By the replies, it would appear that I am using too much sauce in the oven.

Follow-up question: when making chicken (or beef or pork) enchiladas, how much sauce do you put in with the meat? That might be my second problem.

We don't put any enchilada sauce in with the meat. Just well seasoned, moist meat and a bit of cheese inside. Cover with foil (no sauce) and bake at 350 until hot 25-30 minutes, then remove foil, top with sauce and cheese, and broil until cheese melts.

Typically in my house the interior of the enchilada is reserved for the ooey-gooey combination of meat, cheese, beans, veggies, etc. (or any combination of those) while the sauce goes over the top of those rolled tubes of goodness. The decision point would be for hot peppers (chipotle, jalapeno, etc.) and whether you want them to influence the interior of the enchilada or the sauce.

Ah! That sounds like a winner.

Vielen Dank! Or should I say muchas gracias?

Funny you did this as did I, last night- almost exact same recipe! Didn't have onions, used scallions on top. So: no "gussiness" just corn tortillas, Monterey Jack for the inside of the tortillas, dipped in the hot oil 3x, then dipped in the sauce I had in bowl. Let cool, then roll up monterey Jack place in glass pan, covered with canned sauce, then sprinkled fresh grated Extra Sharp Cheddar. Oven 400F about 15 minutes. mmmm.

I'd never made enchiladas before- and my husband said "Where'd you GET these?" "um.. I MADE them, you were HERE when I did" (I'm a terrible cook- he didn't believe me ) also used canned sauce. They were.. very good. It was one of those recipes "what've I got in the cupboard/fridge to make something with? The dipping the corn tortillas in the hot oil was the messiest/hardest part since I HATE cooking with messy grease.

But yeah- how is it that restaurants can't provide such a simple, easy & delicious enchilada?? Cheese (maybe they used processed??) but funny tho yes I had to chime in, I was very pleased with my "good" dinner for once. I like to cook, and follow all the recipe instructions but my dinners are hit or miss unfortunately. I got lucky with this recipe. I think it was the canned sauce.

+1, as store bought sucks (even from the Mex markets) compared to the DELICIOUS plethora of Mexican restaurants in my hood.

Hey there enchilada fans! I had forgotten about this thread until Sweet Willie sent me a gentle reminder today.

I came up with my own recipe after watching a few cooking shows. Prior to that I used mild red chile enchilada sauces made by La Victoria, Las Palmas, El Pato, and others. Surprisingly, the Target store brand green sauce is very good although it has a lot of salt in it.

I don’t have a formal recipe or exact measurements to make red enchilada sauce, but it’s pretty easy. I use the following ingredients:

Dried chiles: A 6-ounce bag is about 20 dried and costs me about $3.50. I use mild chilies, (Guajillo, California, Colorado, or New Mexico)

A yellow onion: Cut into large chunks

One or two cloves of fresh garlic (OK, I use a lot more than two—maybe six or eight, YMMV)

And this is what I do:
Place dried chilies, onion, and garlic (and any other spices/salt/seasonings/herbs you may want to add) in a stockpot and fill the pot with water, and bring to a boil, cover pot, reduce heat to simmer for 30 minutes. When the chiles and onions are soft, remove from heat and allow the whole mess to cool a bit (20-30 minutes).

In a blender (in small batches) blend the mixture of chiles, onions, and liquid until smooth. Pour mixture through a fine sieve. Use a soft rubber spatula/Scotch spoon to push the liquid through the sieve—you want to trap and discard the stems, seeds, and small bits of chile skin that didn’t soften up.

Muy importante! Be very careful when blending warm or hot liquid, as the heat can cause the liquid to come out of the top of the blender or even blow the top off of it. No one needs a faceful or an eyeful of hot enchilada sauce. I never fill the blender more than half way, and I cover the top of the blender with a thick towel and hold it firmly while the blender is going. The liquid will be thin. Pour it into a large skillet and cook it over low to medium heat until it reduces and thickens.

I apologize for anything that seems vague. I came up with this “recipe” on my own, so I just go by how I want it to taste and how thick I want the sauce to be. This makes a fair amount of sauce (again, sorry to be vague) which can be refrigerated for about a week. The sauce can also be frozen.

I find that the fresher the tortillas, the less they fall apart. I used to soften the tortillas with oil, or warm sauce, to but now I use a cast-iron skillet or comal to soften the tortillas so they are flexible enough to fill them and roll them up. If you don't have a cast-iron skillet or a comal, you can nuke each tortilla for a few seconds in the microwave.

I was gentle, wasn't I ? me thinks you've done well from what I've gathered watching various Mexican cooking shows, Muchas Gracias for posting the recipe.

In anticipation of making the traditional Wednesday-night-before-Thanksgiving enchiladas, just as the Pilgrims did, I checked out Wikipedia to see what they had to say about enchiladas. There are some interesting (and delicious-sounding) descriptions of the different varieties of enchiladas cited, including TMOliver's enchiladas moladas--stacked enchiladas, complete with a fried-egg layer. Check it out.

Thought you folks might find it of interest.

----Edit----

Caught myself in a misspelling in my post above. It should be enchiladas montadas in my post above. I had "mole" on the brain at the time I was posting. "Montadas" refers to the stacked enchiladas while "enmoladas" refers to enchiladas prepared with mole sauce as opposed to chile sauce--hence . . . "molada" vs "chilada". Molada = mole sauce, chilada = chile sauce. Sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . enchiladas.

I am lazy with enchilada making these days and simply layer them in the appropriate sized souffle dish. I still griddle fry them before Layering them. The best part is that the leftovers don't dry out when reheating and the souffle dish takes up less room in fridge.

Interesting take on 'stacked' enchiladas/moladas. Using a dish slightly largeer than the tortillas to allow for a bit of sauce in the bottom could provide interesting results...Hard to eat conventionally though...

A note on enchilada sauces: Many US based chains (most often "TexMex" style) use a sauce dark red "chili gravy" sauce w/o tomato, while the more traditional canned sauces (Mexican brands or produced in Border States) have a good bit of tomato and far less 9if any) "meat" flavor/content. The canned and most restaurant "Green Chile" sauces tend to be thickened a bit with one or another starch (at home, often a light "roux") as part of the prep. More rarely encountered or prepared are the Tomatillo-based sauces, more acidic and un-thickened, and the Puebla-style "Green Mole" which can be muy picante, but sure good with pork. Then there are "Suizas", using a sour cream based sauce, most often a chicken filling, and now and again topped with Swiss cheese.

In Mexico, at least in my long-ago memories, enchiladas filled with beef (or any meat) were the exception rather than the rule.

I tried to find this in my local Safeway, but they only had El Pato salsa sauces, not enchilada. I need to move where there are more Mexicans

I grew up with the stacked style in NM, though my family didn't use that name. It's perfect for a 9 x 13 Pyrex if you want to create an enchilada "casserole": place six heated corn tortillas in a slightly overlapping layer, then sprinkle raw onions and shredded cheese, then your meat and sauce, then repeat everything for another layer and top with a bit more cheese before popping in a 375 degree oven for 12-15 minutes or so.

Far enough afield, but worth mentioning in the casserole vein, an old USAian adaptation of tamales, "Tamale Pie", a shallow dish, the bottom filled with about 1' of a "wet" meat filling, then topped by a masa/corn meal-based "batter" and baked until the batter is set, served with grated cheese and chopped onions and salsa. The best example I recall used chopped pork "al pastor" moistened with a red chili sauce.

I suspect that the 'original" was a 1950's purely "Anglo" concoction of ground beef sauteed with onions and a little chili powder, topped with corn bread batter, then "Mexicanized" by later preparers.

A slight veer off topic, but still within the same barrio as enchiladas, I'm going to try my hand at tamales for the first time. I found this wonderful family history and illustrated (photographed) recipe: Grandma Salazar's Tamales. It's worth a read even if you aren't going to make the tamales. I'll let you know how they turn out.