Do you ever cut corners when you’re following a recipe? I do—all the time—and I’m always learning from my mistakes.
Take these black bean sweet potato enchiladas, for example. I blundered through Gluten Free Goddess’ recipe, made it my own, and came out a better cook in the end.
Lessons learned:
- Substitutions can be ok: I subbed Target’s salsa verde for the Karina’s green chile sauce, which worked out fine.
- Skipping steps is usually not ok: I ignored her recommendation to warm up the corn tortillas first, so they broke to pieces when I tried to wrap the tortillas around the inside ingredients. As a result, my enchiladas weren’t as pretty as they could have been, but it didn’t affect the flavor. I need to trust that my fellow cooks will not recommend additional steps if they are not integral to the dish’s success!
- Additions are just fine: I love spicy food, so I knew adding a jalapeño and a Fresno chili pepper was a good idea. And it was.
- Pay more for high quality ingredients: Packaged breads, including tortillas, tend to be full of preservatives and unnecessary ingredients. I paid more for these sprouted grain corn tortillas at my local health food store, and go figure, they taste better than the rest!
- Some flavors are so good together, you can’t go wrong: Black beans and sweet potatoes are a delicious combination. Even with all my mistakes, I ended up with a mighty delicious meal.
Scroll down for my recipe.
| Vegetarian Black Bean Sweet Potato Enchiladas |
Recipe type: Main
Author:
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- Filling
- 1 15-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
- 2 teaspoons minced garlic
- One lime’s worth of fresh lime juice
- 2 cups cubed, baked sweet potatoes (one extra-large or two smallish sweet potatoes)
- 1/3 cup crumbled goat cheese (optional)
- 1/2 cup chopped roasted green chiles
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, if you like spicy food like me
- 1 jalapeño, diced
- 1 Fresno pepper, diced
- Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
- Remaining Ingredients
- 1 jar of salsa verde
- 8 organic corn tortillas
- Monterey Jack cheese
- Chopped fresh cilantro
- Sliced avocado
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour enough salsa verde into your baking dish to lightly cover the bottom.
- Mix together the filling ingredients in one bowl.
- Warm up your tortillas, one by one in a skillet, or all at once in a microwave so they don’t break when you bend them. Add 1/8 of the filling to each tortilla, sprinkle with cheese, wrap and place it in your baking dish. Repeat for all of the tortillas.
- Top with more salsa verde and cheese. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until sauce is bubbling and tortillas look slightly golden.
- Sprinkle with fresh cilantro and serve with freshly sliced avocado. Enjoy!
Notes
- Adapted from Gluten Free Goddess. Also see Kathleen’s similar recipe for lasagna.
- Yields 8 enchiladas.
What have you learned from your cooking endeavors?
11 Comments
YUM. I’ve been making a really simple black bean and sweet (mashed) potato quesadilla using the same sprouted tortillas and just a tiny little bit of goat cheese. Then I smother it in hot sauce. It’s perfection and the goat cheese is the just right.
Woah there, your quesadilla sounds amazing! Does the mashed sweet potato hold the tortillas together?
Wow, how good do these look?! I’d love for you to submit this to the M&T Spotlight at http://www.makeandtakes.com/spotlight
These look amazing! I’m totally going to be trying these ASAP.
xo
Jean
Wow these look excellent! Thank you for sharing :)
These look so good! I may just make these tonight.
I made these for my boyfriend tonight and he practically inhaled them! I also added a little corn into the mix (I’m rather obsessed with the stuff) and it was a nice addition. I couldn’t find Fresno peppers, so I diced up an Anaheim. I have a great tortilla soup recipe that calls for those, so I figured they would be a good substitution.
So glad to hear it! Corn and an Anaheim pepper sound like great additions. Now I’m craving Mexican food…
These may be the best enchiladas I have ever had! So simple and delicious. I am so glad I found your blog. Our entire month of dinners are recipes from your website and not once have we been dissapointed!
I am so glad you enjoy my recipes, Amanda, and I’m astonished you’ve made a month of dinners with my recipes! If you have any feedback or suggestions, I’d love to hear it!
Hi Kate,
I just wanted to let you know I tried making this today and it turned out great. Even my fiance who’s a carnivore, liked them and was satisfied with his meatless dinner!! I posted about it on my blog here http://healthnutholdthenut.blogspot.com/2012/03/wiaw-13-hot-engaged-version.html.
Thanks for posting this!!
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