It’s astonishing how widely El Monterey frozen food can vary in taste and quality. The Charbroiled Chicken and Monterey Jack Cheese Quesadillas, for example, are fantastic, while the XX Large Spicy Red Hot Beef & Bean Chimichanga is something we likened to “an old gym sock that’s been filled with sand.” That’s a pretty wide spread, is it not?
So when we learned that El Monterey had tossed its hat into the enchilada ring, we weren’t sure if we should be thrilled or terrified. Of course, there’s only one way to find out, so we picked up a box of El Monterey Cheese Enchiladas so we could taste them for ourselves.
Quite often, enchiladas are round and packed with filling. These, however, are kind of flat, with mostly just a gooey, stretchy cheese inside.
In fact, we’d say that a vast majority of this meal is cheese. Not only are these enchiladas filled with it, but they’re also covered in a layer of monterey jack cheese. This is a pretty hefty serving of cheese, so if you want your enchiladas to be exceptionally cheesy, these might be right up your alley.
Aside from the cheese overload, there really isn’t much to this dish. The tortillas are nice and soft, and there’s a verde sauce to top the whole thing off. While verde means green in Spanish, this sauce ends up a brownish color. It’s not the most appealing thing to look at, but it tastes fine.
These have a little bit of spice to them, which we didn’t notice at first but it sort of increased as we ate more. By the time we were about halfway through, we found our sinuses to be clearing.
These enchiladas come with a side of cilantro lime rice. The portion is tiny, but that’s okay because it’s not that good. The rice itself is virtually flavorless, but it’s absolutely soaked in lime juice, so you’ll really just taste lime. Still, we’ve certainly had worse side dishes in our frozen meals.
While there are two enchiladas in the box, El Monterey still considers the full package to be a single serving. We do appreciate that, as this is clearly not designed for sharing. This entrée will run you 480 calories (210 from fat) and 910 mg of sodium. Those numbers seem a little high, but they’re actually just slightly above average for frozen enchiladas. Plus, most of the enchiladas we review only consider one to be a serving, even though they’re typically packaged in twos.
The El Monterey Cheese Enchiladas are better than we were expecting. They’re not amazing, but they’re loaded with cheese and there are no glaring flaws to be found here. Overall, we’re pretty happy with this cheesy entrée.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these frozen enchiladas, check out our package scan below.
