Shredded Beef Enchiladas

Sometimes delicious food comes about as a happy accident, this is one of those recipes! I bought a hunk of pot roast beef early last week thinking that I would make a pot roast but when it came around to it I just didn’t feel like eating pot roast! A quick Google search led me to creating shredded beef with it instead, and of course I had to give it a Mexican flare! Cody says this tasted like Chili Colorado, and as such this beef can be used for many different applications! However, these enchiladas are absolutely incredible!

Start out by searing both sides of the beef. This is a chuck roast that I believe was about 1.5 pounds. About 5-7 minutes each side. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 275.

Next, add a 14oz can of crushed tomatoes. We love the fire roasted ones and use them in many of our recipes, but any crushed tomatoes will do! Then add water so the liquid comes about halfway up the meat. I used 1 cup of water. I then added chili powder, cayenne, and paprika on top of the beef. I honestly didn’t measure these ingredients but if I had to guess its approximately 1 TBS chili powder and a half TBS of each cayenne and paprika. This is all to your own taste!

Now, because I wasn’t prepared with the rest of the sauce components and wanted dinner on the table at a certain time I stuck this right in the oven while I worked on the rest of the components of the sauce! The beef will have to roast in the oven for about 3 hours total. As long as the liquid goes halfway up the meat and your pot is covered it wont dry out at such a low heat. If you are a better planner than me, feel free to make this part of the sauce beforehand and throw it all in the oven at the same time 🙂

For the rest of the sauce: Chop up a yellow onion and a tomato (2 if they are roma or smaller tomatoes) give those a quick sauté in a saucepan. We are just looking for a little browning here, they will continue to cook in the sauce. While those are browning take 4-5 dried New Mexico chilis, cut the stems off, empty the seeds out, and cut them into strips into a small bowl. Pour boiling water over just to cover and let steep until softened. Combine peppers and water with the tomato and onion, add some garlic powder, and puree. Our immersion blender is a godsend here.

Now pour this sauce over your beef and put it back in the oven at 275 for the remainder of the 3 hours!

After about 3 hours your beef should be very easy to shred with two forks! I removed it from the sauce to do this, meanwhile simmer the sauce a bit on the stove until its of your desired consistency. I ended up immersion blending this to get that smooth enchilada sauce texture!

Add 1 cup of the sauce to your beef and you are ready to build your enchiladas! We used locally made corn tortillas for this, as well as some sharp cheddar cheese. Put a scoop of enchilada sauce in the baking pan and start adding your rolled enchiladas!

Top with more of the sauce and cheese and bake at 350 for 30-45 min or until they are nice and bubbly and look like this!

Top with some fresh cilantro and serve! These are SO GOOD! If you have any leftover sauce definitely save it to heat up with the leftovers (if there are any leftovers!)

ENJOY!