Da Beef's West Texas enchiladas

His original great post is here:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=20598&p=214632&hilit=beef+enchilada#p214632

Scroll down a bit, it's in the middle.

Thank you so much, Da Beef, for your great recipe and post.

I was searching high and low on foodnetwork yesterday for a beef enchilada recipe -and couldn't find one. Yours really hit the spot.

I made it slightly differently. To the red chile sauce I added 2 poblanos and 2 habaneros - roasted peeled and seeded. Just couldn't help myself - they looked so nice at the store.

For the picadillo - I roasted the peppers, peeled, seeded, chopped. Once again, 2 jalapenos, 2 poblanos and 2 habaneros.

I really liked his spice rub for the picadillo - it's like a really good taco seasoning. Uh, I added Mexican Oregano to that seasoning, since I was having a Mexican Oregano field day yesterday.

I just used a bag of El Milagro Blancas tortillas I got from Caputos. Bag was steamy, they seemed pretty nice.

I did manage the tortillas differently. I put the red chile sauce in a pie dish, I lightly fried each tortilla, just about 30 seconds each side - and kind of slid them through the sauce to get the sauce to stick. It's a method a Mexican friend once showed me - she was using watered down mole instead of red chile sauce.

I had issues with assembly, so I'm going to recommend a procedure for using a standard pyrex 9x13 pan.

Put sauce on the bottom of the pan to coat.
Lay 6 tortillas around the bottom - of course, lightly fried and sauced.
Spread out 1/4 of the picadillo
Add 1/2 lb grated cheese - or sliced, whatever.
Repeat with a second layer.
Finally add one more layer of tortillas.

I baked this for a while, then added another 1/4 lb grated cheese on top and returned to the oven.

His recipe volume makes 2 9x13 pans worth.

Mine is spicy. It is SO GOOD. I've screwed up beef enchilada casseroles in the past, and this is the best I ever made/had.

Thank you Da Beef, for the recipe. But can you tell me why to bake it without the cheese on top for a while, I didn't really understand that.

Um, I ended up using 2.5 lbs of cheese. I think it would have been nice to use 3 lbs of cheese - 1/2 lb on top....

Here's what it looked like: