Loaded Beef Enchilada Recipe

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What better way to end the day than with a big batch of enchiladas? There's no doubt that enchiladas are one of the most popular items on the menu at Mexican restaurants, and the age-old question is always which do you prefer: chicken or beef? This particular recipe calls for a delicious beef and onion mixture paired with your traditional red enchilada sauce, a flavorful salsa and sour cream mix, and, of course, cheese that melts perfectly over the top of the tortillas.

Recipe developer Kate Shungu of Gift of Hospitality came up with this loaded beef enchilada recipe, which is filled to the brim with deliciousness. "Enchiladas are my version of comfort food! These are creamy, cheesy, and satisfying (especially on a chilly day)," Shungu shares. This is a pretty classic beef recipe that's perfect for weeknights, but Shungu does have some tricks up her sleeve, including a quick and easy two-ingredient sauce that adds extra creaminess to every bite.

If you make enchiladas quite a bit, this list should be familiar. Just grab ground beef, a small onion, diced green chiles, prepared salsa, sour cream, flour tortillas, red enchilada sauce, Mexican blend cheese, and cilantro. "Any canned enchilada sauce is great for this recipe," Shungu notes. 

Place the ground beef and onion in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally to break up the meat, for 6–7 minutes, or until the meat is cooked through. Stir in the diced green chiles.

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a medium bowl, stir together the salsa and sour cream.

Pour a few tablespoons of enchilada sauce into the bottom of a 13x9-inch casserole dish. Swirl until the sauce covers the bottom of the pan.

Lay a tortilla on a flat work surface. Spoon 1–2 tablespoons of the sour cream mixture on top, and spread it around the tortillas. Spoon ½ cup of the beef mixture into the center of the tortilla, and roll it tightly. Place in the casserole dish. Repeat with the remaining tortillas.

Pour the remaining enchilada sauce over the top of the tortillas. Sprinkle with the cheese.

Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cheese is melted. Remove from the oven, optionally sprinkle with cilantro, and serve immediately.

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Enchiladas are perfect for feeding a large crowd. Not only can you whip up a big batch of them at once, but you can make many of the components of this recipe in advance. You can make the ground beef filling a few days in advance and keep it in the fridge; same thing with the sour cream and salsa mixture. If you wanted, you could even roll them up and arrange them on the baking dish in advance. Just make sure they're tightly covered. Then, pop the baking dish in the fridge or freezer.

It's best to pour the enchilada sauce and cheese over them just before baking, otherwise you could end up with a soggy mess. Once you bake the full dish, the enchiladas are at the peak deliciousness when eaten straight away, but don't worry: Leftovers will keep in the fridge for a few days. So don't let those extra enchiladas go to waste!

One of the (many!) great things about enchiladas are their versatility. You can switch up what's inside the filling; you can play around with different sauces; you can top them however you please. We kept ours fairly straight forward with a red enchilada sauce and ground beef, but that's far from the only way to enjoy them.

Instead of beef, you could make these enchiladas with ground chicken for a slightly lighter (but still filling) meal. If you're going the poultry route, however, it'd be best to stick with dark meat, as white meat's lower fat content tends to dry it out. When it comes to what you cover the enchiladas in, consider swapping the red enchilada sauce for green. You could even make your own, homemade green enchilada sauce with tomatillos, hatch chiles, onion, garlic, and cilantro!

Enchiladas have a long and complicated history. In pre-colonial Mexico, a version of the contemporary dish was eaten by the Aztecs. Its original Nahuatl name, chīllapīzzali, translates to "chile-flute," and this helps explains enchiladas' visual similarity to what we know now as flautas. These original enchiladas looked a little different than this modern recipe — they consisted of filled, rolled tortillas dipped in a chile paste, not cooked in a sauce.

After the violent colonization of the area by the Spanish, the dish began to morph away from its Aztec roots. The paste was swapped for the sauce we know today, and Spanish cooks added European ingredients and the now-common garnishes of cream, herbs, or salsas. By the time a recipe was published in a commercially available American cookbook — Encarnación Pinedo's "El Cocinero Español" — in 1898, it included the designation to use a red chile sauce. The name enchilada is a conjugation of the Spanish verb meaning "to season with chile," referring to the saucy cooking method used in this recipe.

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