For decades, I thought that enchiladas were a hallowed recipe, passed down from generation to generation and beware anyone who didn’t follow the rules.

Then I met chef Gerardo Vázquez Lugo at Nicos restaurant in Mexico City.

He took a softball-size round of fresh queso bola de Ocosingo, used a fork to scrape out the white interior, mixed that with diced raw onion, made a 15-minute sauce, refreshed tortillas in hot oil, filled, rolled, and sauced them, and called it a day.

This is a recipe so simple, so easy, that it could be thrown together any Tuesday night. And, back at Milk Street, we enjoyed this simple cheese enchilada as much as a more complex filling, made with chorizo, from the same restaurant.

A week later, however, I began to realize that I had been taught something immensely valuable about Mexican cooking—how to make a quick salsa—which has hundreds of applications. You start with a few plum tomatoes, two cloves garlic, a couple of fruity or smoky chilies such as guajillo or one guajillo and one serrano, and a quarter medium white onion. Char them on a comal or in an iron skillet (or outside on the grill). Get them good and dark. Throw them in a medium saucepan, add a cup or two of water and bring to a simmer, then cook them briefly to soften. Add this to a blender (the most used appliance in Mexico) and blend until smooth. Return to the pan with some oil and simmer down until the froth disappears, 5 to 10 minutes. Done.

The magic here is twofold—charring to deepen flavors, which is bedrock Mexican culinary technique, and using fruity or smoky chilies to add flavor. Chilies in Mexico are not about heat, not about punishing your palate. They are chosen for their flavor, and guajillos add a ton of it. Think of fruity or smoky chiles (ancho for example) as a seasoning packet—they do most of the work for you.

I was also told that enchiladas are often made with day-old tortillas, much the way bread pudding is made with stale bread. Most Mexican cooks will heat oil in a skillet and give the tortilla a once over lightly to freshen them (they need to be pliable to wrap around the filling), but a fresh tortilla works just fine as is. (We brush tortillas with oil and heat them briefly in the oven—a good technique for handling volume.) Beware of the gnarly corn tortillas sold in supermarkets—they are coarse, too thick and not soft enough to roll, plus their flavor is overpowering.

Once you have mastered this simple salsa technique you will become a much better cook. For example, I used this approach when making a red pozole recently and would bet good money that almost any tomato-based soup or stew could swap a 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes with this salsa. You add depth and complexity with little work.

As for the filling, use whatever is on hand—leftover roast chicken, canned beans, cheese, cooked rice or any mashed up stew meat. This might just be the most useful non-­recipe in the entire world.

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."