Why Your Enchiladas Turned Out Soggy

For many Mexican food lovers, enchiladas are where it's at! The traditional Mexican dish is served with warm corn tortillas stuffed full of meat, beans, and veggies of your choice and then covered in melted cheese (via Guadalajara's Grill). Understandably, this delicious combination of ingredients makes the classic meal incredibly hard to resist. One of the most arguably important aspects of the enchilada is the sauce.

There are quite a few traditional sauces you can put on your enchiladas, including everything from red enchilada sauce made with red chilies to verde sauce made with jalapeños. Food Champs shares mole sauce is also particularly popular for this dish. Regardless of your preference for the filling or the toppings, enchiladas are a staple in Mexican cuisine and are super easy to make at home, but if there is one thing that trips up beginners, it is the curse of the soggy tortilla.

According to Kitchen Seer, classic enchiladas should be fried a little before stuffing and baking. This toughens up an otherwise soft tortilla which would become drenched in whatever sauce is used. If timed incorrectly, a soft tortilla can quickly absorb the sauce, thus ruining the texture of your dish and making it more difficult to eat because the tortilla simply falls to pieces. Of course, the moral of the story is to take a little more time to fry those tortillas before using them. The extra step is worth it.

Another thing that adversely affects enchiladas is the addition of too much sauce. If you've ever thought, "There is no such thing as too much sauce," you might want to think again. Although it might be tempting to dump the whole serving of sauce in, this can actually be an enormous mistake. If you are actually following a quality enchilada recipe, you should have already dipped your tortillas into your chosen sauce before baking. 

This process softens the tortilla and infuses it with flavor, so if you just dump the rest of the good stuff on top of your dish before baking, you are begging for a soggy mess. Instead, put a bit more of the sauce onto the bottom of the pan before placing the stuffed tortillas into it. This will prevent your enchiladas from sticking and also give you a little more sauce without soaking up your food (via AllRecipes). Instead, top your enchiladas with cheese, which will melt and crisp up nicely in the oven.