Enchilada Casserole

So my family has a really awesome enchilada sauce recipe which makes amazing enchiladas. The only problem with making the enchiladas is it requires you to get pretty messy with dipping the tortillas in the sauce, filling them with whatever meat, cheese and veggies you want; then trying to cook them. I wanted to find a way to make the same amazing taste, with a lot less work so I created this recipe: Enchilada Casserole.

Basically, Enchilada Casserole is lazy enchiladas. Now that I know I can do this instead of prepping the enchiladas into rolls, well I won't be getting messy anymore. Essentially, you layer the Greased/Pam'ed casserole dish with Enchilada Sauce, cooked taco meat (Used 1lb 93/7 ground beef and 1 packet of Old El Paso taco Seasoning, with a cup of chopped onions & red peppers), diced tortillas and shredded cheddar.

For the enchilada sauce, I used my secret family recipe that I will share with you:

Enchilada Sauce
2 Tbsp Oil
1 Tbsp Flour
2 tsp Cumin
1/4 tsp Garlic
1/2 tsp Salt
3 tsp Chili Powder
1 Tbsp Sugar
1 Small Can Tomato Sauce (6 oz)
2 Cups Hot Water.

The rest:
1 Pack of Mission Burrito Tortillas (6) chopped
1 lb 93/7 Ground beef (cooked with 1 packet of Old El Paso Taco Seasoning-chicken can be subbed)
1 cup onions/red peppers (cooked with the ground beef, optional)
1 bag of shredded cheddar


Mix all this into a sauce pan and heat until boil and stir. After boiling, turn down heat to simmer and stir ingredients together until even. Once the sauce is done, go ahead and mix it into the casserole dish with the tortillas, taco meat (w/ onions/peppers cooked) and shredded cheddar. You can layer it however you like, it really doesn't matter but it also looks good to have a layer of cheese on top. Bake uncovered (for crispier top) in the oven at 350 for 15-20 minutes or until cheese is melted and dish is warmed thoroughly.

Top view before cooking, after cooking it looks the same except the cheese is melted.

Layers of goodness

So the above pictures are what it looks like before it is cooked, I forgot to take a picture of it cooked but it looks the same except the cheese is melted. It is like eating a soft, gooey, cheesy enchilada. This was very popular with the crowd that I had over. The calories I calculated are for a basic batch. My batch above is slightly bigger (more beef and cheese). Some variations you can do would be to use chicken, if you really want to save time, you could substitute 2 cans of chicken so you can skip the meat cooking phase. You can make it spicy by using spicier taco seasoning or hot peppers. This is a great comfort dish for the fall and winter.