Overnight Breakfast Enchiladas

Who needs bacon and eggs when you can have breakfast enchiladas? These delightful overnight breakfast enchiladas feature scrambled eggs, seasoned pinto beans and sweet corn (along with a healthy portion of other veggies) tucked into soft corn tortillas, smothered with enchilada sauce and cheese. Assemble them the night before and when you wake up, toss them in the oven and in just 25 minutes, you have a hot, satisfying Mexican breakfast ready to devour. (Or if you can’t wait, just bake them straight away!)

You guys, my computer died. Well, it didn’t so much as die, it just wouldn’t charge anymore. I just bought it in November last year so you’d think it would have survived longer than that! I contacted Dell and they asked me to ship it back to them for repair, but it’ll be out of commission for at least 2 weeks. That means it’ll be May before I get it back! I was kind of really really sad because my bloggy muse had just woken up and started whispering recipe ideas to me again … and the first thing she said to me was “breakfast enchiladas”. Entranced by the idea, I made the enchiladas and photographed them and couldn’t wait to share them with you. But then suddenly I found myself computer-less. It took a few days before I realized my youngest has a computer she no longer uses! It’s a little old and loud, but it works. So here I am, blogging again and I’m sooooo super excited.

Anyway, let’s get back to enchilada talk, shall we? There are a few key things you’ll need to make these breakfast enchiladas truly stellar:

1. an awesome enchilada sauce
2. perfectly cooked and seasoned beans
3. excellent eggs – preferably from happy, free range chickens

What’s the best sauce for enchiladas?

Truly, the sauce that you top your enchiladas with is the #1 most important flavor factor for your breakfast enchiladas. If you have an enchilada sauce that you love, feel free to use that, or try one of these recipes:

• Creamy Cashew Enchilada Sauce – a seriously magical sauce with cashews to give it a creamy undertone … currently my favorite enchilada sauce, and that’s a good thing because I have several jars of this yumminess on hand!
• Cinnamon Chipotle Enchilada Sauce – smoky chipotle peppers with a hint of sweet cinnamon are a totally intriguing combination.
• Fire Roasted Red Enchilada Sauce – fire roasting the peppers and onions on the grill gives this sauce a really good smoky flavor. It takes a bit more time and effort, but who doesn’t like playing with fire? (Ooops, my inner pyromaniac might be showing …)
• Tomatillo Salsa – if you love the tangy taste of tomatillos, this salsa makes a magnificent sauce for enchiladas … but then you might have to call them entomatilladas (see below).
• Tomate Chile Verde Sauce (awesome sauce) – this is my favorite green chile sauce recipe, adapted from the Green Chile Bible, a cookbook I acquired back in New Mexico where all things green chile reign supreme. If you’ve never had Hatch green chiles or witnessed the experience of roasted Hatch green chiles, seriously, do put it on your bucket list, right alongside attending the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Wandering amongst the vibrant colors and lights of inflating hot air balloons on a crisp cool morning with the scent of NM breakfast burritos and coffee lingering in the air right at that magical awakening moment of the day is one of my favorite memories. I hope to make it back again someday to experience it again.

Can I use canned beans for breakfast enchiladas?

I mentioned that you want perfectly cooked and seasoned beans for this recipe. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make your own (although making your own beans is super budget friendly and the flavor is definitely superior), yes you CAN use canned beans. I recommend warming and seasoning your canned beans with some cumin and a nice spicy powdered chile (green chile, chipotle, or cayenne) and/or a really good taco seasoning mix. Also, stirring in some sauteed onion and garlic and/or some finely chopped hot peppers is always a good idea!

If you want to tackle making your own beans and you have a pressure cooker, I highly recommend my Instant Pot Beans recipe.

But have you ever heard of entomadas? or enfrijoladas?

I also have to share with you a fun thing I recently learned! Did you know there are other versions of these things we know as enchiladas? I totally didn’t know there was such a thing as an entomada … or an enfrijolada until one of my recipes was featured in the same post as this entomada recipe. One of my friends guessed that the homemade entomadas was my recipe, and that got me curious, so I had to go look and read the post. I discovered this cool thing that I’d never even thought about before: enchiladas are literally named for the chile-based sauce we slather all over them before we put them in the oven. So for entomadas, instead of the traditional chile based sauce that we use for enchiladas, you use a tomato based sauce. Similarly, for enfrijoladas, you use a creamy bean-based sauce, frijoles being the Spanish word for beans.

And you KNOW now that I’ve learned this bit of knowledge, I’ll be posting recipes on this blog for entomadas and enfrijoladas in the future. I’m super excited to try them!

But for now, I invite you to partake in the beauty that is breakfast enchiladas. I think they are perfect just like this, but please tweak it to your own liking and make this your own recipe. If you want to throw in some breakfast meat like bacon or sausage, I won’t judge. 😉

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Nutrition analysis is a calculated estimate and does not include garnish.