Aug 12 2007
Ew. This was really bad.
This recipe came from a magazine I picked up in the grocery store checkout line in the Fall of 2006, called “EAT: easy family food”, and it’s a Better Homes and Gardens special interest publication. This was the Cover Recipe, titled “Bean and Beef Enchilada Casserole”. It looked good, it sounded good, so I made it. And it was awful. This is the recipe:
Bean and Beef Enchilada Casserole:
1/2 lb. ground beef
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 15-ounce can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1 4-ounce can diced green chiles, undrained
1 8-ounce carton sour cream
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
8 6-inch corn tortillas
1 10-ounce can enchilada sauce
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (4 ounces)
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large skillet, cook the ground beef, onion, chili powder and cumin over medium heat until onion is tender and meat is no longer pink. Drain off fat, stir in pinto beans and chiles, set aside.
2. In a small mixing bowl, stir together sour cream, flour, and garlic powder, set aside.
3. Place half of the tortillas in the bottom of a lightly greased 2-quart rectangular baking dish, overlapping if necessary. Top with half of the meat mixture, half of the sour cream mixture, half of the enchilada sauce, and 1/2 cup cheese. Repeat layers.
4. Cover dish with foil. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until bubbly. Sprinkle with reserved 1/2 cup cheese. Bake, uncovered, about 5 minutes more or until cheese melts. Makes 6 servings.
Now, that sounds pretty good, right? It looked pretty good when I was assembling it, too.
The dish before baking:
The dish after baking and slicing into squares:
It came out of the oven smelling good too, but this is what we didn’t like about it. The sour cream layer seemed out of place in the dish, it would have been better to just serve it with dollops of sour cream on top. The pinto beans had no real flavor of their own, it would have been better if they were seasoned first before adding them to the meat mixture. And, the corn tortillas were mushy. I guess I’m just not a fan of corn tortillas cooked that way. I like making what I think of as enchiladas by rolling seasoned meat and cheese up inside flour tortillas, putting them in a greased baking dish, pouring enchilada sauce over them and sprinkling on cheese. Corn tortillas are good cut into triangles and fried in oil for homemade tortilla chips! So I won’t be making this exact dish again. Ever.
Well, you had to try it to know that it wasn’t that good.
Now you know it :)
Well, it looks good. Maybe with some tweaking it could be better.
I make enchilada casserole sometimes with flour tortilla, just to get away from the much. But, you sacrifice the flavor of the cornmeal. I never use beans and the sour cream is always an after thing for us.
I bet this would be good if you tweaked it.
But Elizabeth, they aren’t enchiladas if you don’t use corn tortillas. Its like leaving the chicken out of “chicken and dumplings” and using a pot roast instead. :-)
If you substitute flour tortillas when making enchiladas, then its burritos enchilada style, a very tasty dish, but enchiladas are called enchiladas because of the enveloping of the corn tortillas.
I like to experiment with alternative fillings for enchiladas. One of my favorites is grated squash, corn, rice and green chiles. You can use Mexican squash, yellow squash or zucchini. You just barely cover it with some enchilada sauce and bake. This is comfort food to me, lol.
I’m laughing that you posted a recipe that you don’t like! I’d probably just toss it, but it’s good of you to warn the rest of us.
My favorite easy enchilada recipe is on my recipe website. I think I found it in a magazine, too.
Oops – ignore that last link! I forgot to copy the url, just pasted the one that was on my clipboard and didn’t even look! I can’t believe a perfectionist like me could do such a thing!
Here’s the real recipe.
Anna-That recipe sounds delicious! Let me ask you this-do the corn tortillas cook up better if they get coated more with whatever the sauce is? Maybe that’s why mine were dry and chewy.
I’m adding BCMom’s Kitchen to my blogroll, and I will definitely be back!!
Because it’s been a while since I’ve made this (you know, so many recipes…), I can’t really tell you how the tortillas cook up, exactly. I know they’re not dry and chewy, though. They define the layers and give a nice corn taste – at least I like the taste. Also, corn tortillas are very important because I have a friend who doesn’t eat wheat, therefore, no flour tortillas or she can’t eat it.