Are enchiladas healthy? They can be if you choose healthy ingredients.

Some of us love spicy Mexican food. But, when we eat something, we should always determine how it affects our body.

So, is traditional Mexican food healthy, or is Mexican food unhealthy? How about enchiladas? Are enchiladas healthy? And while we are on that topic, are chicken enchiladas healthy?

A lot of you have come to this article while trying to search for are enchiladas healthy, Reddit? There are healthy enchiladas, beef, or otherwise, such as healthy white chicken enchiladas.

However, it is best to make enchiladas at home as most commercial enchiladas and enchilada sauce are high in calories, sodium, and saturated fat while lacking in the most beneficial nutrients such as minerals and vitamins.

Read the rest of the article to know, are enchiladas healthy or unhealthy?

Enchilada’s Nutritional Value

Commercial enchiladas and enchilada sauce still have some nutritional benefits. Let us see if commercially prepared healthy cheese enchiladas with beef have those benefits or not.

• 323 calories
• 18 grams of fat
• 9 grams of saturated fat
• 30 grams of carbohydrates
• 12 grams of protein
• 0 grams of fiber
• 1319 milligrams of sodium
• 0.4 milligrams of riboflavin
• 228 milligrams of calcium
• 1135IU of vitamin A
• 0.5 milligrams of copper
• 0.6 milligrams of manganese

As you can see, in a commercially made enchilada and enchilada sauce, there is plenty of calories, sodium, fat, and saturated fat, which is not healthy. 

But, you can opt for a more healthy, homemade version yourself, which will be beneficial to your body.

Enchilada’s Health Benefits

Even with all the unhealthy elements of commercially made healthy chicken enchiladas and enchilada sauce, there are certain health benefits to them. Let us explore what those benefits are.

Minerals and Vitamins

Enchilada and enchilada sauce have quite a bit of healthy minerals and vitamins that can be very beneficial to your health.

According to Harvard Health Publishing, “To maintain your brain, muscle, bone, nerves, skin, blood circulation, and immune system, your body requires a steady supply of many different raw materials—both macronutrients and micronutrients.”

Calcium Content

You can find about one-fifth of the calcium that you want in your body in one day by eating enchiladas.

Calcium is very important for our bodies as it maintains and builds healthy bones by strengthening, lengthening as well as slowing all sorts of age-related losses.

In addition, calcium helps your body’s muscles contract, including the beating of your heart. It can even help in clotting blood as well as nerve function.

Manganese Content

The manganese content on healthy chicken enchiladas and enchilada sauce, vegetarian or not, is in large amounts. As enzymatic functions need to happen in your body, manganese can help with those.

Manganese can help with enzymatic functions such as bone formation as well as making your energy from the food you eat.

Copper Content

Healthy chicken enchiladas and enchilada sauce are rich in copper. It is known as a trace mineral. This trace mineral can help your body to make hemoglobin and even work as an enzyme.

Copper can help in producing the energy in the cells of your body as well as developing connective tissue.

According to Harvard Health Publishing, “The results show that adequate intakes of vitamin K, vitamin A, magnesium, zinc, and copper were associated with a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease—but only if they came from food and not supplements.”

Riboflavin Content

Healthy chicken enchiladas with green sauce are rich in riboflavin content. This can help in producing energy in the cells of your body.

Riboflavin can also help in turning the amino acids in your body into niacin. This niacin is essential to prevent plaque accumulation in your arteries as well as to enable the body to use your body’s insulin more efficiently.

What this does is helps your blood sugar levels to stay at the desired levels.

What Tortillas Should You Use

Now that you know that healthy chicken enchiladas and red enchilada sauce can be healthy, you should learn how to make one as healthy as you would like. 

Because you are making your enchiladas yourself, you will have the option to choose what kind of tortillas you can use. So, you should choose wisely.

Here are some of the healthy options that you can choose from:

• Siete tortillas
• Gluten-free tortillas
• Corn tortillas
• Flour tortillas

What You Should Put in Your Enchiladas

You can put so many things in your healthy chicken enchilada that it is like a blank canvas. There are a lot of ingredients that you can put in your healthy chicken enchiladas, such as chicken, beans, rice, beef, sweet potatoes, corn, and more.

What I would suggest for making simple and healthy chicken enchiladas is shredded chicken that you can cook over your stove. You can also use rotisserie chicken if you want. This will be your source of protein.

For fiber, you should add black beans to your enchiladas. And, for flavor, you can add green chilis. 

Healthy Chicken Enchiladas Recipe

Now that you have your ingredients, all that there is left to do is to make the healthy chicken enchiladas that are healthy for you.

I will now guide you step by step to prepare your enchiladas.

Step 1: Cooking the Chicken

The chicken is a big part of where you would get the flavor of your chicken enchiladas. So, you may not want to go wrong here.

To start with your chicken, you want to season your chicken on all sides and use a skillet or saute pan to cook your chicken over medium heat.

You want to cook that chicken for about six to seven minutes on both sides. After that, you can bring your chicken off of the heat. Then, shred your chicken after it has cooled off.

Step 2: Making the Filling

Now cook your garlic and diced onion until they look translucent. After that, you can add in the rest of the ingredients of the filling, which include your shredded chicken for your healthy chicken enchiladas.

Step 3: Filling and Topping Your Tortillas

Firstly, you need to make your corn tortillas pliable. To do that, you can just warm them in your microwave.

Now is the time when you fill those tortillas with the mixture of chicken that you made earlier and roll up the corn tortillas, placing them in any casserole dish container that you have that contains the enchilada sauce. Remember to keep the side where the seam is down. 

Then, you can fill your corn tortilla with the filling and roll it, placing it in a casserole pan. Again, the seam side needs to be down.

Now, you can top that with cheese and enchilada sauce. Do not go for sour cream, as sour cream can be unhealthy. But, you can use tomato sauce as well as chili powder.

Step 4: Baking

Now, you can go ahead and bake your healthy chicken enchiladas for fifteen minutes at about 350 degrees F. You can take them out when you see the sides bubbling.

Final Words

Are enchiladas healthy or unhealthy? Well, they can be if you choose the ingredients carefully yourself and make your own. 

Commercial enchiladas are very high in sodium, saturated fat, calories, and fat. So, even though they have some health benefits, they can be quite unhealthy to eat.

That is why you should eat enchiladas that you make yourself at home. They are really easy to make and tasty to eat.