Three great enchiladas from one basic recipe

The enchiladas are good but a little variety helps. Here’s how to make chicken, steak, and cheese enchiladas at the same time. Oh, did I forget about the pig?

Selection of Meats

Beef: I like steak enchiladas, but you need good beef that is tender and flavorful. Some of the restaurants around here use ground beef in their enchiladas. These are the restaurants I never visit twice.

When I started working as an engineer in Colorado (a million years ago), an old industrial engineer told me this: Never buy a piece of meat in breading!

He went on to say that any old piece of meat can be breaded and you just don’t know what you get. It could be as old as the hills, unrefrigerated, contaminated, dumped on the ground and stepped on, or pulled from the grease trap, for all you know.

The same goes for ground beef. Who knows it’s true history? In enchiladas it gives the wrong texture and the wrong flavor.

So buy a nice piece of meat. You don’t need much because there are other things in the enchilada. Most of the good Mexican restaurants around here put way too much meat. You don’t need it.

In fact, they use way too much cheese. My heart surgeon doesn’t like that, but my wife does.

Pork is a good substitute for beef or chicken for those who prefer the taste of pork. In 1956, when I, with a fellow engineering student, drove to Massachusetts to work for the Norton Company for the summer, we passed through Iowa. The pigs there were like the pigs on our church welfare farm. They looked more like elephants than pigs.

I moved to Iowa in 1966 to teach in the engineering department at Iowa State University. By then, hogs were lean and mean, still long but not fat. Those changes made pork acceptably low in fat. And pork has great flavor for enchiladas.

Meat and Poultry Preparation

Fresh, frozen, or canned meats can be used to make enchiladas. If you use frozen meat or poultry, thaw it at room temperature or in the refrigerator. If you’re like me and sometimes in a hurry, put the meat or chicken in the microwave and thaw it. I have a freezer full of Omaha Steaks® products that were sold to me by nice people over the phone. I can not say no! So I usually take my meat out of the freezer.

I like to use a whole dead chicken, so I let it stew in pomegranate juice until the chicken is ready to fall off the bones. The pomegranate juice seems to penetrate the chicken better than other juices and gives it a fabulous flavor, especially the next day.

If you use chicken breast, they are easy to slice even when frozen. For me, I want some browned meat, so I use all the bug.

When I say use a “dead” chicken, I really mean it. Years ago my dad decided to buy a live turkey for Thanksgiving. He killed him in the basement, where he ran wild for the longest time and spilled blood from hell until breakfast, ultimately creating a mess of bloody feathers. When I was a boy, we would cut off the heads of chickens and let them flit back and forth in the yard. Who needs that?

I buy Kirkland® canned chicken at Cosco®. It has a nice texture and flavor and is great in chicken soups and salads when you’re on the go. I’m not much of a fan of canned meats, but now they’re different, and there are some great options to make. Spam® is still available, but I’m not sure I want a Spam® enchilada. Canned or pan-seared, season the chicken with poultry spice, Creole spice, teriyaki sauce, or whatever you like.

For other meats, cut the meat into short strips. Keep each meat separate from the other ingredients. (You can also use leftover meat from that Sunday roast, and other than cutting it into short strips or small cubes, no other preparation is needed.)

Put a little canola oil in a pan with a clove of garlic. Make sure the oil is hot. (You probably don’t need a lot of oil, so you can just spray the pan and not use the garlic.) For meat, I like to use Omaha Steaks® All Natural Steak Seasoning. Another seasoning that I like for almost everything is Spice Island® Beau Monde Seasoning. Tampa Spices® has a full range of low-cost spices (packaged by MIS, POB 2081, Gibsonton, FL 33534). I like their Creole seasoning and their meat and poultry seasoning.

Prepare each meat separately and put each in a separate bowl. Have a bowl with just shredded cheese. (More on cheese below.)

Preparation of the enchilada mix

In a pan with hot olive oil (or your favorite oil) fry bell pepper slices, green chiles (You can add canned green chiles if you like. They are a pain to clean and slice.), onion, a variety of hot pepper small (remove the innards and seeds if you don’t want the enchiladas to be too spicy), cumin, salt and pepper. Add a trace of cayenne pepper if desired. You can also add chopped black olives; which I do because my wife likes them and I can tolerate them. Drain the mixture and place it in a bowl.

Now, mix a little of this into each bowl of meat or poultry. Save some for the cheese enchiladas.

The tortillas

I have a dyke together with the floor. It was a Christmas present from my daughter who is married to a great enchilada maker. I used it once. Now, I go down the street to the panderia (Mexican bakery) and buy corn or flour tortillas. (Note: I also buy those round loaves of bread. I cut a circle out of the top, remove the stuffing bread, and fill them with hot soup. I take the top circle and toast it, then top it with garlic butter and Parmesan cheese. That’s called a bowl of homemade soup.)

You can also buy tortillas in any supermarket. Before using the tortillas, you may need to soften them. Mine are fresh so I can just roll the ingredients in the tortilla. When they’re not soft, or if I want to just roll up a tortilla with the ingredients and eat it, I put them in a pan with hot oil, turn them over and take them out. It takes about two seconds on each side. Do not burn yourself. I usually go cook my tortillas in the oven, so I just drop three tortillas on the rotating glass shelf of my microwave oven and cook them for less than a minute to soften them up.

Preparation of the enchilada sauce

The way I usually make enchilada sauce is to go to the store and buy Hatch® brand enchilada sauce made in Deming, NM. There are two varieties to choose from. I like the green chile style, but the red or tomato style is just as good. Not all brands are created equal, so you may need to test brands to see which sauce you like. Here’s what I suggest: Ask a clerk or stockist what brands are hot. No, not so “hot”. What brand is the best seller?

When you read the label on the can, see if it’s “mild,” “spicy,” or “holy jamoly!” I always buy soft. I can always heat it up if I want, which is never by my wife and guest from Idaho.

Enchilada sauce is expensive. You can easily make your own if you are not lazy like me. This is how you do it:

1. Put a tablespoon of oil in a hot pan.

2. Add 3 tablespoons of flour. Stir until browned. (The Cajuns call this a “street.”)

3. Add 6 tablespoons of chili powder to 2 cups of water or beef broth (beef or chicken broth would work). When the powder dissolves in the water or broth, it is added to the flour and rue oil. Add ½ teaspoon of garlic powder (why not just garlic?)

4. Bring the mixture to a bubbly boil, stirring frequently. Cook over low heat for 5 minutes.

That will make you 1 2/3 cups of sauce.

Note: Chili powder is a mixture of cumin and cayenne pepper. To cut down on the “hotness”, reduce the chili powder and add more cumin. The cumin is what makes the chili taste good but not “spicy”.

putting it all together

Drizzle oil over the surface of a baking dish or casserole dish. Soften has omelette. Place
one of the meat mixtures on the tortilla and roll up the tortilla. Place it in the skillet or saucepan. Do this over and over until the mixture disappears. Repeat for the next chicken or meat mixture.

For the cheese tortillas, mix the shredded cheese with the basic enchilada mix and roll up and place in the skillet or saucepan.

Remember where you put each type of enchilada. They all look the same when cooked.

Now for the enchilada sauce all over: on top, under, and between the enchiladas. Top with grated cheese. You can try a Mexican blend of cheeses, Colby, Monterey Jack, Parmesan, mild, cheddar, or whatever.

Cover your dishes with aluminum foil.

Preheat oven to 325oF. Place your fantastic creations in the oven and cook for 35 minutes. When the cheese is melted and everything looks good, take them out of the oven and let them sit for a while before serving.

THAT’S ALL! Enjoy!

Just a note: we had guests yesterday, but some were unable to make it due to illness. I had enough enchiladas left over to feed an army. So that’s what I did. I took them to my son’s house to feed his 13 children.

The end