El Cholo’s Sonora-Style Enchiladas Recipe (2024)

This would be so easy to make into a complete vegetarian meal simply by omitting the chicken. With the beans and eggs, it’s still a hearty meal.

After years of trying and failing to make rolled enchiladas (the corn tortillas would always break even after dipping in sauce) this method is my new standard. It's faster, easier and makes an impressive presentation.

These are quite similar to the enchiladas served in New Mexico.

https://www.elcharrocafe.com/history/Sonoran cuisine is also enshrined and in fact, started in, the Sonoran desert. It ranges from Mexico up thru Tucson. Los Angeles is not in the Sonoran desert El Charro, founded in 1922, is the goto for Sonoran Cuisine. I believe they invented Carne Asada, Carne Seca dried meats on their rooftop. As well as the Chimichanga.The flat tortilla is generally of the Sante Fe and New Mexico cuisine style.My wife has a version, she calls "Tortilla Delight"

I think dipping the tortilla into oil is a matter of personal preference-it’s sufficient to drag them through the red or green sauce in assembly step. Love the idea of alternating red- and green-sauces tortillas! In New Mexico, we order these as ‘Christmas’ style!

I learned to make these, sans chicken, from my mother some 70 years ago. She, in turn, picked up the recipe in New Mexico, where they go under the name "enchiladas montadas", presumably because they're topped with a fried egg. They make an excellent vegetarian meal just by themselves.

This is an extraordinary preparation. This a time consuming for starters. It is more of a restaurant prep rather than a standard effort for the home cook. Making both sauces enabled me to use a pile of pots and an incredibly difficult clean up. The directions and method were a jumble of directives not easily followed. Finally after hours making this I served it. It was delicious. I’d like to simplify this maybe with one sauce or at best to find a restaurant that does this style of cooking.

This was dinner last night—and it was excellent, rich and flavorful. Took about two hours to put together and was worth it. Next time, I’ll reduce the liquid in the filling (mine was a bit soupy) and sub chicken stock for water when I do. I reduced quantities to feed two; left over sauce and filling will become nachos tomorrow for lunch.

My mom always made "stacked" enchiladas for breakfast - cheese, onion and lots of NM red sauce with a fried egg on top. The perfect hangover food!

It's similar in construction to the enchiladas we have here in New Mexico, i.e, flat and smothered with chile. However we don't use a lot of poblanos. I've only seen them used in chiles en nogada. Maybe the very occasional relleno--at least here in the north. I'm going to give them a try!

poblanos are mildly spicy but you can switch to a green bell pepper for the filling.For the green sauce, omit the jalapeños. For the red sauce, leave out the arbol, consider using more california peppers instead of the guajillos.

inverted the proportions of green and red sauce (my red was too firey), and it came out amazing.

Mexican CREMA

A straight-forward and easy-to-follow recipe, or rather, recipes. A lot of steps, none difficult. I found it fun to do. The sauces alone are good and can be used on other dishes. Yes, you use a lot of pots and implements but the cook times give you a lot of free time to clean up as you go. The results are well worth the effort. This is a delicious and filling dish. We'll make it again.

I don't know why you would do one stack at a time. On a baking sheet, I put the first layer of all 6 stacks, then the 2nd layer on all, etc. I also used store-bought green and red enchilada sauce - still absolutely delicious! I used one rotisserie chicken.

As the recipe notes, there’s a lot going on all at once at the end—tortilla frying, assembling, broiling, egg frying. It became a team effort with our guests and was fun and only mildly dangerous. And the presentation and taste were fantastic—every bite a little different. Great recipe.

Delicious recipe. I put off making it for almost two weeks because it was intimidating. I'm glad I finally did it though. Really enjoyed it. I did not put 1 T salt in the chicken filling. Only about half that and it was still plenty salty. I did cook the tortillas in oil as directed, but next time I'll simply lay them on the jelly roll pan, spray them with cooking spray and put them under the broiler for a minutes or so, turning and spraying the second side too. Much easier.

This is excellent! I used a store-made cooked chicken pre made enchilada sauce to speed up the prep & it came out great!!

I suspect that there may be a typo in the list of ingredients. Adding 1 tablespoon of salt means that each individual serving has one half teaspoon of added salt. I wonder if they meant 1 teaspoon in total.

I followed the recipe and thought it was a fun change from ordinary enchiladas. It was enough work that I probably won’t make it again. But I look forward to visiting El Cholo on some future trip to LA.

The sauces are amazing. Layered with beans instead of chicken to make it vegetarian.

Instead of putting each stack onto a plate separately, I placed all the stacks I would need to feed my family on a sheet pan, broiled and then served from there.

Really enjoyed this recipe. Did with only green enchilada sauce and skipped the egg - delicious and would make again for sure! Served with black olives, sour cream and red salsa.

Excellent flavor. Putsy to put together, but worth it when you eat it.

This was undoubtedly one of my favorite NYT Cooking recipes I have ever made. It took me a lot longer to make than I thought it would so next time I will make the sauces the day before. Family members said this was FIRE! I will make this again and again and again......

This recipe was the closest one to restaurant style enchiladas that I have ever found. My only changes were to use queso fresco cheese (melts better and is what the restaurants in So. Cal. seem to use) and only the red sauce (just because that is what the family likes). Absolutely stunning recipe - will definitely make again. The sauce is supposed to be thin.

I don’t believe this was worth the time it took for each stage of prep in a home kitchen. However, the filling base was a pleasant surprise and worth replicating in other dishes.