You Don't Need Meat To Make Your Enchilada Hearty

While cheese enchiladas make a fine alternative to beef or chicken on a meatless Monday and can be a great recipe to have on hand for a Lenten Friday, there are other meat-free fillings you may wish to consider. Beans are an obvious choice, but mushrooms, not so much. Nonetheless, developer Catherine Brookes thought it would be fun to add some fungi to her enchilada filling, so that's exactly what she does here.

Mushrooms aren't the only ingredients Brookes uses to stuff her tortillas, however. She also packs in some protein with a can of black beans, bulks things up with onion and bell pepper, and makes things saucy with canned diced tomatoes. Chili powder, coriander, cumin, oregano, and paprika give the filling some flavor, while a jar of enchilada sauce and some shredded cheddar top things off nicely. The resulting recipe is a little something that Brookes likes to call hearty mushroom enchiladas and the dish is as filling as advertised, especially if you add the optional sour cream.

This recipe, of course, can be taken as a template rather than something carved in stone. To translate the metaphor-speak, what we mean is that many of the ingredients can be swapped out at will, starting with the eponymous mushrooms. Brookes uses creminis, but white button mushrooms would be just fine, as would portobellos, shiitakes, or any other type of mushroom you're likely to find in the produce section. You can also swap out the red onion and bell pepper for a yellow onion and green pepper if you prefer these or you find that they're cheaper where you shop.

You can also change the cheese if you please. Cheddar is always good in enchiladas, true, but so is pepper jack. While either Swiss or gruyère would be a less-standard choice, both would work well with mushrooms. If you want your mushroom enchiladas to be even heartier, you can always make them less meat-free with the addition of ground beef, shredded chicken, or chorizo. Depending on how much meat you add, though, you'll probably need extra tortillas (or larger ones) to hold all of the extra filling.