These Easy Beef Enchiladas are a wonderful, family-friendly dinner. Watch the video showing you how to make Easy Beef Enchiladas, then scroll down to the bottom of this post and print out the recipe so you can make them at home.
How to Make Easy Beef Enchiladas:
Heat oil in a large skillet, and add a pound of ground beef.
Break the meat apart and let it brown.
Tilt the pan to let the oil pool along the edge of the pan. Use a spoon to scoop out the oil and get rid of it. You don’t need any of that extra fat in there. Remove the meat to a bowl.
Add chopped onion and finely chopped zucchini to the hot skillet, and cook until the vegetables are slightly softened. Trust me on the zucchini. No one in your family will even notice it, and it’s really good in this Easy Beef Enchiladas recipe! If you hate it, I suppose you could leave it out… but I hope you’ll choose to trust me 🙂
Add the vegetables to the bowl with the beef and stir them together.
Add 1/2 cup enchilada sauce to a 13×9-inch pan. I make homemade enchilada sauce… SO good… and SO much better than the metallic-can tasting stuff. It’s simple to make.
Tilt the pan to swirl the sauce around and make sure it coats the entire bottom of the pan.
Assembly time! You’ll need corn tortillas, the meat/veggie mixture, cheddar-jack cheese and enchilada sauce. Note that in the photos, I am using a corn-flour blend tortilla. You can use any tortillas you want!
Spoon the beef mixture down the middle of a tortilla.
Sprinkle some cheese on top.
And drizzle about one tablespoon of the enchilada sauce on top of the filling.
Roll up the stuffed tortilla tightly and place seam-side-down in the sauce-coated pan. Continue with all of the tortillas until you have created 12 enchiladas.
Drizzle the remaining sauce on top of the rolled-up enchiladas.
Spread the sauce around so you get a nice coating all along the top of these Easy Beef Enchiladas. At this point, you’re going to cover the dish with foil and bake for 30 minutes.
Take the enchiladas out of the oven, remove the foil cover and sprinkle cheese on top. Put them back into the oven to melt all that cheese.
Just like that.
Ready for eating!
Serve these Easy Beef Enchiladas with whatever you’d like. I served them on a simple bed of shredded iceberg lettuce with some freshly sliced avocado. My husband added a generous spoonful of sour cream. And my kiddo– one who would never, ever willingly eat zucchini if it were placed in front of him– ate this meal as-is and with great enthusiasm. Apparently he didn’t spy the zucchini in the midst of all of that wonderful sauce and cheese.
If you’re looking for recipes to serve with these Easy Beef Enchiladas, try my Mango Guacamole or this Enchilada Rice. Mexican Chopped Salad and Seasoned Black Beans are also delicious choices!
Easy Beef Enchiladas
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil
- 16 ounces lean ground beef
- 1½ cups finely diced onion
- 1½ cups finely diced zucchini (about 2 medium)
- 12 taco-size corn tortillas (heated or fried to soften)
- 2½ cups enchilada sauce (canned or homemade)
- 3 cups shredded cheddar-jack cheese
- serve as desired with lettuce, sour cream, avocado, etc.
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9x13-inch pan with nonstick spray.
- Heat oil in a large, nonstick skillet. Add the ground beef; break apart with a spoon or spatula to crumble the meat. Saute the meat on medium heat until browned (about 5 minutes). Tilt the pan and spoon the fat out of the pan; discard. Remove the cooked meat to a bowl.
- Return the pan to medium heat, and add the onion and zucchini. Saute until just softened, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove the vegetables from the pan and add to the meat mixture; set aside.
- Add 1/2 cup of sauce to the prepared pan. Spread it around so it coats the entire bottom of the pan.
- Assemble the enchiladas: Place a tortilla on a work surface. Spoon 1/4 to 1/3 cup of the meat mixture down the middle. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of cheese on top of the meat. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of sauce on top. Wrap the tortilla around the filling tightly and place it seam-side-down in the pan. Repeat with remaining tortillas and filling until you have finished filling 12 tortillas. Place the tortillas side-by-side in the pan- it's okay if they are all snuggled in there tightly.
- Pour the remaining enchilada sauce over the top of the stuffed enchiladas. Cover the dish with foil and bake for 30 minutes.
- Remove the pan from the oven and take off the foil. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top; return to the oven and let the cheese melt (about 5 minutes). Serve immediately with desired condiments.
Notes
- *I like to use tortillas for this recipe that are a corn/flour blend. They're easy to roll (they don't break), and you don't need to fry them!
- *If you are preparing this recipe as GLUTEN-FREE, just make sure that you are using brands of enchilada sauce and corn tortillas that are designated as GF
- *Be sure to check out my recipe for homemade enchilada sauce.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Best. Dinner. Ever… My husband said. Nice job. The homemade sauce is the key. And I used ground turkey instead of beef since I don’t eat red meat. Simply amazing and not super heavy. YUM!
I’m from Texas and currently living in Chile. I’ve been craving TexMex like crazy lately so I decided to make these for an international-food-themed dinner with Chilean friends. Most had never even heard of enchiladas, but everybody LOVED this dish. I made the sauce from scratch as suggested, spiced up the beef a bit with taco seasoning, and added a little special something (aka cream cheese!). I spread just a little bit of cream cheese on each tortilla before adding the mixture. It was exquisite! Thank you for sharing!
Sounds like a delicious addition- thanks for the tip!
Fantastic recipe! I just made these last night and the sauce was amazing! My husband loved them, and I can’t say that about every recipe that I’ve tried. The only thing I did different was add half a package of taco seasoning to the beef. Thanks for sharing your recipes!
Just made these tonight and they were fantastic!
These are awesome–best meal I’ve had in a while! My husband loved them too. I used your homemade sauce recipe and followed your enchilada recipe exactly except I added some spices to the meat while it was cooking. They tasted great leftover too. I actually looked forward to coming home to pop some in the microwave 4 days in a row. Highly recommended.
One of your readers said their tortillas cracked – one trick my mom taught me in how to make luscious enchiladas is to swipe the tortillas through a puddle of enchilada sauce (on both sides) which moistens the tortilla, adds flavor, and makes it so there’s no cracks! Another trick is to just warm the tortillas in the microwave for about 30 seconds.
Great tips!
Can this be made ahead and frozen? It looks delicous!
Haven’t done it, but I would imagine that you could prepare them up until the point of baking, and then wrap them well to stick in the freezer. Defrost before baking.
Posted the link along with a link to your enchilada sauce, I hope that’s okay too. They were both so good!!!!
Tried these with my mom (who doesn’t like sauce on ANYTHING) and my very picky two little girls – everyone LOVED them and went back for more! Totally delish, and I love the homemade sauce too! Would you mind if I posted these on my site, http://www.katescuisine.com, with a link and credit to your blog, of course? My readers would love it, I think! Thanks for sharing!
a link to the original recipe would be just fine. Please do not re-post the recipe onto your site though. Appreciate it 🙂
We just had enchiladas last night without veggies because I couldn’t really think of any that would be good with them. Next time, I’ll copy you and hide them inside. Genius!