Note: you can prepare Homemade Enchilada Sauce a day ahead and keep it in an air-tight jar, in the refrigerator. (You can also use store-bought enchilada sauce instead of homemade.)
Preheat a medium sauce pot over medium heat, add oil, and saute onion until softened. Add garlic and saute until fragrant.
Sprinkle flour over the onion and stir until onions are evenly coated.
Slowly pour in stock while stirring. Add can of tomatoes and all remaining ingredients. Stir well and bring the mixture to simmer. Let it simmer for a few minutes.
Transfer the content of the pot into a food processor and blend well until smooth. The sauce is ready for making enchiladas!
Filling
Slice onion and peppers. Preheat a large cooking pan over medium heat and add some oil to the pan.
Add onions and peppers and cook until it starts to soften.
Dice tomatoes, press garlic and add both to the pan. Add salt and 1 tsp of chili powder. Stir well and let veggies cook until all soft. Take veggies out of the pan and set aside.
In the same pan, saute ground beef. (You may need to add a little more oil to the pan.) Make sure to break up all the clumps while beef is cooking. Season the beef with chili powder, cumin, oregano, paprika, garlic powder, salt as it cooks.
Once beef is all done, mix cooked vegetables into the beef. Take off heat.
Beef Enchiladas
Preheat the oven to 375° and spread about a cup of enchilada sauce in the bottom of the 9×13 greased casserole dish.
Spread some beef filling and shredded cheese in the tortilla, in one line, and roll it up.
Place rolled tortilla into the casserole dish, seam down. Repeat filling the rest of tortillas and rolling them.
Spread the remaining sauce over each rolled tortilla and generously top it all off with shredded cheese. Bake enchiladas for 17-20 minutes.
Video
Notes
Make Ahead Suggestions: To save some time, make the sauce ahead and keep it in the fridge, in an air-tight glass jar. You can also cook the beef filling ahead or time and keep it in an air-tight food storage container, in the refrigerator. Once you have the sauce and the filling, enchiladas will only take 30 minutes to make. (Reheat the sauce and the filling before rolling, just until warm.) You can also follow the recipe all the way up to the baking step but instead of baking, cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to bake. When ready to bake, take the dish out of the fridge and discard plastic wrap. Let the dish sit on the counter while the oven is pre-heating or start preheating the oven with the dish in it. Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes.
If you want to increase the spice level of beef enchiladas, feel free to add some chili peppers like jalapenos, serrano, or habanero. Remember most of the chili pepper’s spice is in the seeds so choose to leave the seeds in for more spice or discard for less.