The Perfect Ench-eee-lada - The Thread

How do you serve the enchiladas? Do you cut them, or serve each person several layers of whole tortillas?

I don't know about cutting tortillas. I serve them on dinner plates. I'm not trying to be funny. But I don't know how else to answer your question. The recipe goes something like this.

The Perfect Ench-eee-lada
Printer version of this recipe

Start with a couple dozen (figure on five tortillas per serving) corn tortillas.
Flour tortillas don't work because they fall apart in the sauce pan.
Fill a large skillet with corn oil about two inches deep.
Let the oil heat (setting between 5 and 6 on an electric stove)for about ten minutes.
Fill a large sauce pan (the pan has got to be large enough to receive the tortillas - the larger the better) with, oh a lot of enchilada sauce.

Make your own or use a store brand. Old El Paso is ok, imo.
Heat the sauce but don't boil it.
Fry the tortillas in the oil (don't fold them; leave them flat) then place them into the sauce pan. When you've accumulated five tortillas in the sauce pan (let the last one cook a bit) remove them one at a time and place them on an oven safe dinner plate.
Sprinkle grated cheddar cheese, diced onions and a small amount of enchilada sauce on top of each tortilla and then more on top of the stack.

Place the plate in the oven at 250 F and serve hot.

Also, what size tortillas are best?

I don't know. I've only used onesize. The tortillas in my refrigerator measure 145mm in diameter (used my handy dandy scale I keep in my shirt pocket - it's a nerd thing). That's about 6 inches. I can imagine the larger the tortilla the more difficult the task of transferring them from the sauce pan to the plate.

So, you don't bake your enchiladas, right?

Right. After preparing a plate I put it in the oven at around 250F, just hot enough to keep it hot but not hot enough to bake it. It'll take another 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the other plates so anything hotter than 250F would definitely bake the enchiladas. The cooking goes on in the sauce pan. It's not enough to just dip the tortilla in the sauce pan. You've got to cook them. I leave them in the saucepan for 5 to 10 minutes. But not too long. Leave them in the saucepan too long and they break up, not long enough and they won't absorb the sauce.