You're from Texas? Show me your enchiladas

This morning I was asked by a hometown friend for my recipe for cheese enchiladas, so guess what we're going to talk about today. Skip to recipe.

English speakers all over the world use the phrase "the whole enchilada" to mean the whole thing, the full monty, the whole nine yards, the whole shebang. But even though I hear all kinds of people saying that phrase, I've noticed that people outside of North America often don't actually know what an enchilada is, other than an edible Mexican thing that must have all the things in it.

I suspect a lot of people in Mexico jokingly insist that people in Texas STILL don't know what an enchilada is either! But that's a different debate for a different day.

The word itself is pretty cool. "Enchilada" lacks a direct English equivalent, but if it had one, it would be "en-chili-ated." In the same spirit as encapsulated, immolated, enculturated . . . "enchilada" literally means "a thing that has been engulfed in chiles."

Enchiladas were first described in writing by Spanish conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo in 1519. Anthropological evidence shows them to have been around a very long time before Bernie ever showed up. Aztecs and Mayans had been rolling meats and eggs and vegetables in corn tortillas for millennia. It's a very old idea. Aztecs called enchiladas chīllapīzzali, "chile flutes", and made them by dipping tortillas in thick chile paste and then wrapping the seasoned tortilla around their choice of fillings. In this sense, the prototype of both enchiladas and tacos is more or less the same thing, "stuff rolled in a tortilla" , with the main difference being that the word "taco" describes all the tidy little finger food variants whereas enchiladas are basically "a taco that's simply too messy to pick up" (if you're not an Aztec anyway). That's thanks to their eponymous chile sauce coating of course.

In most parts of Mexico today, enchiladas are a common but somewhat minor dish. This surprised me as a kid. If you're browsing a menu in Mexico, you'll probably find enchiladas on there somewhere, but you may have to scroll past dozens of tacos, sopes, tortas, grilled meats, and so on before you find any enchiladas. And modern enchiladas in Mexico are a pretty modest affair: almost always shredded chicken inside unless specified otherwise, often with a choice of red or green tomatoey enchilada sauce, and a light drizzle of Mexican crema, and a sprinkling of onions and cotija cheese (a crumbly Mexican cheese kind of like feta, and often even called "feta cheese" on English menus for the understanding of gringos like me).

Frankly, Mexican enchiladas are a little healthier too, but I won't hold that against them.

You might be also surprised to see several other en-______-ada variants on a menu in Mexico too, for preparations where the coating is something other than chile sauce: enfrijoladas (black bean sauce), enmoladas (molé sauce), entomatadas (tomatillo sauce). Down south you can slather anything on a tortilla, and there's a nice name for it.

North of the border, however, the other saucy coatings kind of fell out of style. But the enchilada itself certainly did not. Quite the contrary in fact. Enchiladas are usually the cornerstone and sine qua non of any Texas-style Mexican restaurant, and like the Aztecs, Texans will stuff damn near anything they can find inside them. Not every sit-down Mexican restaurant in Texas serves tacos, or carne asada, or tamales, or tortilla soup, but you'd be hard-pressed to find one that doesn't sell enchiladas. In fact, once you get past the appetizers and the specialties of the house the enchilada usually occupies a place of great distinction on any Texas Mexican menu. And in dozens of different combination dinners mixing and matching various enchilada fillings and sauces, along with tamales and tacos. And always served with the ubiquitous piles of fried rice and beans, which are rarely accompany enchiladas in Mexico. (I suspect people in Mexico find enchiladas a heavy enough meal already, with the starch and veggies already all built in and so not needing any side dishes.)

The first enchiladas to become popularized in Texas seem to have been served by the now famous "chili queens" who set up mobile chili carts and food stands in San Antonio around the late 1800s and made the city famous for its Mexican food. It was one of the first US cities where white settlers ventured to try Mexican food. Enchiladas are first mentioned in writing in a lost but often quoted tourist pamphlet from 1882 called Gould's Guide to San Antonio: "Those who delight in the Mexican luxuries of tamales, chili con came, and enchiladas, can find them here cooked in the open air in the rear of the tables and served by the lineal descendants of the ancient Aztecs." There's ample documentation that the chili queens' tamales were typically served smothered in a dollop of chili con carne from their chili pot, and presumably those first Texan enchiladas were enabled by her pot of chili in some similar way. My personal suspicion is they spooned some drained chili beef into the inside of a tortilla, rolled it up, and then ladled a healthy splash of the chili juice over the top; that's how I would do it given those same raw materials.

A San Antonio chili queen serving tortillas and fried beans to a pecan sheller. March 1939. Russell Lee. Public domain.

But in the decades that ensued, the variety of enchiladas in Texas has veritably exploded. The standards you'll see at most eateries include chicken enchiladas (with a number of different sauce options: salsa verde, salsa roja, ranchero sauce, sour cream, avocado sauce), beef enchiladas (also with a number of sauce options), vegetable variants like spinach or avocado or even mushroom or nopales, and finally the king of all Texas comfort foods, cheese enchiladas with chili gravy.

Whether you side with Texans on this topic or against them, Texans do love their cheese. The most common complaint about Texan food I hear from almost every Mexican who's visited Texas, and a lot of other people too, is "God, everything is so beefy and greasy. And why do you have to put so much CHEESE on everything?!?" Honestly, the visitors are not wrong. About using cheese. On everything. But as a Texan myself, I say if too much cheese is wrong, I don't want to be right? And if a Tex-Mex restaurant doesn't serve an honest plate of cheese enchiladas, it's not an honest Tex-Mex restaurant.

So how did we get from chili cart beef enchiladas to the gooey cheesy ones? There's a 1914 recipe in Bertha Haffner Ginger's "California Mexican-Spanish Cookbook" where the filling is grated cheese, but the rest of the ingredients are so horrifying (including raisins of all things) so it's hard to say from that alone whether the practice was widespread. A better source is San Antonio's Gebhardt Chili Powder Company's self-promotional cookbook "Mexican Cookery" whose 1936 edition includes Enchiladas American Style (rolled and both filled and topped with chili con carne) and Enchiladas Mexican Style, which are stacked and topped with a fried egg, but whose fillings are strickly cheese and minced onion. There's no mistaking that this 1936 recipe is truly for cheese enchiladas, and served in the way still common in New Mexico.

The concept may be that old but mentions of "cheese enchiladas" in print are sparse.

One huge contributing factor is that before the mid-20th century, well-to-do white Texans were a little horrified by Latino cooking. At best white Americans considered it "too spicy to eat", with several journalistic accounts describing the dangers in humorous detail:

Speaking of hot things, at San Antonio they have a dish called chili con carne. It is of Mexican origin, and is composed of beef, peas, gravy and red pepper. It is awful seductive looking, and gives a fellow the idea that he has a soft thing on hash. They always have enough to go around, for no stranger, no matter how terrific a durned fool he is, ever calls for a second dish. He almost always calls for a big cistern full of water, and you can’t put the water in him fast enough with a steam engine hose.

– Fort Scott Daily Monitor, September 14, 1877

(Incidentally, this specific article's mention of "peas" is also one of several pieces of evidence that beans were always an opinion in Texas chili, even if not a consistent ingredient.)

Other early white descriptions of Mexican food were tremendously disparaging, really leaning in to claims of how disgusting it was. And given that it was white Americans who were writing and publishing most of the books and newspaper articles, it's no surprise that early 20th century Tex-Mex evolved a little bit in the shadows, including much evidence of what the cheese enchilada was doing all this time. Plenty of people were eating them, but their voices are hard to find today. It wasn't until in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the cheese enchilada's popularity exploded as a common listing on mainstream restaurant menus, and so, in a lot of ways, cheese enchiladas in popular Texas culture are a tokenly 1980s Texan food.

Perhaps that explains why my generation of Texans seems to have such a cultural attachment to this dish in particular: We were the first ones who grew up with "One cheese enchilada, rice, and beans" being Kid's Menu Special #1 at every Mexican restaurant in the state. I grew up a little too early to participate in the chicken nugget phenomenon, but I was just the right age to eat a cheese enchilada for every meal, instead. It's baked into any Gen-X Texan kid's identity.

So, with the spotty history behind us, what makes a trademark Texan cheese enchilada, and why do Texans have so much trouble finding them elsewhere or even making them at home?

The secret sauce, no pun intended, is the chili gravy.

Enchiladas with meatier fillings like beef or chicken can take any number of sauces. But aside from full-blown chili con carne, chili gravy is really the only one that "works" with the cheese-filled ones. And that's why Texans get so frustrated, buying the little cans of what's allegedly "red enchilada sauce" at their local supermarket only to discover that the bland tomato paste that comes out of the can is not remotely like the enchilada sauce at any decent restaurant.

Because enchiladas were served by the chili queens, I think it's a reasonable assumption that chili gravy was originally just the saucy part of chili con carne with the meat strained out. It would make sense that if you ordered a whole bowl of chili, you got the whole deal, but if you ordered a beef enchilada or tamale, the server would skim up the runny bits as a "sauce" to ladle over the top. Gebhardt's "American Style" enchilada recipe also validates that idea.

No matter how it evolved, current day chili gravy is its own discrete meat-based sauce, usually based on beef broth but sometimes chicken. It also incorporates some kind of meat drippings, often lard or beef tallow, and is thickened with flour. Hence the "gravy" title. It's meat gravy, just spicy. The gravy is simmered with a rich mix of chili powder (they wouldn't be enchiladas otherwise!), cumin, salt, pepper, and various combinations of onion powder, garlic powder, and sometimes Mexican oregano. A tiny dab of tomato paste is allowable, but this is most definitely not a tomato-themed sauce, so any tomato ingredients should be used with great restraint. As a young Texan I resented the ketchupy Mexican food I discovered the further north I ventured. Don't be that person.

As with lot of beloved sauces, there's really not much room to experiment with other ingredients beyond those without turning it into a different sauce that it's not. But it's a workhorse. Chili gravy is such a cornerstone of Tex-Mex cooking that it often finds itself drizzled over Texan carne asada, grilled chicken, tamales, smothered burritos, all kinds of things. Once you master this relatively quick and easy sauce, you'll use it on tons of stuff. (Dipping a quesadilla in it will change your life.) And you'll forget about how mad you were that "the stuff in the can" was the totally wrong thing all those years.

The Recipe

Makes 12. Serves 4-6

Prep Time: 15 min

Cook Time: 20 min

Chili Gravy

• 1 cup lard, beef fat, or oil of your choosing (This is not health food, if you hadn't figured it out yet.)

• 2 Tbsp ground cumin (this spice, in this quantity, is a key element that makes Tex-Mex food taste "Texan" and not "Mexican")

• 2 1/2 Tbsp chili powder of your choosing (these measurements are very forgiving; I usually just eyeball it and adjust later). If I'm allowed to follow my dreams, my top pick is 80% red Hatch New Mexico chili powder and 20% chipotle chili powder. Ancho and/or guajillo are nice in there too. But the cheap "chili powder" from the spice aisle is great too and what most restaurants use too. The choice of chili powder is really the #1 variable in making your enchiladas your own.

• 2 cups beef and/or chicken and/or pork broth (it literally doesn't matter much; it's mostly for umami)

• 1 tsp onion powder

• 1 tsp garlic powder

• 1/2 tsp Mexican oregano powder (if you only have Italian or Greek oregano, start with about half as much to make sure it doesn't start tasting like Greek roast lamb or something)

• 2 tsp salt (or to taste)

• Slurry of a couple of a couple of teaspoons of corn starch in a few ounces cold water for thickening. But you can also use flour, or even masa which was likely the original formula.

1. Heat the fat/oil in a small saucepan until it's about 225ºF.

2. Measure out your broth and have it ready. This is important.

3. Add the cumin and stir, let the temperature rise slowly until the cumin starts to roil round in the oil and sizzle at the edges. It should start to smell nice and roasty.

4. Reducing heat slightly to maintain that same temperature, add the chili powder. Stir it around ONLY for about 30 seconds to get all that good chili essence dissolved in the oil, and then...

5. QUICKLY pour in your broth. If you miss this step or get distracted, your chili powder will burn and taste awful and you will have to start over from scratch. It's the only tricky thing about this recipe, but please don't serve your family burnt chili powder. It's awful.

6. Add in the other spices, and stir. Let it simmer for a while while you get everything else ready.

7. When you're ready to thicken it, and it's simmering nicely, bit by bit splash in a little bit of the corn starch and stir, until you get a nice silky sauce. It should be about the consistency of buttermilk or a little thicker than that. (Traditional recipes thicken with flour, but I find that cornstarch makes a nicer and smoother sauce, with the added bonus of making this otherwise wheat-free meal 100% gluten free.)

8. I like to add my salt after thickening, because it's easier to taste the sauce once the cornstarch has unified the oil and broth together.

Assembling the Enchiladas

• 12 fresh corn tortillas (Always buy the kind that are in a refrigerator. The corn tortillas in the same aisle as the room temperature flour tortillas will kind of work, but are useless for tacos and not so good for enchiladas either.)

• A few cups of whatever hard cheese makes you happy. Texans typically use various combinations of monterrey jack, cheddar, colby, longhorn, that kind of thing. Asadero or Oaxaca cheese also works great, for a more northern Mexico effect. Just avoid anything that would accidentally make it taste Italian, French, Dutch, Swiss, etc. Swiss Enchiladas are a thing (Enchiladas Suizas) but even those use monterey jack.

• Chopped onions (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.

2. Heat up a large flat pan until the surface is at least 375ºF.

3. Lightly oil (e.g. cooking spray) a baking dish big enough to hold 12 enchiladas. 12" x 9" is usually about right. Pour in a little bit of the chili gravy (about 20%) and use a spatula, basting brush, whatever you like to do your best to spread it around evenly.

4. One at a time (or 2 or 3 at a time if your pan is big and you have a helper) warm the tortillas on the dry pan. Many recipes suggest a little oil, but I find dry a little more forgiving and way less messy. Heat each tortilla about 30 seconds on a side, flipping back and forth until it's soft and steamy, and before it starts to brown or dry out at all. If you don't have a helper and/or don't want to roll them one at a time, stack the hot tortillas inside a tortilla warmer until you're done heating them.

5. On a cutting board or other clean surface, lay the warm tortilla flat. Fill with about a half a handful of cheese, and the fresh chopped onion (if you're using it). When I don't include onion, sometimes I sprinkle a little cumin, chili powder, and salt inside each one so it's not just 100% cheese.

6. Gently roll the tortilla around the cheese into a flute shape (Aztecs! Chile flute!) and place into the pan, side by side until you've done them all.

7. Now, making sure to cover them all fairly evenly, slowly drizzle the chili gravy over the top of all the rolled enchiladas. If you mess up you can always use a spatula to "redistribute the wealth" a little bit.

8. Finally sprinkle with more shredded cheese and more of the diced onion. I also like to include some green onion or chives for appearance sake too.

9. Bake the enchiladas for 15-20 minutes until cheese is melted both inside and out.

10. Remove and let cool a little before serving. Typical serving is 2-3 enchiladas per person. To serve it the truly Texan way, put the enchiladas in the middle of a wide Feistaware style dinner platter, flanked by Mexican rice, refried beans, and a little lettuce and diced tomato salad. It's also nice to have a little stack of additional warm corn or flour tortillas for sopping up the leftover sauce.

Shortcuts

With a little practice and the right ingredients on hand, it's easy enough to whip up an individual serving of chili gravy in about 10 minutes. If you're cooking for only 1 or 2 starving non-picky people, you can make the rest of the prep almost as fast.

First off, just microwaving a stack of corn tortillas in a tortilla warmer or between two plates is also a totally legitimate way to go and saves a lot of effort. That's how we did it my whole childhood. They'll be a little more steamy and mealy is all.

Secondly, putting the rolled enchiladas directly on a dinner plate, smothering them with sauce and cheese, and then nuking them in the microwave for about 30-40 seconds still works surprisingly well. There are no raw meat ingredients to worry about, and the only risk is that sometimes the tortillas can get a tiny bit leathery.

This will probably be the only time I'll tell you to cook ANYTHING in the microwave, but when you're not trying to impress anyone, it's the different between 45 minute enchiladas and 12 minute enchiladas. Not a bad trade-off.

Chili gravy also keeps pretty well in a jar in the refrigerator. If I've made too much, it's often a blessing because I can always find other things to use it on later in the week. That will also drastically speed up a second batch of enchiladas, if the sauce is pre-made and just needs heating up.

Next Steps

Once you get the basics of this comfort food dish down, it's forgiving enough that you can do away with the measurements and use your heart. Do you love smoky chipotle powder? Go for it! Want to put some green chiles in there? Who's stopping you?

Some of the more interesting variations of cheese enchiladas I've enjoyed at restaurants:

• Thick chunky chili con carne instead of the gravy? Or a blend of both? That's absolutely a thing, and very well could have been how the first cheese enchiladas were served.

• Various kinds of chopped peppers mixed with the cheese are also a totally legit and very common variant. Even some of the hundred-year-old recipes included dice jalapeños or other chilis in there.

• Different tortilla types. New Mexico blue corn tortillas with a nice mild white cheese are a treat.

• Try different blends of chili powders, including some of the more spicy ones if you're so inclined. Or those canned chipotles with adobo (this gives the dish a smoky, vinegary aspect).

• A strictly north Texan variant is the "soft cheese taco." It's technically just a cheese enchilada with creamy cheese sauce instead of chili gravy, but if it's not chili sauce then it's not an enCHILada, hence "cheese taco." (I was also curious why they're not called enquesadas, but learned that's already a long-lived slang term for either a sex-starved person or a corrupt politician who launders money. So "soft cheese taco" is fair.)

• And lastly, if the "chili flute" is too much work for you, feel free to experiment with the stacked enchiladas of New Mexico, or the folded enchiladas preferred in some parts of Mexico. Do what makes you happy.

Sources

• Ralat, José R. "Enchiladas Are So Much More Than You Think." Texas Monthly. May 25, 2021.

• Lee, Alexander. "Enchiladas: A Culinary Monument to Colonialism." History Today. June 6, 2019.

• Lomax, John Nova. "The Bloody San Antonio Origins of Chili Con Carne." Texas Monthly. August 10, 2017

• Pilcher, Jeffrey M. Planet Taco. Oxford University Press, 2012.

• Haffner-Ginger, Bertha.

• Mexican Cookery for American Homes. Gebhardt's Chili Powder Company. 1936 edition.