Topic: Ehhhcheladas.

[8ullfrog]

I have a lot of meat I need to move through. Not sure why mom bought so much, but whatever.

She makes a rather uninspired "burrito meat" which is ground beef, some spices, ground up. Not exactly noteworthy, and honestly I wish she'd stop.
To that I added a cup and a half of diced Onion, redosing the meat with a teaspoon of chili powder and one of cayenne. On the plus side, this knife is pretty decent.

Next I dumped the enchilada sauce (Green) over the meat, because why not, she's never going to buy red for beef. If we had chicken, I'm sure we'd have red sauce.

I brought all that up to a simmer, I suppose one could just eat that as a stew type concoction, and I'll admit I was tempted. Also tempted to just toss cheese and the meat mix in a tortilla and settle for somewhat lousy wet burritos.

But no, I persevere. I rolled those gits tight and loaded them in a pre-sprayed cooking dish. Topped with obscene amounts of cheese and the re-strained enchilada sauce. Kind of like mac and cheese, but we're not tossing the remainder.

The dish now resembles something like an enchilada. 350 degrees, It's on a 15 minute pre-cook. If it looks good, I'll give it another 15 minutes then serve.

If not, golly it. I didn't feel like cooking anyway.

[8ullfrog]

It's pretty.

https://imgur.com/a/nZ4UEyu

[6pairsofshoes]

I put on weight just looking at that.  It sounds delicious.

[8ullfrog]

Little spicier than I would have liked, I suspect that's the cayenne. Re-looking at the recipe, I was supposed to use Cumin. Whoops. Guess that adds to the Ehhh ness of the recipe.

I guess I just prefer the sauce to do a bit more of the work, but I knew it was the wrong sauce going in.

I should have just done the smash burgers like I intended to, but the crumbled beef was already prepped, so I did the FIFO thing. (First in, first out)

I do imagine this dinner cut some time off the life clock.

On the plus side, the simmering really woke the onions up, taste wise. Made me regret the cayenne more, because those onions were probably something special, but got buried in the mix.

[8ullfrog]

Uh, I hate double posters as much as the next guy, but I felt like relaying leftover news.

I originally cooked the dish for 15 minutes, flipped the pan around in the oven and gave it another 15. This gave it a fairly even cooking, I thought.
I actually ended up cutting them smaller than I intended, there were five tortillas rolled narrow and filled with filling, then the cheese up top.

I intended to cut right down the middle, but the portions were somewhat over generous, so I quartered em. That was a good deal, and made it last a little longer.

But when mom was on dinner patrol, she forgot she had put them in the oven, I noticed the house smelled really good, asked "food?" and she went "OH poo".

So about half the pan got scorched. Thankfully we got it out before the cheese went black, but it was a pretty deep golden brown.

And it was fantastic. Left em crispy like eggrolls. MUCH better than the initial serving. I don't know how to describe that in the recipe though. "Forget they're in the oven, save before burnt to crisp" seems somewhat lacking.