove on a nice medium-high and warm up a large skillet with some oil in it (a lot of natural oils come out of the beef, so you don’t need a ton of oil on the surface). Start to cook down the beef and be sure to watch it as it is cooking. Add some salt, pepper, and the chili powder to the meat for seasoning. I also threw in some Chipotle Tabasco sauce (that stuff is awesome!) as well to give the meat a little more kick. Please note that it is imperative that you cook it just enough so that the red has disappeared and not too much over that, since we don’t want to dry out the beef. When the beef is finished cooking, put it into another bowl. Now, start cooking the onions and garlic, and mix those together. Once the onions have started to go translucent, throw the beef back into the skillet. Turn the heat down to medium, just mix everything together, and after a few minutes remove it from the heat.

Take a 9″ x 13″ baking dish and pour about 1/4 cup of the enchilada sauce into the bottom of the dish and spread that around. Take each of the corn tortillas, spread some of the beef mixture into it, top it off with some of the cheese, then tightly roll it up and place it into the baking dish. Repeat this process until you’ve used up all of the beef mixture. I only was able to squeeze out about 7 enchiladas, but if I spread out my beef mixture more during the preparation, then I’m sure that I could have accommodated for 8. When all of your wrapped tortillas are snugly fit into your baking dish, pour the rest of the sauce over the them, and top it off with the rest of the cheese. Throw the dish into the oven for about 15 – 17 minutes, or until you see that the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbling. Leave it in there for too long, and the sauce will dry out from the baking.

The ironic thing is, the can of refried beans that gave me the idea to make enchiladas in the first place, I didn’t even use because I thought that having two enchiladas per person would be enough to eat!

Categories: Recipes

Tagged as: beef, enchiladas, mexican, recipes, summertime