After two plus years of
this recipe residing on my blog, I can still say these enchiladas are
one of my favorite meals. They definitely rank up there with special
occasion dishes but are well worth the splurge on ingredients and
time (I request them every year for my birthday dinner!).
The creamy, cheesy
sauce is seasoned perfectly with just the slightest kick of heat.
Combined with the succulent, tender shrimp, these enchiladas are a
knock-out! I’ve streamlined the recipe just a bit from when it
was originally posted to cut down on a few steps.
After making these for
the bazillionth time, I made some calorie-cutting changes that still
produced fabulous tasting enchiladas. I've made notes in the recipe
below but basically I cut the butter in the cheese sauce from 4
tablespoons to 2, used milk instead of whipping cream, used light
sour cream, used coconut oil (and less of it) in the shrimp mixture,
cut down on the cheese in the sauce just a bit.
Ingredients
Cheese Sauce:
1/2 cup chopped red pepper
1/2 cup chopped yellow or white onion
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whipping cream or milk
1 cup Monterey Jack cheese or Pepper Jack cheese
1/2 cup sour cream, light or regular
Shrimp Mixture:
1 tablespoon butter, canola oil, coconut oil or olive oil
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 1/2 pounds shrimp, peeled, deveined and chopped into bite-size pieces
2 cups ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 1/2 cups Monterey Jack cheese or Pepper Jack cheese
8 (9-inch) flour tortillas
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Lightly grease a 9X13-inch dish and set aside.
Sauté red pepper, onion and
green pepper in 2 tablespoons butter until crisp-tender. Add
oregano, salt, garlic powder, pepper, cayenne pepper, and flour;
blend well and cook, stirring constantly for about a minute. Whisk
in the cream or milk and continue cooking for 3 minutes or until
slightly thickened. Add the cheese; stir until melted. Add sour
cream, stir to blend. Set aside.
In another skillet, melt 2
tablespoons butter. Sauté onion in the oil until translucent
and soft, 3-5 minutes. Add the shrimp and cook until the shrimp are
pink (don't overcook or the shrimp will be tough). Add chopped
tomatoes and 1/2 of the cheese sauce. Spoon 1/3 cup shrimp mixture
into each tortilla. Sprinkle a bit of cheese on top of shrimp
mixture. Roll the enchiladas up tightly. Arrange seam side down in a
9X13-inch glass baking dish. Spoon remaining cheese sauce over
tortillas and sprinkle with remaining cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35
minutes.
Recipe Source: adapted from a recipe Aunt Marilyn sent me
Melanie Gunnell is a food-loving, chocolate-obsessed mom who has a desperate need to share
her favorite tried-and-true recipes with the world. In a past life she graduated from Brigham
Young University with a degree in public health, but for the past ten years, stay-at-home
motherhood has been her job along with blogging-from-home for the past five.
She resides in the brilliantly cold tundra of Northern Minnesota with her husband and their brood
of five children: four boys and one tiny, bossy girl. Dark chocolate (particularly the act of
shoving chocolate chips in her mouth whilst hiding in the pantry) is her coping skill of choice for
both the never-ending winters and the never-ending wrestling matches in her front room.