One meal I miss from my higher carb eating days is my cheesy enchiladas. Mr Low Carb didn’t really care for them as he doesn’t like refried beans but he would eat whatever I made. I knew I had to find a low carb alternative for this! I have also been on a stuffed pepper kick lately, don’t ask me why, which is really strange because I never really used to like peppers. It’s funny how my taste buds have changed with this new lifestyle. Last week I made lasagna stuffed peppers, but forgot to take pictures or track what I put in them so no blog post for those, however I will post the next time I make them. As I was driving around doing grocery shopping my mind was swirling with some new recipes I would like to try and put together and Enchiladas were one of them. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did tonight. You won’t even miss the refried beans.
What you will need(most items can be approximates):
- 1-2 tbsps of your favorite fat, I used avocado oil for this
- 12 oz riced cauliflower, you can buy this frozen or rice your own
- 8 oz cream cheese, I use Philadelphia as that is the lowest in carb amount
- 5-6 peppers
- 3/4 pound of roast, you can use ground beef, shredded steak or pork as well…I just had some roast I wanted to use up
- 1/2 cup enchilada sauce
- 1 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
Heat oil in a skillet, then add the cauliflower and cook on med-low till moisture is gone and it starts looking dry”ish”. Next add the cream cheese to the cauliflower. Stir every now and then till mixed evenly and heated through. The cauliflower and cream cheese are taking the place of the refried beans, they have almost the same consistency.
While the cauliflower and cream cheese are cooking, wash your peppers and prep them to be filled. You will slice the top off as little as possible, but enough that allows you to get to the membranes of the inside. Take a paring knife and cut out the seed pack and any membrane you can’t just pull out by hand. Be sure to get all the seeds removed. Place in cooking dish, you want a pan that will fit the peppers nicely without a lot of extra room so they do not topple over. One thing I might try next time is roasting the peppers before hand for a few minutes before filling them.
Now take your cook meat and mix it with the cauliflower mixture, mixing well, and let it get heated thoroughly. At this point you can choose to add the enchilada sauce to the mixture or you can add it later.
Next take 1tbsp of shredded cheese and place in the bottom of each pepper. Then fill pepper with the meat/cauliflower mixture. Really pack it down.
Add 1 tbsp enchilada sauce to each pepper. Make a well in each of the filled peppers for the enchilada sauce(next time I will put the sauce in with the mix as it’s kind of messy to do after) and combine with a spoon or your fingers to mix the sauce around.
Top with another 1-1 1/2 tbsp of cheese, drizzle a little more enchilada sauce on the peppers. Make a tent with foil and bake at 425 for about 30 min, remove foil and bake for another 20 min or so until cheese is golden bubbly and pepper is tender.
Top with sour cream and shredded lettuce if you’d like.
The nutritional information given is just an approximate as it will all depend on the size and color of the pepper, what kind of meat used, and different brands of ingredients can have different amounts of carbs. In the pictures you will see 11 stuffed peppers, I am making the recipe amounts here for 5-6 peppers, adjust as you need to.
Nutrition: Net Carbs 6g; Protein 24g; Fat 38g
