Give Chicken A Break – Make Delicious, Affordable Enchiladas With This Unexpected Filling

Mac and cheese may be everyone's favorite comfort food, but when it comes to well-rounded one-pan meals that are just as comforting and twice as flavorful, enchiladas take the crown. Once you circumnavigate the common mistakes in making enchiladas, they come together fairly easily. Well-seasoned proteins and veggies nestled inside corn tortillas bake to bubbly, tender perfection draped in zesty enchilada sauce and melty shredded cheese. Plus, if you dread shredding chicken breast for dishes like these, you can skip that step and make your enchiladas vegetarian by swapping in sweet potatoes.

This may be an unexpected sub for protein, especially in a savory dish, but if sweet potatoes make a deliciously elevated topping for reinvented shepherd's pie, they can certainly make a batch of hearty, savory, and filling enchiladas. The trick is to season them properly so their signature sweetness becomes a nuanced background note rather than the main flavor. You can do this by tossing cubed sweet potatoes in chili-infused olive oil, garlic powder, and paprika before roasting them off, or by steaming some cubes and mashing them together with roasted garlic and seared chilis, along with a soft cheese like queso fresco or cream cheese.

Whether you choose to roast or steam your sweet potatoes depends on the texture you're going for. Roasted cubes offer a little bit of dense crunch, while steamed mash offers a softer, velvety bite. However, both will become relatively soft as they bake, since enchiladas are traditionally supposed to be uniformly fork-tender.

Though high in potassium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, sweet potatoes are lacking when it comes to protein, clocking in at just 1.6 grams for every 3.5 ounces of bright orange tuber. This may be fine if your enchiladas are part of a larger potluck or a light meal before bed, but protein is important to helping us feel full in addition to providing energy. Fortunately, fortifying these tasty enchiladas with a little more nutrition is as simple as adding a can or two of chickpeas or black beans to your filling. Just be sure to rinse them well to rid them of that tinny flavor that often clings to canned foods.

If you're not in a hurry, it's also fairly easy to infuse black beans with impressive amounts of flavor simply by simmering them in a little olive oil or other fat. Infused olive oils and compound butters are especially good for this, as black beans are basically little pockets of starch, which is a sponge for soaking up flavors. Chickpeas act much in the same way, though in both cases you want to keep your oil from becoming so hot that the beans fry and become hard or crunchy. Remember that the best enchiladas have a soft interior, though some texture is okay. Once your beans are warm and seasoned, lightly mash them before mixing with the sweet potatoes to ensure all flavors are evenly distributed — this also helps bloom flavors in the beans.