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A tray of homemade enchilada
November 2 , 2025, by Owen Mattila
The Only Commonality is a Tortilla
The Only Commonality is a Tortilla
by Owen Mattila
The hiss as the raw meat hits the pan. The spices that flood your taste buds and fill your nose. Add in the spicy, tomato sauce that defines the dish and wrap it all up in flour tortillas and you’ve got my favorite dish: enchiladas, a dish with a history almost as rich as its flavors.
The earliest form of an enchilada is thought to have been an adaptation of wraps made in the Mayan empire, but later developed by the Aztecs into a “‘true’ enchilada” (Lee). These wraps, like a modern enchilada, were dipped in sauce sold by merchants in the markets of the Aztec empire and were noted to have developed many kinds of sauces, especially spicy ones (Lee). When the Spanish arrived in modern day Mexico they also came to love the enchilada and developed it with food they brought from the Old World “...including cheese, pork and chicken…” (Lee).
A plate of enchiladas
November 2 , 2025, by Owen Mattila
Tray of enchiladas
November 2 , 2025, by Owen Mattila
The enchilada never lost its popularity; even when Mexico gained independence from Spain, it was and is a significant part of Mexican cuisine (Payne). The part that, most likely, resulted in me coming to know enchiladas was when parts of Mexican territory were annexed into the U.S.A.. This includes Texas, which has developed its own “Tex-Mex” food. Unsurprisingly, this food is mostly centralized around the Texas-Mexico border (Ralat). Mexican food didn’t stop there though and has made its way to all parts of the United States, including Michigan.
When the Spanish found enchiladas they changed them to their liking by adding their old flavors to the dish (Lee), and it happened again in America. Taco Bell, a fast food version of Mexican food, along with other large businesses redefined Mexican cuisine. The change was so dramatic that many don’t even know what the real thing is like (Pilcher). This globalized version of fast food has even started to destroy the actual cuisine leading to people trying to protect it (Pilcher). Though you have to ask what they’re protecting, as seen from the enchilada, as Mexican food came out of adaptation, not concreteness.
Because of the adaptability of the dish, I’ve had a long-standing love for the food which comes initially from my Nana’s recipe and the changes that have come to it after being given to my mom. For me it always comes down to the sauce placed on the enchilada; otherwise it would just be a stuffed tortilla, and there’s this restaurant that makes an incredibly good sauce - El Charrito’s. In fact, the sauce brought the family back every year, often more, and, as a tradition, on the last day of school to this same restaurant for the same dish. I will say the dish was technically a wet-bean burrito, but my mom and I both wanted to mimic the sauce, with its exquisite flavor, for our own enchiladas at home. This challenge has been bonding for us since it was first attempted, adding meaning beyond the dish itself. This has been an enjoyable, but so far difficult, goal for years now; attempting to master the sauce.
The enchiladas of my family are definitely highly Americanized but, authentic or not, I’ll be here enjoying my, still not perfect, enchiladas.
Works Cited
Lee, Alexander. “Enchiladas, a Culinary Monument to Colonialism.” History Today, London, 6 June 2019, historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/enchiladas-culinary-monument-colonialism. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
Mattila, Owen. “Tray of Enchiladas.” 2 Nov. 2025. Author’s personal collection.
Mattila, Owen. “Plate of Enchiladas.” 2 Nov. 2025. Author’s personal collection.
Mattila, Owen. “Tray of Enchiladas Past.” 2 Nov. 2025. Author’s personal collection.
Payne, Laura. “enchilada.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Dec. 2024, britannica.com/topic/enchilada. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
Pilcher, Jeffrey. “The Globalization of Mexican Cuisine.” History Compass, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008, pp. 529–51, doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00509.x. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
Ralat, José R. “Enchiladas Are so Much More than You Think.” Texas Monthly, 25 May 2021, texasmonthly.com/food/tex-mexplainer-enchiladas/. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
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