Enchiladas

Variations

• Enchiladas verdes: Swap the red sauce for a green tomatillo salsa.
• Cheese enchiladas: Skip the chicken and fill with plenty of cheese.
• Enchiladas suizas: A creamier sauce topped with melted cheese.
• Beef or bean: Fill with ground beef or black beans instead.

Tips

• Chile relleno names this dish for the problem it is built around. That page keeps its sauce underneath because poured on top the coating softens within five minutes — "the same timing problem enchiladas turn on." The difference is that an enchilada does not avoid it. It is rolled in sauce, covered in more sauce and baked, so the tortilla spends its whole time in the oven wet. Every tip here is about making one survive that.
• A corn tortilla has no gluten, so "pliable" is a temperature, not a property. Pozole sets out what it is made of — nixtamalised corn — and there is no elastic network in it at all. What holds a tortilla together is gelatinised starch, which is supple while it is warm and cracks once it is cold. That is why the recipe warms each one in oil before rolling rather than softening them in the sauce alone: cold, it splits at the fold no matter how wet it is. The oil does a second job at the same time, leaving a thin fatty layer that slows the sauce soaking straight through.
• Frying the blended sauce is the same step a curry paste gets. Blooming spices says a wet paste is fried until "the oil separates back out onto the surface" and that adding liquid before that leaves a raw, hard edge in the dish to the end. Here the chillies were softened in water and blended, so the sauce goes into the pan wet; the five to seven minutes it spends thickening is that step, and it is why the tip says the frying "cooks out the raw chilli" rather than merely reducing.
• Its neighbours are the same three ingredients sorted by medium. Chimichanga draws the line: a quesadilla is folded and griddled dry, an enchilada is rolled and baked under sauce, and only a chimichanga is submerged in oil. Dry, wet and fried — and the wrapper is the same disc each time, which is why it is the one that has to change its handling.
• Warm or dip the tortillas in sauce so they stay pliable and don't tear when rolled.
• Fry the sauce once it's blended — it deepens the flavor and cooks out the raw chili.
• No dried chiles? Chili powder makes a great shortcut version.
• Place them seam-side down so they don't unroll while baking.
• Add the toppings right out of the oven and serve hot.