Episode 043 Enchilada Skillet

Intro: Welcome, welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes, you can get on the table any night of the week. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: All right. If you’ve been around here and around Mom’s Dinner for a while, then you know that enchiladas are one of my absolute favorites. I love enchiladas. I love red enchilada sauce. My mouth is watering now. I love ordering enchiladas at a Mexican restaurants. We have one here in Kansas City where I can get, I think it’s called a tres amigos, and it’s three enchiladas and it’s a chicken enchilada, a cheese enchilada, and a beef enchilada, and all three of them have different sauce. It’s the best Mexican dinner ever. 

So you know that I’m passionate about enchiladas. However, what I will say is that enchiladas are not super easy to make at home. At least I don’t find them that easy to make at home. Now, if you use flour tortillas, absolutely. Easy, done, in and out. If you want to use corn tortillas, I feel there’s just that extra layer, or are they going to crack, are they going to split? Are they going to fall apart? Is this going to work? A whole nother level of difficulty. That’s why I made this awesome recipe for an enchilada skillet, because you can still get all of those enchilada flavors, including the traditional corn tortillas, and it’s simple and anxiety free, just what we want at dinnertime. Anxiety-free enchiladas. 

So this recipe only has about seven ingredients, and of course, there are some ways that you can customize the recipe that we’ll talk about while we’re going through the full recipe, and it’s only going to take you about 30 minutes to make. Super easy, super fast, weeknight-friendly dinner. 

Enchilada Skillet Recipe: I don’t have a lot of tips for this recipe, so I think we’ll just get into making the full recipe right now. The one piece of equipment that you’re going to want to make sure you have is a high-sided skillet. Probably a 10 to 12-inch skillet that has a lid that will fit. I’ve made this in a non-stick skillet and just a stainless steel pan and they both work fine. So whatever you have that’s large, high sides with a lid, will work here.

You’re going to start with that pan over about medium heat. You’re going to add one cup of diced onions. I love to use white onions in most of my Mexican recipes. Then three chopped garlic cloves. Go ahead and saute that for about five minutes until the onions are nice and soft. Now, if you want to add the variation of ground beef, you can add ground beef at this point and crumble it and cook it through while you soften the onions. The only extra step that you want to add if you add the beef is making sure you drain off any grease before you move on. 

So the next step is you’re going to pour in one cup of chicken broth and two 10-ounce cans of red enchilada sauce. Now if you’re going to make your own enchilada sauce and add it here, you’ll want about two and a half cups of homemade enchilada sauce. Just bring that to a boil over about medium heat. Then after it starts to boil, you’ll lower the heat back down to low and you’re going to nestle in corn tortillas right into the sauce. So what I like to do is take 12 to 15 corn tortillas and just quarter them, so that it’s in pie slices. Then take two or three at a time and just nestle them right down in the sauce.

Now you’ll want to go ahead and put that lid on the pan and simmer the whole enchilada for about 10 minutes. Then you’ll remove the lid and you’re going to  sprinkle in about one and a half cups of shredded cheese. Two things with the cheese. Use any flavor you want. If you want to use pepper jack, Monterey Jack, Colby Jack, Cheddar, whatever you like, or whatever you have, go ahead and use it.

The other tip is with shredded cheese, it’s always best to shred your own cheese. The pre-shredded cheese, it’ll work, absolutely 100%, and I definitely have used it. But it usually has preservatives and anti-clumping agents on the cheese that prevent it from melting as creamy as a hand shredded cheese.

So go ahead after you put the cheese on the enchiladas. Pop the lid back on and simmer for about five more minutes until the cheese is nice and melted and gooey and yummy. Remove the entire pan from the heat and let it sit uncovered for about five minutes before serving. This is going to be just like lasagna or traditional enchiladas. You just want to let it sit and kind of come together and solidify before you serve it. 

Now when you are serving, I’d love to add some toppings to this enchilada skillet. You can do sour cream, fresh, chopped avocados, green onions, cilantro, jalapenos, or whatever your favorite Mexican-style toppings are, go ahead and add them here.

Now as far as side dishes go, I recommend adding Mexican rice, and then if you didn’t add beans to the enchilada skillet, then my 15-minute refried beans are an excellent side dish as well. If you’re trying to make it a larger dinner, I also have a wonderful recipe for a cilantro, honey pineapple that is a delicious, fresh Mexican side dish. Then, of course, margaritas. Hello. Of course, you need a margarita. 

As always, I will link all of those recipes right in the show notes for you. So when you are ready to make an enchilada skillet for dinner, you’ll have everything you need. 

That does it for today’s episode. If you are enjoying these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love to have you follow or subscribe to your preferred podcast player. That will just make it easier for you to find all of our future episodes right in your podcast feed.

Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes sure dinnertime a little easier. See ya.