The Easy Weeknight Dish That Would Benefit From Canned Enchilada Sauce

If you dream big enough and have some canned enchilada sauce almost anything can become an enchilada. While the classic form of using rolled tortillas is always great, the basic combo of a filling, an edible container, and a bath of savory, spicy sauce can take on infinite variations. Stuffed potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, stuffed squash. Every one of them is a great use of enchilada sauce with some Mexican-inspired fillings. And an easy, classic recipe everybody already loves that only gets better this way is stuffed peppers.

Stuffed peppers are a weeknight classic, able to be thrown together in 15 to 20 minutes before they go in the oven, and giving them an enchilada twist doesn't require any extra work. Many stuffed pepper recipes feature melted cheese on top or get baked in tomato sauce — they're halfway to being enchiladas already — so all it takes is swapping out some ingredients. Red enchilada sauce is usually best here, but if you prefer green then go for it. Just make your favorite stuffing recipe, and then add a few tablespoons of canned enchilada sauce to the mix. Then pour the remainder of the can into the base of the pan you'll be baking the peppers in. If you are topping them with cheese, sprinkle it on top during the last five to 10 minutes the peppers are baking. You'll have barely added a minute to your prep time, and you'll be rewarded with some punchy southwestern peppers.

Once you've tasted stuffed pepper enchiladas, you'll certainly want to try out some other combinations. The most obvious, but certainly delicious, choice would be using poblano peppers instead of bell peppers. You can't stand them up the same as you can bell peppers (if that's your preferred way of baking them), but you can either bake them on their side, or slice them in half and turn them into stuffed pepper boats.

You can also swap out your standard beef and rice filling for stuffing with a little more southwestern flair. Picadillo is a classic ground beef dish popular in Latin America that uses potato instead of rice and works great as a pepper filling. If you want to spice it up a little to go with the enchilada sauce, use chorizo instead of ground beef. Or try using your enchilada sauce to make a variation on Mexican chicken tinga, which can come together quickly using shredded rotisserie chicken from your grocery store. The ever-popular bean and cheese combo makes a great vegetarian option, and goes well with corn or rice too.

Don't ignore the enchilada sauce either. It may be coming from a can, but there are plenty of easy additions to canned enchilada sauce that can boost it and bring even more flavor to your stuffed peppers. It really is a combo that you'll never get tired of tinkering with.