I have had quite the hankering for Mexican recently, so I was so happy that the October issue of Cooking Light included a bunch of delicious sounding Mexican inspired vegetarian meals. I decided to go for the Black Bean & Cheese Enchiladas, because they can easily be frozen for future lunches and dinners. I substituted a few of the ingredients for what I already had, but you can find the original recipe here.
Ingredients:
2 Cajun peppers, stemmed, seeded and chopped
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 cup chopped yellow onion
5 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3 cups chicken broth, divided
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons no-salt-added tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
The juice of 1 lime
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
2 cups pre-shredded Mexican-blend cheese, divided
3 thinly sliced green onions, divided
Cooking spray
10 (6-inch) corn tortillas
5 tablespoons light sour cream
Preheat oven to 400°. Prepare the peppers, onion and garlic cloves. Heat the olive oil in a medium saute pan over high heat. Add onion and cook for 1 minute.
Reduce heat to medium and add the garlic and salt. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add 2 cups broth, parsley, tomato paste, and cumin.
Cook for 10 minutes, or until it thickens slightly, stirring occasionally.
While this is cooking, add the extra cup water and the chopped peppers to a food processor. Pour the onion mixture into the food processor when finished cooking. Blend until smooth. Stir in lime juice and cayenne.
Combine the beans, 1 cup of cheese, and half the green onions in a bowl.
Add 1/2 of the sauce to the bottom of a cookie pan coated with cooking spray. Add 3 tablespoons of the bean mixture to to each tortilla.
Roll up, placing the seam side down.
Add to the cookie pan.
Pour the remaining sauce over the tortillas.
Top with the remaining cheese.
Bake for 15 minutes.
Sprinkle with remaining green onions and serve with sour cream.
This recipe has so much flavor! I was really pleasantly surprised with how this turned out. I am pretty sure I didn’t allow the sauce to reduce enough, but it thickened up in the oven and still tasted wonderful.
A serving is two enchiladas, so I actually have 4 meals left over after making this. As I mentioned before, enchiladas freeze really well, so 3 are going into the freezer and one will be my lunch tomorrow, win!
To make this recipe more effective for a weeknight, you can make the ranchero sauce ahead of time an refrigerate it until ready to use. The recipe took about an hour from start to finish.
That sounds like it would make a great empanada as well, with the sauce to dip in!
I love enchiladas and mexican food. These look amazing! How did I miss these in the magazine, guess I better go through it again!
Y U M!
I love mexican, and these look delicious 🙂
Your photos are Fab, too!
–shelley
Enchiladas are my favorite! These look really yummy!!
Delicious! How funny that we posted completely different enchiladas on the same day…these look fabulous!
We don’t have much of these type of recipes but I bet it will be good try for a change, something similar for us will be the capati and the fillings are served separately.
These look delicious!!!
Delicious looking! Great vegetarian option for a meatless Monday! 🙂
that’s good lookin’ ranchero sauce!
I found the same thing when just making this- the ranchero sauce seems very thin which is how I found this blog: looking for a way to thicken it up. I was afraid to assemble it ahead and have the liquid disintegrate the tortillas. I’ll have to see what it does in the oven: thanks for the helpful pictures!
Did you use corn tortillas or flour? It said corn but looked like flour. wondering which would taste better.
Nicole,
You’re right, I did use flour tortillas! Sorry about that. I personally find corn tortillas really difficult to fold without breaking. Tastewise, however, I bet corn tortillas are fantastic versus flour. I hope this helps!
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